At first glance you may be bummed out at Tekken Revolution. You only get to play so many matches with in a set limit of time and then you have to wait for "tokens" to respawn unless you want to actually pay for more. Thing is....you can unlock characters... all of them. If you keep winning ranked matches and you're good you earn gift points. Get enough gift points and you unlock a new fighter. Get money to earn stat points to invest in fighters.

I'm actually really interested now in continuing to play this. Play five matches or so which should keep me busy for 20 minutes. A perfect game for short bursts and its all free. Unless you're really really impaitent you can basically have a whole tekken game minus some of the cool costume customization things in TTT2 and peripheral single player modes like ghost battle.

I'll be putting some time into this. Asuka is my gal!

I suck at Tekken and kind of just button mash, but I like playing it anyway. I think this is fun and would be really cool if they added the costume customization at some point,.

Hmm... So it sort of brings back the character unlocking progression of the old games? In a different way? I figured you could only buy new fighters with actual money. I'll install it after I get some room on my hard drive.

Well, that's cool. I was really down on it earlier, but a lot of the reactions seem to be pretty positive. If they ever get around to adding Christie or Eddy, I'll bite the bullet, buy a nice chunk of coins so I have a good cushion to fall back on, and call it a day.

They are already in the game just like in say... Marvel Heroes you get random characters as drops once you reach specific numbers of "Gift Points" which you get for winning matches. I already unlocked Lars and its random because a buddy unlocked someone else on his first character.

I feel mixed, but yeah, it's pretty addictive. Ran out of Coins, so uhhhhh, do they refill everyday, or have to PAY to play more?

@crithon: Aracde coins refill every 60 minutes and you can only hold a max of 2. Ranked/player refill every 30 minutes and you can only hold a max of 5. It doesn't matter if the console is on of off either.

@demoskinos: Really? Could have sworn I saw a roster and they weren't on it yet. Well then, in that case, guess I'll give it another go sooner than expected.

@babychoochoo: thank you, huh. hmmmmm interesting interesting.

I'll definitely check it out, but the game I've been playing most of lately is Tekken Tag 2 anyway, so I'm mostly just curious about what's different. I know it has the critical arts and the... something else arts that add invincibility or something? The trailer made it almost look like an alpha counter.

Well I can't be 100% sure but like there are way more than just the starting 8 characters in there.

On the character select screen it shows a few specific moves and I think each character has one or two more that aren't shown there. The ones in red I think are the critical arts THOSE ones have invincibility on them at some point in the animation. The other ones (forget what they are called) don't have invincibility but are prone to be able to critical hit people which is where the Vigor stat comes in. The higher that stat is the better chance you can score a critical hit.

It's really fucking weird playing without bound, and I don't think I like the new invincible moves at all. Also, backrolls are now super-safe for some bizarre reason.

I'll stick with Tag 2. I have to say though, it's been fun trashing all of the new players.

Has any of you found an offline versus mode?

Online matches are fine, but couch multiplayer is the real meat of a fighting game for me...

Seems actually pretty good, though I wish Tekken 6 was as good as this online and looked as nice etc... but yeah its pretty cool... now i just need to get better at Tekken again lol

I still play Tag 2 pretty much everyday, and from what you said I think I'll give it a miss too. I know a lot of new players get pounded for trying to backroll all the time.. Interested to see where this goes :)

Can you unlock Jinpachi?

Hes my main.

I think they're throttling the experience too hard. It won't be long before online matches become impenetrable for new players, who will leave out of frustration rather than spend all their tokens on constantly losing. I'd bet a cosmetic selling model would have generated more revenue in the long run.

@luddite: Considering all the stuff they had like that it is insane that they didn't add customizable characters too. I probably would have paid for at least a few items to recreate my Asuka costume from TTT2.

So man the funny thing about this game is that everyone online is garbage right now. If you want easy wins seriously now is the time. I'm mildly decent with Asuka and I've been TEARING people apart online so far. Which... is an extremely odd experience for me because I usually get thrashed in fighters online.

