YMMV / Tekken 7

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• Adorkable: Lidia at the end of her reveal trailer.
  Lidia: This will be over before lunch. Osu! Uh, I mean, uh...
• Americans Hate Tingle: Lucky Chloe is not liked in the West, to put it mildly. Her true personality, while at least adding some depth to her character, is a moot point when she proceeded to humiliate fan favorite Eddy Gordo in her Character Story. The best thing that the Western fans can come up with about her is just how she's preferable to the reporter narrator in the story mode - and that she plays pretty good.
• Awesome Video Game Level: Infinite Azure, both versions. One of the simplest, yet most beautiful stages in the game, this stage is very well-liked for its simplicity and clarity; especially in Training Mode, where the lack of any background objects or clutter makes it especially easy to practice in. The background music (which got remixed in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, by the way) also helps a ton, seeing as for many a Tekken player, this is all but their answer to The Grid. As an added bonus, the stage is actually based on the real-life Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
• Broken Base:
  • Upon its announcement, Tekken 7 quickly became the most divisive entry in the entire series since the fourth game. A common complaint was that it's more of the same, but one camp saw the series' staples as tried-and-true and thus found nothing wrong with it. Another camp claimed that, between the polarizing new characters, the recycled assets (character models, sound bytes, animations, voices and mechanics), the lackluster soundtrack and the lack of hype in comparison to other fighting games, this installment is evidence that the Tekken series is on life support.
  • Story Mode itself. Katsuhiro Harada promised 7 story would finish the Mishima storyline. Then it turns out he only meant Heihachi and Kazuya's feud. Kazumi was only relevant to the lore of the Devil Gene and Akuma was unusually important for a Guest Fighter. All other important plot threads of the Myth Arc, namely Lars, Jin, and Asuka, get left forgotten. The entire value of the game's story to players may slide from Play the Game, Skip the Story up to Casual-Competitive Conflict. Regardless, quite a few players went the mile and accused Harada of being a Lying Creator for this.
  • The lack of character endings on Arcade Mode, along with how Story Mode treats everyone who isn't Kazuya or Heihachi Mishima (even Jin got some flak in that regard), was divisive thanks to the Casual-Competitive Conflict stemming from the value of the story versus emphasis on competitive play. Not helping was the fact that the same people were fresh off Street Fighter V 's exact same problems with general lack of content causing the exact same heated debate. Thanks to this, people who paid attention to Tekken 's storyline became afraid of what would become of Soul Calibur VI, not only because of what was seen on T7, but also because of Soul Calibur V being an even more egregious example that released five years prior. Thankfully, SCVI featured two separate campaign modes for players to work through, with dedicated story modes for each character and another mode with light RPG elements for custom characters. While it didn't solve the fact that Arcade Mode there still had no endings (or barely any reason to play it), many players who appreciate storytelling and lore felt far better treated by Okubo's game than they were by Harada's.
  • Rage Arts are either a neat inclusion or are out of place in the series. What doesn't help their case is that most are variations of a character's regular moves in a cinematic sequence.
  • The Nerf to backdashing and sidestepping, two of the series' biggest gameplay components. It's either received well for giving newcomers less to worry about when learning the game, or hated for making movement less interesting.
• Catharsis Factor: Considering all the horrible deeds that Heihachi has committed throughout the series, Kazuya killing him and chucking him into the volcano is immensely satisfying.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The arrival of Leroy Smith in December of 2019 has completely upended the Tekken landscape thanks to being equipped with strong attacks both offensively and defensively and has instantly made him the single best character in the entirety of Tekken 7, to the point EVO Japan featured six Leroy players out of the entire top eight field (compare this to EVO 2011 where Bob swept the Tekken 6 top eight lineup and even then, it only featured four Bob players).
• Crosses the Line Twice: Heihachi kicking a young Kazuya in a flashback. While this is par for the course for Heihachi, it unintentionally loops back to being hilarious because little Kazuya goes flying.
• Dueling Games: With Street Fighter V, which is ironic as Akuma is a Guest Fighter in this game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See the series-wide page here.
• Fan Nickname: More entries to browse in the series' main page here.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Tekken 7 releasing around the time of Like a Dragon's Newbie Boom post-Yakuza 0's release in the west, Kiryu (and Majima, to a lesser extent) has become a popular request as a Guest Fighter for the game from both fandoms.
