Tekken the p**s: my issue with difficulty in Tag Tournament 2
Before I begin this opinion piece, let me make one thing clear: I love Tekken. Katsuhiro Harada’s beat ‘em up is the reason I bought a Sony PlayStation instead of a Sega Saturn, the reason I took up martial arts, and the reason my teachers rarely received my homework on time. From the moment I performed my first 10-hit combo at the age of ten, I was hooked. Consequently, I’ve purchased every instalment across all three PlayStation generations, become at least competent with every character, and taken part in a variety of official tournaments. In brief, I’m pretty handy.
When Namco Bandai unveiled the console version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, I was giddy with glee. The original Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2 was an excellent title, chock-full of game modes and unlockable content, and thus I was really looking forward to losing myself in its sequel, reacquainting myself with my favourite fighters and experiencing TTT2’s evolved tag mechanics.
Alas, I am sorry to say that after a few days of playing time I’ve not had as much fun as expected. Why? Because the game’s AI has proven to be cruel, unrelenting and cheap.
Now before anyone reacts to this statement with the ever-mature response “you just suck”, I do acknowledge that, as I’ve grown older, my reaction times, hand-eye coordination and propensity for anticipating attacks are not what they used to be. Nonetheless, aficionados will know that the single-player element of Tekken titles has always catered to a broad range of skill levels by providing five difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard and Ultra Hard. Years ago, I would play on Very Hard. Nowadays, I tend to play on Medium – and I’m ok with that, because I can more than hold my own against actual players. Feel free to challenge me at your peril (*winks*).
So, the day prior to release, my pre-order arrives. I insert the disc, complete the enormous 8GB install, and head straight for Arcade mode (difficulty set to Medium by default). My duo of choice comprises Marshall Law, my go-to combatant, and Jun Kazama, whose 10-hit combinations I can recite from memory. Stages one through six are a breeze. I cut through my foes’ defence like a knife through butter, and even manage to pull a few perfect matches out of the bag.
Then, I reach stage seven. My opponents are Mishima Zaibatsu head Heihachi Mishima and his father, Tekken 5 boss Jinpachi. The announcer yells “Fight!”, and I’m bounced around the room like a sphere of polybutadiene. Twice.
In my wisdom, I decide to change tactics, substituting my aggressive approach for a more defensive, tactical one, and with a bit of patience I overcome and progress to stage eight. True Ogre is my sole adversary. It’s two against one – a doddle, I think, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. After successfully landing a few devastating combos seconds into the match, I’m launched into the air by a sneaky uppercut and beaten into submission by a series of bounds and juggles. My ego bruised, I persevere, but the same happens again for another three rounds until a lucky Dragon Fang secures me a “Great” victory. I breathe a huge sigh of relief, but I’m not done yet; stage nine begins to load…
Jun Kazama is my sole adversary. It’s two against one – a doddle, I think. Déjà vu, anyone?
Predictably, I took a battering. Each time I went on the offensive, Jun would instinctively intercept my advances with an impeccably timed assault, and then rinse and repeat the same four moves until my health bar was depleted. Unable to beat her, I resigned to joining her, and executed the cheapest combo I knew repeatedly until I triumphed over the vicious little cow.
Once the credits had finished rolling, I dove into the options menu to adjust the game’s difficulty setting, convinced I’d lost my touch. With Easy now selected, I returned to Arcade mode, picked the same tag team, and hoped that attempt two would result in a less embarrassing outcome. As before, stages one through six were child’s play, but as soon as I reached Jinpachi and Heihachi I was forced to relive the experience described above. There was no mercy, no leniency, and fights were certainly not ‘easy’. If the AI’s first bound move connected, all I could do was endure the punishment until I either a), landed and managed to retreat, or b), perished (which was the more common conclusion). Changing the difficultly level appeared to make no difference whatsoever.
Please don’t misunderstand me here; I have no problem with accepting a loss, and I’m certainly not suggesting that I should be able to defeat computer-controlled fighters time and again without fail. However, in my view an ‘easy’ opponent should not be able to perform bounds, juggles and combos with the intuitiveness, timing and precision I would expect from a comparatively harder equivalent – or even a masterful human counterpart, for that matter.
Personally, I feel a patch is required. My belief is that videogames should be accessible to everyone, irrespective of their ability and experience. In this case, I fear that newcomers will purchase Harada’s latest title having been enticed by the influx of near-perfect review scores that have been published since September 11th, only to have the its ruthless, seemingly clairvoyant AI make them feel extremely unworthy.
To borrow the words of Metacritic user ‘John718’, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 as it stands currently is “not for the casual gamer”.