Anyways in other news apparently the game might get a training mode update if this tweet from Harada is to be taken seriously. Which... god I hope so. I'd like a training mode to get some actual combos down with Asuka. Because some of her stuff doesn't seem to connect the same way it did in TTT2.

https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/344725543482171392

@demoskinos: I like how even his Twitter background is trolling Ono. Harada never passes up a chance.

Yeah, I find it weird that they've gone with such a punishing model (even if, let's be honest, it's essentially identical to the experience you'd be having in the arcades) despite the fact that the gameplay system itself is a massively dumbed-down version of Tag 2.

@demoskinos: Awesome. I don't have Tekken (or any 3D fighter) experience beyond mashing and bowling in TTT1 so a training mode and a movelist would be pretty great. I'm not sure how deep I'll get into it but King has been fun so far.

I'm not sure how I feel about the stats system though

Kinda wish you could use altternate costumes but hey I'm fine with this.

I like the bound system for extending combos introduced in T6 but that's gone here, also certain moves have been seriously nerfed like Asuka's F+2, that move now has invincibility frames which Tekken never had for guaranteed mid blocking punishers, that's fine and it makes the game very quick and more strike oriented like old school Tekken games... but it's not as satisfying as the whole incorporated system of TTT2.
For a free Tekken game it's a fun and simple online 3D fighter, that being said it lacks the tutorial mode of TTT2 and doesn't have a practice mode, the free nature of this will draw new players to the game and it's a shame they won't have a way to learn and be drawn to the full game.

I didn't play enough to know how the upgrading character stuff works or if it's broken, but i can't imagine it is judging by the nerfed moveset dumbing down the game a little, i recommend people pick up TTT2 it's a fantastic game.

I have enjoyed it too, i do wish i could play more then 5 matches though. And all I want to unlock is Bob, once I have him, I will not care anymore. The nice thing about this is that i wanted a game with a fresh new user base because trying to play tekken 6 a year ago led to me fighting the same dude and having my ass handed to me. At least now it more of an even playing field (ie. i am winning a lot more but still losing).

I'm finding this an absolute blast to just jump in and play a few matches between doing other things. The token system stops you playing for any solid chunk of time without paying but it hasn't stopped me playing like 40 rounds over the past few days and beating arcade mode god knows how many times.

I wish character unlocks weren't so far apart though, I want more mans but you need so many giftpoints past the first 2.

i like it but i feel like for a tekken game it lacks one of the things i love in games cosmetic customization :C

Bloody Roar free to play..... LETS GO!!!!

Your main was free. Not fair! I haven't spent enough time with it to form an opinion, but it sure is a nice change of pace to find that most of the people online aren't very good. Tekken Tag 2 was kind of brutal in that respect. Not sure how I feel about the stats though, constantly increasing my damage seems a little cheap.

@hunter5024: Eh, once you meet someone who has dumped 85 points into endurance you'll want that extra damage.

@demoskinos: I suppose I'm more worried about how it will affect the balance. I mean if someone is willing to play enough to get all those stat increases, they're probably pretty good at Tekken, and that means all of the best players will not only have a skill advantage, but a numbers one too. That will make it a lot less fun for new players because they won't stand a chance, and a lot less fun for experienced players because fighting someone on even footing will be that much rarer.

Was thinking of giving this a go, sadly none of my characters are in it so will be terrible, but thats ok should be fun for free.

Also finding it strangely fun, and I have a hard time with fighters in general. Had to laugh as it took me all of ten minutes to unlock 33% of the trophies this morning.

Not sure what I should spend my money on? Wonder if people are going to stick to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 or move on to this one. I get the feeling this game is just gonna divide the Tekken community even more. Still though its free, so I can't complain.

I haven't played Tekken seriously since DR Online, I definitely don't remember scrubbing people out with Kazuya's uf + 4444 so often. Shame on them I guess, ha!

