Recent reviews by disco snail

Tekken 8 has all the makings of a great game, but once again, Namco seems determined to fumble the ball when it counts most. We're just a couple of months into the game's life, and instead of tackling real issues, Namco seems set on sabotaging its own growth.
I can't recommend the game at it's current state. Devs are either overworked or completely incompetent. Every balance patch they break more things than they fix. Also they would rather change the core game system instead of target nerfing a single character, which results in even more unintended bugs and interactions in the game (broken wall combos, floors not breaking, etc.). They tried to nerf the obnoxious Azucena WR3,4 and it ended up being a buff because you can't even punish it on whiff.
Accidental buffs? Sound familiar? They did the exact same thing when they wanted to nerf Akumas techroll catch in Tekken 7. Instead of target nerfing the problematic interaction, they made a system-wide nerf to tech catches, which ended up taking away a layer of mindgame at the wall for every character. And the best part is, Akuma could still do the tech catch. They've done this many times before and they will do it again, because this is one of the most stubborn group of people that will blame the fanbase before they admit they did something wrong.
After a huge backlash on one balance patch, people demanded more transparency from the devs. So, what did we get? A brief burst of activity from the game directors on Twitter (which lasted about a month) and some half-hearted explanations buried in the patch notes. But they still sneak in changes without telling anyone. They made a huge change to the matchmaking system that resulted in people not finding any matches. I have been searching for a match, while writing this review and I found a single match with a player more than 5 ranks away from mine.
Bandai as a publisher is also not new to the anti-consumer practices. A $70 game is getting a "battle-pass" 2 months into it's release with filler, throwaway cosmetics that were available for free in the previous games.
One of the most knowledge check-heavy characters, Eddy, is a $6 DLC character, which you can't lab against if you don't buy him (can't even take over your own character in the replay).
I'm not the biggest modder but the modding scene is a huge part of the Tekken community. Instead of offering cosmetics that people would actually want to pay for, Namco decided to release laughable garbage and go after the modders just so they could squeeze out as much money as possible from their battlepass.
The balance is a mess (see Dragunov, Azucena etc.) but that could be remedied in the upcoming balance patches (lol).
Ranked is also full of pluggers. Instead of getting an automatic win when your opponent plugs, like in every other game, namco decided that its better to keep an excel spreadsheet of the players reported on twitter and manually issue bans to them every other patch... yeah.
Nobody's talking about this, but one of the main reasons I love tekken and not any other fighting game is because of the quality of character animations. All the moves felt like they had weight to them and looked very fluid. However, since the later Tekken 7 seasons (see Lidya's whole moveset, wallbounce) it has taken a huge dive. Some of the new animations in Tekken 8 are outright terrible (tornado animation, everybody getting a backflip move that make the character look weightless ex. Jin). This all culminated with Eddy that had his whole movelist reworked and now looks like he's sporadically jumping between animations when he does a move (no windup, no recovery, moves worse than an MK character). However, this is the least of the games problems. It looks gorgeous otherwise and devs did a great job.
This is my favorite game franchise, which I've been playing since Tekken 3 on PS1 and I hate to see it in its current state, but the only way to get through to namco is to stop giving them more money. At the end of the day all they care about is money and this will keep happening if you keep supporting them with your wallets.
In short, Tekken 8 has potential, but until Bamco get their act together, I'd steer clear of this mess. I know this review will read like Im venting, because I am. Im sad to see this happen to my favorite franchise. There's a reason I have 3000 hours in Tekken 7 and just as many playing it offline with people I've met through this game that I can call my lifelong friends.
UPDATE:
The upcoming patch seems to be promising. Obviously overtuned characters are getting nerfed and they seem to be providing a lot of free content for damage control. The game needs a few more of updates like these and it will be in a great state. I will update my review accordingly.
UPDATE 2:
They were just weathering the storm. Now that people have quieted down, they release Genmaji Temple stage as a separate DLC, not included in season pass or ultimate edition. This company is a joke