The mass negative reviews have some merit; Namco is too busy trying to appeal to whales, homogenizing the roster and system of the game in order to appeal to new/casual players, while simultaneously screwing over long time players who've worked hard over the years to gain any semblance of legacy skill. If I had to summarize this game, it'd be "50/50: The Videogame" and this is all due in part to the heat system. The heat system is an interesting mechanic but all it does when you actually KNOW how to use it is turn Tekken into what was originally a defensive, movement oriented game into an oppressive, 50/50 guessing game nightmare. Any form of counterplay is tossed out the window because heat smashes are generally safe on block, deal chip damage, and put you in a 50/50 because 80% of the cast automatically enters a stance after heat smash on block. Only a few characters have truly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ heat smashes that are punishable on block, and I feel these are the most balanced because I think the general conensus should be that supers should be punishable on block. These are no-risk/high reward moves, like wtf? And if Eddy is anything to go by, I hope future DLC characters don't have their identity ripped out of them just to make them more accessible for new players. Eddy is missing so many moves from T7 all in favor of his new Mandinga install moves (2 moves btw, just 2 moves). As a Lei Wulong and Armor King main, I'm afraid they'll butcher these legacy character's identities in favor of accessibility, when the whole point is that you're supposed to be rewarded for the hard work you put into these characters (for Lei it's having a large moveset and knowing what moves are good for what situation, how to utilize your stances, their movement and their mechanics effectively, all while partying hard. Armor King is having intermediate-high level execution, good whiff punishment, good movement, and a good neutral game, as his grab game isn't as neccesary as Marduk's or King's). If Tekken 8 has these characters as DLC, I feel that a lot of the hard work put into them in previous games will be for nothing.