We're sticking to TTT2, this is a neat game but it's 1/12th the scale and balance of the full game.

Tekken Revolution is a decent demo for Tekken. If you enjoy what you are playing, You should definitely buy one of Tekken games available right now. After playing this game, I decided to buy Tekken Tag 2 off PSN. I know that you can get it cheaper at Target and other places but I like having my games on the hard drive.

Well come to think of it the game in itself is a good gateway drug since this seems to be like "stripped down" Tekken back to the T5 days with some enhanced moves (the move that each character has that have invincibility frames). I don't have a PS3 so I haven't played it but this seems like a good game for a newcomer to come in and probably get a taste for Tekken.

Ive been playing this since E3 and ive been enjoyng it, its far from perfect but when i play alone or online it tends to be for short bursts and this is exactly what Tekken Revolution allows me to do. I get my 30-40 min burst before i go and play something else, though ive been playing Tekken since the original so i have no idea how someone new to the series would view this.

Assuming Harada-san has new content on the way i think this game will last, Dead or Alive is doing something similar next month with the exception that they are allowing you to straight up buy the story mode and fighters you want so will be interesting to see how that does.

Seems fine, it's free so not much to complain about. Most of the people you run into have yet to discover the sacred art of blocking low and I was able to do a 10 hit combo reliably despite not playing Tekken for 7 or 8 years (still think Tekken 3 is one of the best fighting games ever made, Tekken Ball seals that one up). It does kind of make my hand hurt to mash out the combo though, not really an issue with KoF or Injustice (Injustice forces you to be accurate and fast with the inputs, little or no mashing; KoF is just crazy ass motions that I'm getting better at over time somehow).

It's fun to play but I keep it at small periods so I can primarily focus on playing Tag 2.

It's not immediately apparent but this is basically a pay to win system unfortunately, I think I've only lost 2 matches to players that weren't at an extraordinary advantage from the getgo, and they'd always wind up at like 10% losses on either side but if I had better stats then I'd have wound up victorious etc. Even fought a dude with 80 power today and would have handily beat him in a neutral context. I did fight some guy with 300 wins who was running 0/0/0 and kicked my ass, so props to that guy; probably finds the regular Tekken community too easy or something. Now granted you basically only have to spend 5 bucks since it's not that hard to win back your ticket. Still if it gets people playing Tekken again I suppose it's not the worst thing out there. Don't know why they put Kazuya and his pew pew lasers in the game instead of Jin or Heihachi.

@fredchuckdave: It is not pay to win. You still have to put in the time and play the matches to get the XP to level your character up. And if you're good you can hang on to one ticket and continually play as long as you win giving you the chance to win enormous amounts of XP in a single day. And you can easily acquire multiple tickets just by winning matches and running through arcade mode that cost you nothing.

@demoskinos: I could probably win 20 matches in a row but you'd have to win a couple hundred to keep pace with most of the higher ranked people, ultimately the game will stifle you at some point barring you're some sort of Tekken mastermind, at which point you probably wouldn't be playing this in the first place. But with a 30 loss cushion that wouldn't really be much of an issue; hence it is. It's entirely possible you just haven't run into someone with 3-4 times your stats yet, it's real fun.

Now it's not pay a lot to win but it's pay more than nothing which is enough to deteriorate the system. In general it just flat out shouldn't have a leveling system, only reason it does is to get people to pay for it; hence while it isn't all that scummy relative to most Free to Play models it still isn't great. Of course I think there should be some level of balance between Path of Exile's ridiculously customer friendly system and something like this, paying for characters seems fine; if they started with a roster of 8 and you were able to buy every other character in a mainline Tekken title and costumes or what have you that would work out okay.