• Game-Breaker: The consensus on Lars in Tekken 7 went from low-tier in Season 1 to complaints that he was suddenly an unfairly broken character on Season 2, due to a new fast punishing move that allowed him to deal a minimum of 20% life, almost 50% at the wall, and near-death combos with Rage. Frustrated Lars mains suddenly found themselves destroying opponents with ease all over again, while many other players believe it needs to be patched out as soon as possible. And sure enough, less than a week later, the combo string in question was nerfed.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Everything about Kazumi and the Hachijo clan gets painted in a very bad light come Tekken 8, as it turns out that the Hachijo clan also worshipped Azazel, a demonic entity bent on subjugating mankind and the actual source of the Devil Gene. This makes Heihachi's killing of Kazumi more justifiable than reprehensible.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In Miguel's character episode, he spares Jin instead of outright killing him, and declares that he'll wait for Jin to regain hope before trying to kill him again so that he can then make Jin truly suffer. In the sequel Tekken 8, all of Jin's friends and rivals gave him the hope needed to finally face his own inner demons, and the resolve to end Kazuya's tyranny.
• He's Just Hiding: Heihachi is killed by a devil gene-empowered punch to the chest, and thrown into a lava pit by Kazuya, for good measure. However, due to Heihachi's history of cheating death, some fans have a hard time believing he's gone for good, arguing that he'll probably just be resurrected somehow, much like Kazuya himself after his death in Tekken 2. Unfortunately, Word of God confirms that Heihachi is Killed Off for Real though he left behind a nasty little surprise for his sons and grandson: Reina.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Bryan via his Tekken 7 version is considered to be absurd and cheap. As described by now-retired longtime Tekken player Aris: Orbital Heel (uf+4), Mach Kick (f,F+4), and Hatchet Kick (qcb+3) are the only tools you need to just do well with him. As of Season 4, he's still a reasonably strong character, but his execution and match-up knowledge demands keep him from being as overpowered as he was in his Tekken 5 days.
  • While it wasn't as immediately apparent as Leroy's case, Fahkumram also gained a fair bit of flak for, much like Leroy, having just about everything (good punishment, absurd range because of his size, surprisingly good movement for someone so large, ridiculous combo damage and wall carry, and so on) as well as having Hitbox Dissonance up the ass, meaning that while some combos will be consistent and reliable with most of the rest of the roster, against Fahkumram they'll either be very inconsistent or just won't work. In his case, it took two patches and a season change to bring him down to manageable levels, addressing both his hurtbox issues as well as his disproportionately superior movement abilities.
  • Julia, whose showing in this game is the strongest she's ever been, even more so than her Tekken 6 iteration. To keep it short, she is one of the most versatile and consistent characters on the roster. Enough that she could even go toe-to-toe with Leroy (see below) on top of Japanese player Mikio (the only other player besides Ulsan that used someone other than Leroy) coming in 2nd place at EVO Japan 2020 with her. Her key traits are her excellent wall carry (which is even better than it was in 6 thanks to the Screw system), consistent and high combo damage, a neutral game on par with Chun-Li's 3rd Strike iteration, and an arsenal of command grabs that rivals those of King's^note  The most infamous of which is Mad Axes - qcb,f+2. A command grab that comes out a lightning fast 10 frames (the average is 12; the only other command grabs that are as fast are the Kings' respective Giant Swing grabs) and gives her some very effective okizeme when it connects. That, and the input buffer is banally lenient, too; enough that you can do the quarter-circle input, perform a quick sidestep, and then press forward plus Right Punch to still grab the opponent. . It took until Season 5 for her to finally be knocked down a peg since her introduction in Season 2, and even then, she still remains a formidable character in the right hands, with her only downsides being her somewhat unorthodox (if at times cumbersome) execution demands.
