Can Namco rescue Tekken 8 Season 2 from disaster?

Tekken 8 Season 2 is the latest patch to Bandai Namco’s iconic fighting game, which was released to bring balance changes to numerous fighters and more. This new update was meant to help refine the game for single-player and multiplayer, something that esports pros were keeping an eye on for future tournaments.

However, the patch has brought more problems than benefits, with many complaining of characters being overpowered or too weak to compete in matches. Over a month on, Season 2 is still the cause of overwhelmingly negative reviews on Tekken 8’s Steam page.

Although Bandai Namco is starting to address concerns, here’s how the developer can improve things and steady this rapidly sinking ship.

Season passes are nothing new. They’re a way of expanding a game by offering new stages, characters, or an extended story to the base game. But when it comes to a fighting game like Tekken that features in several esports tournaments, players take notice.

The Tekken 8 Season 2 changes have instead caused damage to the game itself, with characters becoming overpowered or weakened, with some moves now unblockable or unable to be countered. This means that several strategies that esports players have used before are now useless. There have been so many of these changes that, to some, Tekken 8 no longer feels like Tekken.

What’s hurt players too, is that they feel the team at Bandai Namco has made unnecessary changes. It’s a prime example of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ with Season 2.

The community feedback has been so strong since the Tekken 8 Season 2 release date of March 31, that Bandai Namco has released further patches to mitigate criticism. Reddit posts like these are also a weekly occurrence, with players venting their frustrations about the game, and wondering if Bandai Namco will ever roll some changes back.

It also doesn’t help that Tekken 8 has had some controversy before Season 2. Soon after the game’s launch in January 2024, a Tekken Shop was announced, where real currency could be used to buy customization options for fighters. This flew in the face of Bandai Namco saying that there wouldn’t be any paid content apart from the Season Passes, and was not well-received by fans. Another factor was the return of Heihachi Mishima, one of the series’ antagonists. Having been seemingly killed at the end of Tekken 7, his sudden return in late 2024 was seen as a desperate grab for attention, as it cheapened Tekken 7’s great ending. Again, fans were disappointed with this decision.

Many feel that much of the damage has already been done, but there are still some steps that Bandai Namco can take to try to recover. First off, it needs to be fully transparent in why it made the changes to start with for Season 2, and what its plans are to fix it. There should be clear and concise Tekken 8 Season 2 patch notes in the future, and the community should be allowed to try them before they are released.

As a bonus, perhaps a way to wrap up Heihachi’s story, too. His return was simply bizarre, and players in 2025 want to play games that have a sound narrative structure. Heihachi wasn’t that for Tekken 8, so perhaps replacing him with a fan-favorite like Tiger or Armor King in a Tekken 2 costume as part of future Tekken 8 Season 2 characters would also help to win back some disillusioned players.

There’s no way of sugar-coating it: Season 2 has been almost fatal for Tekken 8 at esports events. Having changed characters into poorly balanced fighters across the board, it’s already alienating esports players and tempting them to move to Street Fighter 6 instead. Having this level of disdain from players could mean that the series’ reputation is left in tatters, with no appearances in future esports events, and potentially damaging Namco’s credibility at other events like EVO.

However, if the company manages to work on fixing Season 2 now, especially as Tekken 8 is at the Esports World Cup later this year, Bandai Namco could still rescue the situation and keep Tekken’s position as one of the most prominent esports.

The worst approach Bandai Namco could do is to keep on its existing trajectory, release new fighters and stages via Season 2, and bring out small fixes across 2025. Doing this would do huge damage to its reputation in the Tekken community, as well as the series itself. Frustrated players could look to move to other games like Street Fighter 6 and FATAL Fury, or even look into previous Tekken entries, such as Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 7.

Other consequences could be losing sponsorships if Tekken 8 is at specific esports tournaments, as it could be seen as the ‘black sheep’ in a sea of competitive fighting games. Prominent esports players could even protest at these events, refusing to play Tekken 8, showing a complete lack of faith in Bandai Namco and the Tekken series.

This could have gone so much better for Bandai Namco. After Tekken 8 was made available in January 2024, it was rightly praised for its improvements in gameplay, graphics, and narrative structure. Yet it’s the season passes that have chipped away at the game since launch.

It’s a shame, as the game is very good, one of the best in the Tekken series. Bandai Namco needs to recognize that more changes are needed, and quickly, rather than in segments. Not addressing these concerns could relegate Tekken 8 from future esports events.

It’s worth mentioning that a similar situation happened with Capcom and Street Fighter V. Released in 2016, it was unfinished, full of bugs, and it was almost two years until patches made it a serious contender at esports tournaments worldwide. Bandai Namco would be wise to learn from this situation, otherwise we could see less of Tekken at tournaments in the future — something that arguably no one wants to see.