Basic logic assessment: Playing the game more equates to a more powerful character, limited resources with capacity to playing the game, therefore one must purchase resources if one wants to compete on an even level. The definition of pay to win as it were; some magical superpowers of awesomeness that enable you to never ever lose aside (though of course even if you're say twice as good as someone all they have to do is land half as many hits given the right stats and still win the fight, thus skill is less of a factor than it is in a normal fighting game as well). I don't think I've fought anyone at my rank that had less wins than I did, and while I've beaten people with better stats than I have, imagine if they were vaguely competent. If a neophyte like me can pull of a 10 hit combo that does 70% of the opponent's health then what if a good player has 100 power and can kill you in literally one combo, is that satisfying gameplay?

So... does the skill point/XP stuff actually unbalance the online play? 'Cause it seems like it would. I can't see a possibility where a player who has a bunch of points dumped into his critical meter doesn't have an advantage over the other player.

@fredchuckdave: No, I have found people with stats way way higher than me and they were terrible and I beat them. I've also found people who came at me with zero stats and kicked my ass mind you my stats right now are 64/40/4 so I think that in the end the better player will almost always win. Granted, in the scenario that you are dealing with someone twice or thrice your strength it leaves you little room for error but its not a forgone conclusion that your going to lose.

If you demand a search within +/-2 your rank you'll usually not be too outmatched.

@demoskinos: And how much did you have to play to get to 60/40? Should the game just reward you for playing longer for no particular reason? It's really basic man,

If playing longer gives you an advantage, then anything that allows you to play longer than your opposition is also an advantage. Tekken Revolution gives you an advantage the longer you play, therefore Tekken Revolution rewards those who have the capacity to play for longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning

Whether this means paying money or the impossibility of never ever losing is up in the air, but imagine you were actually good at the game would you really want to outdistance yourself from everyone else even further?

Does an extremely good player really want to do double damage to his already weak opposition? Yes some people will challenge themselves by playing 0/0/0 when they don't have to but in general the skilled players will be repulsed by such a system and simply revert to playing regular old Tekken; so it's not appealing to the elitist crowd and it's also not appealing to anyone wanting to learn. If you're actually good at the game you will rise in the ranks faster than most others and always be at a disadvantage stats-wise as a result. If you're not good at the game then you will rely on stats to carry you instead of trying to learn how to play; it's a really really bad system and the only redeeming factor is that it is a free way to play Tekken.

@aurahack: It's a significant advantage yes, a really good Tekken player will still win but in an even match usually the stats are the determinant (so if you have several "great" or near "great" type rounds (both players in the red) then whoever had the better stats won by default). It's a shame cause the 5 round system seems pretty well thought out and balanced then they just put in this wrench that fucks it all up.

I should note this game is super duper easy to 100% if you're into trophies, so that's another thing it has going for it.

I'm presently around 30-12, most of the people around my rank are around 50 to 60 wins, if I rank up again it's more like 80 or 90 and then after that it's 120+, so every time I rank up in less than the allotted number of rounds I'm basically losing 20 to 40 wins depending on the rank and how fast I'm able to rank up; so eventually I'm at a 200+ win differential and a huge statistical disadvantage as a result. To be fair I have had some really solid and interesting matches and I don't think the playerbase is terrible beyond the first few ranks/Law players, it's just the system that's fucked up.

@aurahack: I look at the stat system like this; they do have an advantage by having more vigor than the other player yes, but they still have to land that hit on you.

I play Kazuya, a character heavily based around defense/punishment, if a player lands their critical attack on me, I look at that as they made the right read or I made a mistake. Whereas if I evade them, I get to use mine (which with Kazuya are truly devastating), I think with 2 even skilled players it really doesn't make a difference, but with two players that are just mashing out attacks then it can be considered a broken system. I do think it is very unfair when you fight someone who is of a lower skill level, one or two mistakes and they are done for, doesn't give them much time to learn anything.

That being said, the only thing about this game I feel makes it approachable for new players is the reduced roster, I really feel this game is for people who are already very comfortable with Tekken.