  • Shortly after Leroy was released, it was discovered that his moveset was... more than a little over-tuned. As a result, he became extremely hated within the competitive community because he was a Master of All who invalidates virtually everyone else in the game by having, without question, the best possible versions of many other characters' moves and tools. To the point where many considered him to sit above everyone else in the game within the realm of God Tier, reigning supreme not unlike Tekken 4 Jin and Tekken 6 Bob. In fact, Leroy had to receive not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR patches in order to nerf him to tolerable levels, and he's still considered one of the best characters in the game. It's also telling that the only other character that could at the very least go up against him was Julia (mentioned above). As an example of just how dominant Leroy 1.0 was over the rest of the cast: of the Top 8 players at EVO Japan 2020, six were using Leroy (the holdouts being Mikio - who played Julia as mentioned above - and Ulsan - who instead played Bob and Kazumi). For comparison, the Smash 4 Top 8, in a meta where Bayonetta was considered far and away the best character in the game, had just three Bayonetta mains out of eight. Even crazier, one of the Leroy players who made it had only a few minutes of experience with the character clocked in before the tournament began. Naturally, Leroy won the whole thing, piloted by Book, who is normally a Jin main. The highlight of his interview immediately after winning? "Just pick Leroy." That was the crux needed for Namco to finally start nerfing the character to tolerable levels.
  • Towards the end of the game's lifespan, Kunimitsu began to fill the void left behind by Leroy, Akuma, and Geese after they were nerfed. She is incredibly easy to play in this game, having strong counter hit options, strong movement for veterans to make good use of with hands down the best backdash in the entire game, and absurdly long range on her attacks that she can convert any hit from into a high damaging combo. She also has a strong zoning tool like the 2D characters and Noctis in her kunai toss, making her deadly at any range.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It was already noted that both Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros. each have guest fighters from Street Fighter and Final Fantasy (Ryu and Cloud for Smash, Akuma and Noctis for Tekken), but two years later, Geese Howard's Arch-Enemy Terry Bogard would be introduced to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, meaning that both Tekken 7 and Smash have managed to bring together Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Fatal Fury under one roof. And both fighting games are developed by Bandai Namco, to boot! Then Kazuya joined Ultimate as a Guest Fighter, meaning that Tekken, Final Fantasy, Fatal Fury, and Street Fighter are all reunited once again.
  • Many people have pointed out the similarities between Leo and Rock Howard ever since the former's debut in Tekken 6 (short blonde hair, similar looking jacket, one being German while the other is an American of German ancestry), so the fact that one can pit Leo against Rock's biological father is somewhat amusing.
  • Tekken 7's initial release date in arcades? March 18th, 2015. Home release date? June 2nd, 2017. Six years later to the day, and…^note  Even better taking into account Akuma's guest appearance in this one.
  • On the topic of release dates and given the Friendly Fandoms between this game and Yakuza 0 (now known as Like a Dragon), what are the odds the sequel and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth would debut on the exact same release date?
  • In Eliza's Character Episode, when she falls asleep after Lili finds her, the latter remarks that she needs less blood and more coffee. And then came Azucena...
  • Miguel's Rage Art is shown from the opponent's perspective, which drew many comparisons to the Walking Dead episode "Last Day on Earth". Cut to a year after the game's release, and Negan himself came to Tekken 7's roster to show Miguel how such a finisher is really done.
    • Better yet, Negan's stage was even called "Last Day on Earth"!
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Katarina is considered a pretty bad character - she has a lot of recovery on her moves, and while she puts up a lot of pressure she doesn't really do anything special. That is, of course, if you discount her 4+4 rapid kicks, which deal absolutely insane amounts of damage (for example, here's a rather simple combo with her). She's an excellent pubstomper at low levels, and while no true Tekken character is bad, she's the one that will easily make you most angry at the game if you fight someone who spams kicks as her. Season 2 seems to be an attempt to address these issues; her 44444 string was slightly nerfed, while in turn buffing another string of hers to be a fast combo starter, among other changes to her character.
  • Gigas is considered by a decent majority of players to be one of the worst characters in the game; he's a Mighty Glacier that has bad frames across the board - no safe launcher, a plethora of linear and slow moves, only one command grab^note  To Gigas' credit it is one of the most devastating command grabs in the game. , a useless stance in Golem Set Up (db+3+4), and many others. His only redeeming factors are the fact that he has one of the best 10 frame punishers in the game^note  That being Iron Breaker (1,2) which does a whopping 31 damage, knocks down on hit, has excellent range because of his gargantuan arms, and is especially devastating at the wall. and excellent range on his arms.