UPDATE (Sept 20th, 2012): Since this article was published, here and on N4G, many more players have told Harada that TTT2’s Arcade mode bosses (Jun especially) are too tough – even on the easiest difficulty setting. Finally, Tekken’s head honcho has realised this is a problem, and 26 minutes ago he tweeted that he plans to fix it:
Make enough noise and people will hear you.
Sean
September 17, 2012 @ 6:08 pm
Well that sucks. Sounds like this game’s difficulty balance is completely out of whack. Definitely patch worthy.
Funny thing is, despite the fact that consoles now have internet access and can easily receive patches, it’s still not done frequently enough. Lazy developers and greedy publishers are probably at fault.
Steve123
September 18, 2012 @ 1:24 am
Great read, and very well written.
I bought the game over the weekend and I agree with your comments. I play on Easy as I’m not good enough to play on a high difficulty, and my win/loss ratio took a massive hit when I got to the Mishimas. In the end I picked Eddy and Baek and just button bashed until I beat the last three stages. It was a bit of a chore tbh.
Hopefully Namco will read this and bring out an update to fix the problem.
Rob
September 18, 2012 @ 3:46 am
I have avidly enjoyed played Tekken since my first japanese import experience on PSX…
I proceeded to win a copy of Tekken 2 at a tournament a few years later…
And over the years I have loved playing each installment & learning the new characters…
Until… Tekken 6. Which unfortunately started to loose my appeal in the Franchise 🙁
Featuring some over the top & quirky backgrounds compared to the more serenic approach used in Tekken 5 and Tekken 5 DR. I found my real problem with the game as the difficulty curve went from standardly winning every signle match easily, until I reached Azazel…
Who I feel took the F***ing P*ss. Obviously I eventually overcame this problem and learnt how to defeat Azazel to proceed and unlock my favoured sub bosses. But I never got over how annoying that Boss was..
Now with Tekken Tag 2… I feel they have just lost the plot. Juggle crazy cheap opponents in the later rounds just make it less fun to play… I too would like a patch. When I went into my local Game store I enquired about the sales of this title and they had already received some copies back and some trade ins… pretty sad for a game in its first week 🙁
What happened to the good old days, when the last Boss was either Heihachi Mishima or an evil Kazuya!
TheOracle
September 18, 2012 @ 4:47 am
I’m with you Rob…
IMO, Tekken 4 was the last good Tekken game. All releases since have been less accessible to anyone that isn’t a Tekken God, more crazy, and they’ve moved further away from what made Tekken great in the 1990s – a focus on authentic fighting. What’s with all the fireballs, lasers and stupid projectiles? #cheapestcrapever
Tekken 5 had Jinpachi, 6 had Azazel, and now TTT2 has a more annoying Ogre and that unforgiving bitch Jun. I think I’m just going to get rid of TTT2 and play TTT on Tekken Hybrid instead. Sure, the graphics aren’t as good, but at least I enjoyed playing it. Plus, it had Tekken Bowl!!!
AbsurdNerd
September 19, 2012 @ 5:03 am
Glad it’s not just me who thinks Jun is impossible. I set the game to easy and 1 round matches so if I beat her it would only have to be the once. Not so, you still need to destroy her juggling ass twice.
I just want to see the endings but think that will be impossible with the characters I’m good with let alone those that I suck with.
Craig Reynolds
September 20, 2012 @ 6:00 am
There is a way to unlock them without playing Arcade – it’ll take a while, but it works. Play Ghost Battle. At the end of each match you can select which team you fight next. Some teams have a gold box around them, which indicates you’ll get a reward if you beat them. Rewards include customisation parts, costumes, panel cards, money and ending movies. I’ve managed to unlock about 20 movies in the last two or three days, playing for about an hour or two each night.
KingOfIronFist
September 20, 2012 @ 7:58 am
So pleased to hear that they’re going to patch Arcade. Big thumbs up TPG for influencing this. Csreynolds you should be very proud.
Robert Strick
September 20, 2012 @ 8:27 am
Thanks for the support! Please take the time to register on the site if you haven’t already: http://theparanoidgamer.com/wp-login.php?action=register
StoneCold
September 21, 2012 @ 4:32 am
I know the feeling. The difficulty is the reason why I turned bacl to Battlefield 3: Armored Kill and looking forward to the latest DOA installment.
I started with Tekken about 14 years ago. I was very happy when I found out that my parents had bought me Tekken 2. Being 9 years-old and not having played any Beat’em up before, I got to stage 8 on Medium. Eventually I found out that you can lower difficulty and so I did. I enjoyed the ending movies.
