Tekken 7 was first released on the PS4 all the way back on June 2, 2017, and was released in arcades as early as March 2015. Earlier this year, the game broke seven million sales. Series veteran and esteemed colleague Eric Layman reviewed it for us back then, and as always, his articles provide a great and informative read. To my surprise, and presumably to many other folks, Bandai Namco dropped two new digital-only Tekken 7 releases just before Thanksgiving this year. They don’t come cheap — the Originals Edition is $100 and the Definitive Edition is $120 — but both releases are packed with content for what many would consider is the most impressive release in the franchise that first started in 1994. Check out the official new editions trailer for details on what you get.
By now, you have probably already formed an opinion on Tekken 7, and you may even own it already. I had yet to play Tekken 7 before being blessed with a review code for the Definitive Edition, though I had played several entries of the series in the past, mainly in that PS1 to PS3 era. I was familiar with some of the mainline characters (and yes, this is that one fighting game with the weird jaguar and bear characters). Tekken has built up a long and thick history of characters and story, centering primarily around one very old warrior family — the Mishimas. Jinpachi Mishima, Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama, are at the crux of the story, and with Tekken 7, the story mode focuses primarily on Heihachi, but involves many characters from the 40+ roster available.
I found the story mode the most obvious way to start, as it introduced (or re-introduced, as it had been at least two years since I played a Tekken game) me to characters and reminded me of the Mishima rivalry. The action begins as Heihachi infiltrates the Zaibatsu organization to take back control of it. This massive entity and that of the G Corporation ran by Kazuya engage in a massive war that ends up destroying the family and the city of the narrator character who is featured in the cutscenes shown in between the chapters. Quick note — I liked that you could pause the cutscenes in between chapters. The story is, if I’m honest, not super interesting; but it’s worth playing through. Even with watching the somewhat plentiful cutscenes, you can battle you way through the story mode in around three or four hours, depending on your skill level and difficulty setting.
I appreciated that, if you lose a battle during the course of a chapter, you don’t have to start the whole thing over, you can just restart at the battle you lost at. At times, like when Akuma first fights Heihaci in Chapter 8 (and you’re controlling Akuma), this was especially welcomed because there are some spikes in difficulty, though nothing crazy and nothing that some concentration and effort won’t pull you through. The game does offer a great Assist mode that helps you achieve some attacks by pressing L1 + one of the face buttons, but doing Special Moves are up to you. I still struggle to consistently execute the diagonals and half-circles the Japanese fighting games call for, and between the different games I sometimes forget how the Ex and Special gauges and all that work, but it’s still fun. I also would not call this a button-mashing experience given how each face button is tied to a limb of the character and battling is actually pretty realistic for a fighting game. With no Ring Outs like you see in Soul Calibur, you’re also less likely to succeed with a barrage of offensive button-mashing, too. On that note, I do wish there were a dedicated blocking button.
Going into much more detail about Tekken 7 is out of the scope of this review, given that these new digital-only releases are literally the same base game you can buy individually with previously released DLC included. With the Originals Edition, you get twelve characters from games past, while for another twenty bucks you get those and a lot of other stuff, too. My time with Tekken 7 has been playing through the story, Arcade mode, and offline local play with family and friends. There’s lots of other ways to play, running the gamut from offline practice to online tournaments, and even a VR mode, but I didn’t bother to try the VR mode. If you’re interested in the other game modes and nuances of Tekken 7, like the changes to the Rage system, I would recommend reading other articles, such as Eric’s review of the original base game.
All that said — and in the interest of efficiency, be sure to check out the official trailer for the new editions that I linked to at the top of the article. Indeed, the price for entering the King of Iron Fist tournament with either of these editions is considerable, but the amount of quality content here is compelling. This is one of the best 3D fighting games released in years, made only better since its original release thanks to patching and gobs of extra content along the way. This is the culmination of about four and a half years of new content and tweaks, and serves as a celebratory release, a call for hold-outs to finally jump in, and a closing of the chapter of Tekken 7. Surely all eyes will be looking for news of Tekken 8 next year and into 2023, and it will be exciting to see where Harada and Bandai Namco take the series next.
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