  • Lars despite his decency in earlier titles, initially seemed to be one of the more lackluster characters in 7 as a majority of his tools had been nerfed and overall made him a Master of None. And then Season 2 came out and gave him a fast and powerful new move that reliably punished opponents for at least a 4th of their life if they weren't careful. Sure enough, less than a week later, it was patched out, sending Lars mains back to the drawing board to see how helpful the rest of his balance changes were. As of Season 4, while he's nowhere near as strong as say, Leroy or Julia, he's certainly looking a lot better than he did back in Season 1.
• Memetic Loser: Gigas, due to him being an unpopular replacement for Marduk (who came back anyway, making Gigas seem like The Artifact), as well as him being a low-tier, barely used character.
• Memetic Mutation: Now with its own page for the entire series here.
• Narm:
  • The narrator of the story mode, with his borderline monotonic, phoned-in delivery, has been widely ridiculed by fans.
  • The father-son conflict between Heihachi and Kazuya turns from serious and tragic to hilariously over-the-top when the two of them devolve into what can be summed up as a PR war, with Heihachi exposing Kazuya as the Devil after firing a satellite laser on his headquarters, to Kazuya retaliating by shooting down said satellite and blaming Heihachi for it when the debris destroys a city, which in turn caused the public to somehow forget that they saw Kazuya transform into the Devil.
• Older Than They Think: Negan is not the first guest from outside a fighting game in Namco's fighting games, as Kratos and Ezio had previously appeared in the Soul Series, nor is he their first non-videogame guest, as Spawn, Darth Vader and Yoda, and Geralt appeared in the Soul Series as well - not to mention Gon's appearance in Tekken 3.
  • This also isn't the first time someone from a Final Fantasy game has fought a Mishima. As Ehrgeiz was a collaboration between Square and Namco, it not only featured Cloud and Tifa (and later other FFVII characters in the home port), but also Ken "Godhand" Mishima as one of the game's playable characters.
• Replacement Scrappy: Several newcomers for 7 did not please the fans as they seem to be pseudo-replacements of veterans, such as Lucky for Eddy/Christie/Tiger (Eddy eventually returned in Fated Retribution), Josie for Bruce (Fahkumram's addition in season 4 made it worse for some), and Gigas for Marduk (who returned anyway in Season 2). Trading Raven in for a female version in Fated Retribution also upset some people as well.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Zafina. She was by no means disliked per se (at worst, most consider her to be pretty one-dimensional), but two of the biggest points of contention were her Stripperific design and being an all-around Low-Tier Letdown, especially when she debuted in Tekken 6. One all-new redesign and some buffs later and Zafina went from a mostly underutilized and almost forgotten character to a very strong fighter^note  While her frame data isn't anything to write home about, her mobility - which is very crucial at high levels of play in Tekken - is by far the best in the game; having an amazing backdash and sidestep that makes her incredibly nimble to control when compared to the universally nerfed movement across the cast in 7. in the right hands.
• The Scrappy: The nameless reporter in 7 manages to be the most disliked character in the whole series, so much that Americans would even value Lucky Chloe above him. This is chiefly because of his extremely flat characterization and a boring monotone delivery of all his lines. Despite these negative traits, he still got to be the main Character Narrator for most of the story segments, making him feel a rather forced addition to the cast. He singlehandedly causes a lot of story segments where he featured feel incredibly boring in spite of what's actually happening on-screen (e.g. a corporate war destroying a city feels like a dry history documentary).
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • A minor example from 7 is that customization parts for DLC characters can be unlocked regardless of whether one purchased them. While this is helpful if one intends to buy them anyway, those who don't have a small risk of one of their treasure chests in Treasure Battle, including the rainbow chests, being bogus.
  • Related to the above is that the entire cast shares a number of special cosmetic Hit Effects. The problem arises from the fact that these effects only appear in the rarest rainbow treasure chests, and each cosmetic only counts for the character you unlocked it for (e.g. getting a Hit Effect for Jin doesn't unlock it for other male characters). With more than 34 characters (counting the default roster, including DLC you may not even own) each having four Hit Effects, this results in 134-plus identical effects heavily clogging up the potential prize pool for the rarest chests in Treasure Battle.
