Remembering Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Learning To Balance Old School And New School Concepts

"Learn from the old and pursue the new." is one thing that one can learn from innovative thinking yet it's frequently overlooked in today's day and age. Perhaps, my greatest beef today against some people who pursue new stuff is when they fail to learn why the old masterpieces succeeded and enhance them. Tekken 7 unfortunately has some of its problems like why in the world did they decide to spend budget on almost all previous Tekken endings rather than pursue in improving arcade mode, adding team battle mode or everything that actually made Tekken Tag Tournament 2 a smashing game or make a better story mode than their competitors?

I could remember the perhaps minor frustration when I played Tekken 6 where I had to play through Scenario Campaign to unlock certain characters for its Arena Mode and play through only four freaking matches to unlock the ending. Then I bought Tekken Tag Tournament 2. At first, I wasn't so much of a fan of the "symbiotic relationship" where defeating one character lets you win the match and losing one character makes you forfeit it -- I even preferred Mortal Kombat 2011's two vs. two tag team gameplay better but only slightly. On the other hand, Tag Tournament's tagging system was somewhat less frustrating for some as it didn't cause what some call as "unnecessary delays".

So what's missing in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the Story Mode. I admit, I usually don't replay Story Mode after I'm done with it in Mortal Kombat 2011 just to enjoy the traditional arcade ladder or tag ladder more then I freaking turn off the game after that! But there's some fun modes and I thought about how a glimmer of hope came with the arcade mode. The arcade mode of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 simply and nearly restored to Tekken one thing -- defeating a series of characters and unlocking the character endings! You had ten opponents -- six random single/tag team opponents followed by Heihachi/Jinpachi, a single battle with True Ogre and revealing the rather non-canon revelation that Unknown (the "Dural" of Tekken) is actually the most likely deceased Jun Kazama. Then you get that animated masterpiece the traditional way in a new school game.

The gameplay itself was a huge improvement from Tekken Tag Tournament in many ways. Smoother controls, better sidestepping and the inclusion of Tag Team attacks such as Tag Team Combo and Tag Team Throw (which I actually wish Mortal Kombat 2011 had). The Rage System from Tekken 6 was improved where you can switch out to a character with more health to enjoy the rage while your other character heals some of the red portion of the missing health! I just love to see that "death animation" that Unknown had every time you defeated her. I didn't care too much about Tekken Bowl because there was also the Combot mode where you got to learn the basics of Tekken Tag Tournament. I felt said mode actually placed Mortal Kombat 2011's tutorial mode to a lower level IMHO. I even note to myself that this game caused me to actually stop playing MK 2011 for awhile until I started missing the latter game.

Eventually, I realized that I end up liking Tekken Tag Tournament 2 as my favorite game for all those reasons above. It's not the nostalgia value without the nostalgia frustration of past Tekken games. More balanced gameplay is just one such as where it's fun to play and fight against a Jinpachi who's now demoted to extra. I could also talk about Jun Kazama making another non-canon appearance after her prolonged absence though I still wish Julia Chang didn't enter as Jaycee -- though it was most likely done to make sure that both characters don't get confused to each other like it did in the first Tekken Tag Tournament game. The game itself really has the rich heritage of that nostalgia while it makes you accept a lot of new changes that Namco introduced while enhancing some older concepts at the same time.

Pretty much sums up why Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is my current favorite Tekken game!