Tekken 8: 6 Tips To Improve Your Rank

Tekken 8 is a hard game. The series is famous for having some of the most complex fighting games ever, and this one is no exception. The sheer number of moves every character has in the massive roster makes the game very difficult to learn and understand.

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With that being said, Harada and the rest of the Bandai Namco Team decided to make Tekken 8 a much more accessible entry in the series, while retaining the complexity and depth that fans are more than familiar with now. How can you use those tools to escape the dregs of the lower ranks?

6 Learn How To Block

Hone Your Defense

We can't emphasize this enough, defense is a crucial part of any fighting game, but even more so when it comes to Tekken. When you're starting out as a beginner, you will not know what the characters you're facing do. This will be the case of quite a long time. There are more than 30 on the roster and they often have over 100 moves each.

Instead of pressing all your buttons while you don't even know what your enemy is doing, be patient and learn to block. Wait for your turn to strike, and do your damage while you can, then go back to blocking. If you get good at blocking, especially against lower-ranked players, you'll win your games without ever learning a combo.

5 Use Punishment Training

Learn How To Strike Back

Punishment training is an excellent addition to the Tekken 8 training mode, and one that you should definitely use. You won't be able to identify in a live match which punishment goes where, but learning your tools is crucial for the next evolution of your game.

Get the rhythm down, train your reaction times and understand where your ten and 15-frame punishments work, and try to implement at least the 10f one in real matches. After you've mastered blocking, this step will give your defensive playstyle a deadly side.

Frame Count Explanation

• When an attack is called 'ten-frame' or '15f', it means those are the frames the attack takes between starting the animation and when it hits your opponent.
• A ten-frame punishment is usually a fast one-two punch, while 15-frame and above are launchers that give you full combos.

4 Start Learning Frame-Data

The Numbers, Mason

For most of us, frame-data will be boring. It is literally just looking at numbers on a screen, but Tekken 8 does an excellent job at showing you at a glance what they mean. Even if you find it boring, learning this side of the game, even if slowly, will level you up massively.

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Tekken, at its core, functions almost like a turn-based JRPG. Whoever hits first in a match starts their turn, which will end when it is interrupted by the enemy or when the player uses an attack that leaves them with negative graves on block. Learning frame-data will show you where your turns begin and end, diminishing a lot of the frustrations that the game can have when you don't know when you can press your buttons safely.

Frame-Data Explained

• Frame-Data is, to put it simply, the frames attached to each move in Tekken. That is the take it takes for an attack to hit, and the time it takes for the animations to end.
• If your attack animation recovers faster than the opponent's when they block, you just used an attack that is plus on block. If the opposite happens, you're minus on block.
• Being plus on block means that if you use an attack that takes 10 frames to hit and the opponent does a move with just as many frames, you'll hit them first because you technically started the animation before they did.

3 Watch Your Own Replays

It Is Actually Fun, Now!

Instead of having to learn frame-data in the lab as players of previous Tekken players had to do, Tekken 8 gives you all the frame-data in your own replays, with the option to take control of your character and practice your punishments instantly.

Maybe you just lost a match to a character that felt extremely overwhelming, smothering you with strings that seemed impossible to deal with. Head to the replay and you'll see that there are always ways to deal with your enemy's offensive, you just have to learn the gaps and practice your punishments.

2 Learn How To Use And Break Throws

We Know You Hate King

Throws, or grabs, are extremely strong in Tekken 8. If you get hit by one as a counter-hit, the window to escape the throw is minuscule, making it nearly impossible to break. With the addition of more armored moves like the heat burst, grabs also became stronger because they work through armor.

Learn your character's strongest throws, ideally ones that need specific breaks like 1+2, and practice your own throw breaks against multiple characters. This can be done in the lab with a bit of patience, and once you start doing it, you'll see that you'll quickly get better at identifying which break you need to use against specific throws.

Input And Throw Explanations

• Except for specific characters like King, who have what are called ambiguous throws, all grabs in the game can be broken based on visual cues.
• If the opponent's left arm touches you first, you have to press 1 to break. If it is the right one, you have to press 2. If both of them come at once, you have to press 1+2.
• 1 is the left punch button, or X on an Xbox controller. 2 is the right punch button, or Y. 1+2 means that you have to press both of them simultaneously.

1 Don't Become Obsessed With Combos

One Step At A Time

If you had to make a list of your personal priorities in order to become a better Tekken player as a beginner, learning combos should be bottom of that list, regardless of which character you're playing. Learning combos is extremely fun, and landing them in real matches is even better.

With that being said, though, you'll only be able to use them reliably if you've already done all the previous steps that we've shown on this list. You'll know you can launch your opponent if you've learned that the move they just used leaves them minus 15 on block. Learn a simple combo or two to start with, and leave the highlight-reel ones for later.

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