Tekken 8’s Special Style revamp makes controls flow perfectly at every level

When I first played Tekken 8 at a preview in March, my main takeaway was how good the game felt using the new Special Style controls. Since then, the developer has improved the feature immensely, to the point where even the team is surprised by it. 

When playing a fighting game, especially one like Tekken, where I don’t have a storied history, I like to focus on fundamentals like spacing, blocking, and punishing my opponent. Learning that lets me find a flow that works for me as I try out characters and develop a playstyle—but that can take dozens of hours that I don’t have to dedicate to one game anymore. Enter Tekken 8’s Special Style, a toggleable control scheme that T8 producer Michael Murray told Dot Esports was designed as “accessible for newcomers” while still being “appealing to intermediate or advanced players as well.” 

By hitting a single button during a fight, you can swap your controls to the Special Style. This brings up a menu that provides a list of moves you can perform by simply using one of the displayed inputs. For example, by hitting the Triangle Button consecutively at the right time on a PlayStation 5 controller, you can perform an air combo without needing to time out the hits perfectly yourself. 

Bandai Namco added this feature to lower the barrier of entry for Tekken 8 and let anyone start throwing out powerful attacks without needing to memorize combos while still balancing the style for experienced players. And, at a preview event in early December, I got to try out the improved version of the controls while asking the dev team how things have changed since Special Style was first shown off. 

Special Style is like swapping weapons in an FPS

Initially, T8 producer Michael Murray likened it to their version of switching guns in a shooter, but because of player feedback from the Closed Beta Tests [CBT,] it evolved even further. What started as an approachable control scheme for beginners quickly morphed into something that a good portion of the Tekken community was interested in seeing expanded upon. “As we did the various [CBT] tests, I received a lot of feedback from not just advanced or intermediate players, but also beginners,” T8 director Kohei Ikeda told Dot Esports during the recent preview. “Since Tekken has around 100 techniques per character, they wanted a little bit more than what we had at the time for Special Style. So I added directional inputs to give you more options.” 

If you didn’t play in the last CBT, you can now hold a direction in most instances and get a different move depending on the input, which makes the control scheme more viable in more scenarios for players of all skill levels. I found myself using it a lot to try out newcomers like Azucena and Victor or in situations where I quickly needed to throw out a signature technique. 

Throughout the preview, I saw plenty of players using Special Style to supplement their strengths and weaknesses in different ways, which surprised many of them. While talking after the play session, Special Style received a lot of praise for how it rid the line between accessibility and utility. And it isn’t just players that are surprised by this either. 

Even experienced players can benefit from new control schemes

Murray openly noted that, as a lifelong Tekken player who also works on the series, he didn’t think he would like Special Syle as much as he does now that the changes have been implemented. “I remember playing games against Tetsu, a pro player from Germany, and I got destroyed because I couldn’t punish him or do some of these things,” Murray told Dot Esports. “I came back from there and said ‘Come on man, we’ve got to add something more to Special Style.”

With the changes, Murray noted a similar shift in his mindset with Special Style having more options. He focuses more on the space, timing, and punishing that can easily be forgotten when trying to think of the best move to use in every situation. “That rule, in itself, adds another layer of fun to the games, and I’m interested to see how people are going to do with that. Not only how beginners use it, but also more advanced players like us and how they play with it.”

While I will always praise Street Fighter 6 for adding a dedicated modern control scheme, it pales in comparison to the dynamic nature of T8’s Special Style, sheerly because the latter can be switched on and off mid-match to avoid limiting what moves you can perform with the right practice. That means you can train yourself using the regular controls and then implement Special Style to cover areas you feel it works well with or you might need to work on more in the future.

The possibilities are endless, just like the game’s Ghost AI and how it could change how players practice in the fighting game community. At the highest level, we might even see some pros utilizing Special Style to optimize combos and react to certain playstyles, like what some pros thought SF6’s Modern Controls would accomplish.