  • The Auto Combos introduced in Season 2, while entirely optional, are a lot more detrimental than they are helpful to a new player in the long run. For one thing, if enabled, they are mapped to either punch (X/Y on Xbox or Square/Triangle on PlayStation) button. This might seem intuitive until you realize that you also can't use any move requiring that input. Wanna play it safe and use a jab to check or interrupt your opponent? Sorry, but you'll accidentally launch them instead. Are you maybe playing Shaheen or Armor King and are trying to play it safe with their df+1 pokes? Yeah, nice try. Nothing actually happens and you eat a launcher for your troubles. Good thing they're turned off by default because it would cause no shortage of annoyance for most players otherwise.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Akuma's inclusion in Tekken 7. That is all.
  • Wanna know how to top that? Geese Howard.
  • Hey, Nintendo, We take your cameo of Cloud Strife and double it...with Noctis Lucis Caelum!
    • Quite literally, everyone was stunned, since Noctis wasn't even predicted to be in the running!
  • And how do we top that? With Negan of course.
• That One Attack: Boss Rage Arts. They are hard to see coming or dodge, and are instant kills. Demonstrated in this video where a player who was otherwise dominating with Devil Kazuya and loses only because of his Rage Art.
• That One Boss: Shin Akuma in the Story mode Special Chapter of 7, particularly on 10-star difficulty. On your first, say, 50 tries, you won't even last 30 seconds on each attempt, unless you can read his attack patterns, be aware of when he's vulnerable, and know the moves you can do to act accordingly. Oh and you are also stuck on Devil Kazuya, godspeed to those who don't know how to play him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Kazumi Mishima, built up as this huge part of the Mishima storyline from the trailers and interviews, ended up being an afterthought denied of her story relevance in favor of Akuma and some no name reporter. Many fans feel that Devil Kazumi should have been the one to hunt down Kazuya and Heihachi for the sake of the world in place of Akuma and that there could have been far more interesting interactions and development due to her family ties.
  • Speaking of narration, Lei. Given that he's Tekken's resident Detective, you'd think he'd have a passive role in the storyline or have the game's story (and by extension, its Character Episodes) be told through his lens as he's piecing the events of the story together. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, a nameless reporter fulfills that role instead while Lei was a no-show in the game's base roster until Season 2... with little in the way of a story to speak of himself.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The Combo Assist feature initially exclusive to Story Mode but has since been made available in all modes as of Season 2. For a new player, it goes give them a decent idea of how combos are structured and what they should start with, but it's next to useless for even a novice player since most of the launchers mapped to the Asssist button (by default being LB/L1 in Story Mode, then an attack button) already have fairly straightforward inputs to start with (e.g., Claudio's Sky Slash Nova - uf+4 - or Julia's Twisting Arrow Cannon - df+2,1) and the combos themselves are not optimal, rewarding, or provide any wall carry whatsoever.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Akuma was the first one revealed, and is only the second guest character after Gon, making his inclusion quite the shock. Even more so after it was revealed he was going to have a major role in the game's story mode.
  • Few were seriously expecting Eliza, who was assumed to be a one-off character from a now-cancelled free-to-play game, to actually return in Tekken 7.
  • Geese Howard is probably the least surprising of the bunch, mainly because he follows Akuma's precedent as an antagonist from a 2D fighting game, but even then having the SNK Boss was a welcome surprise.
  • Noctis Lucis Caelum. Not only does he use conventional weaponry instead of his fists, he isn't even from a fighting game (His appearance in Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT might not count), astonishing pretty much everybody. Many actually pointed out that, with his sword-based fighting style, use of magic and Teleport Spam, that he would've been more at home in Soulcalibur.
  • There is out there (like Noctis) and there is out there. Season 2 of Tekken 7's DLC releases is headlined by Negan from The Walking Dead. It's been pointed that given his series having a penchant for Gorn and adult themes, that he would've been a more fitting guest for a Mortal Kombat game than a Tekken one.
• Win Back the Crowd: After waiting a long wait for any announcement only to be met with a very vague teaser that amounted to very little as mentioned in Hype Backlash above, Lidia's announcement not only showed off much more of the character, revealing a very appealing and traditional design that harkens back to the series' Tekken 5 heyday (on top of drawing comparisons to Street Fighter's Makoto and Dead or Alive's Hitomi in regards to her fighting style), but the showcase of the second DLC stage, with remixes of two fan-favorite tracks - "Poolside" from the aforementioned Tekken 5 and "Kitsch" from Tekken 4 - basically got Namco back on the fans' good graces. Doubly so when her release would come just a few days after her proper reveal.