Then christmas that year I got Tekken 3. Immediately switched to Easy and started playing Arcade because I wanted the endings. When I had them all, I stared practicing with various characters and started to beat the AI on Medium and HArd without that much of a problem
I didn’t have TTT an Tekken 4 & 5, since I didn’t own a PS2. However when Tekken 6 came out for Xbox 360, I was overjoyed. Though, when i played in the arena, my reaction to Azazel coud be described as such: WTH, WTF?!?
From Tekken 2 & 3 I expected a boss that has some special moves like Ogre’s flamethrower. But that wasn’t to be. Instead it was a boss that used cheap tactics, you couldn’t throw him and he had auto-block.
And now in Tekken Tag 2 Jun is almost the same. I managed to beat the Arcade once on easy with Asuka/Raven.
I’m also not a professional gamer. I’m just enjoy occasionally beating up the AI and in the process enjoy some great ending movies. Though TTT2 doesn’t really let you do that. Instead it is even worse than Tekken 6 in that sense, that you get opponents based on your character rank. So the difficulty setting matters even less. Worst of all, a complete beginner’s skill doesn’t rise as fast as his rank and so the difficulty scaling eventually gets to him.
If I remember correctly, there are four difficulty settings, easy, Medium, hard, Ultra Hard: In my opinion the difficulties should be like this:
Easy: Nothing much required, some good old button-mashing should do the trick.
Medium: Small combos and the occassional block is required.
Hard: Long combos and good blocking/reverse and such
Ultra Hard: better juggle your opponent fast or you won’t survive.
In that sense Bioware had a good approach towards Dragon Age 2. They also had four difficulties.
Easy: We want you to enjoy the story
Medium: We want you to focus on your main character
Hard: We want you to focus on your whole party
Nightmare: We wish you good luck.
And that is something that was completely okay for me. I don’t need to finish a game on the highest difficulty to enjoy it. However when I can’t beat it on the lowest difficulty then I’m annoyed.
Long story short: Namco, fix the difficulty or you’ll lose customers.
And that’s the bottom line, cause StoneCold said so.
Yuri
September 24, 2012 @ 1:36 am
Well atleast you all were able to beat her, I couldn’t beat Jun even after all these days. The difficulty setting is totally borked and doesn’t do sh!t.
Jun has to be the cheapest boss since Rugal in KoF.
To think I’ve played T3-T6 and seen all the endings on medium……..
Craig Reynolds
September 24, 2012 @ 3:02 am
My friend Martin played Team Battle on Saturday night and got a beating (I mean a BEATING) on the easiest difficultly setting – and truth be told he’s not even that bad!
I found out that difficulty will be patched on October 9th, so soon all will be right hopefully.
ENDOY_
October 8, 2012 @ 4:56 pm
I 100% agree, i usually play tekken on normal or hard setting, i tried this on normal and have only beat the game 3 times, i have tried endlessly but to no prevail i cant seem to beat jun/unknown anymore on easy or normal.. I really can’t wait for a patch as i love this game.. but until then ill just play online.. its easier lol
Craig Reynolds
October 9, 2012 @ 4:55 am
The patch is out today, so fingers crossed Arcade mode will be playable once again…
roy jones jr
November 20, 2012 @ 3:32 am
I’m not sure how you all play near the end on story/arcade modes and don’t see the problem. I got to Jun and yeah the 1st time she was all offense. So I played my defensive style. Guess what happened? I beat her! Its no surprise really. She never played in a way that could undermine my counterattacks (yeah she would parry if I got stupid by repeating the same type of move) and I could close the gap if I got stuck in a combo. The problem is Unknown. I eventually beat her at random intervals but she is a beast. BTW I have no patches for TTT2. I play my console offline. Bottom line: some of you may need to realize not every sequential fighting game will be the same from a franchise.
Akuma Kanji
July 12, 2013 @ 3:41 pm
I have to agree with you! I’m not as good as you playing this game, but I also have a PS One, Two and Three simply because of Tekken! And, I agree with what you wrote about the AI. I mean, indeed TTT2 is just a “cruel” game because our characters are not effective when responding to our commands/combos, they are way slower to react and the easy mode is certainly not easy at all! I was not expecting it to be piece of cake but this overlaps the bounderies of unjustice. As I’m not so addicted neither I am na expert, I might just give up buying Tekken games if they continue like this. My favourite mode was always the “Tekken Force Mode” type (The Devil Within (T5) and Campaign (T6)), but my sister, as she writes Tekken fanfics, prefers the story mode, and I am having some trouble in unblocking every story (I still haven’t unblocked all in T6!). And I am way better with some characters than others (Hwoarang is my first warrior of choice!) and I’m not sure I will be able to complete the stories with, for exemple, Lili… anyway… I just completely understand you!