Bandai Namco is finally revealing the 25th Tekken 8 character and she’s already looking like a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to a flurry of quick kicks and some interesting purple-colored lightning-infused attacks, newcomer Reina is going to be a fighter worth keeping an eye on. As you can see in our first look at some Tekken 8 Reina gameplay down below, she’s always on the front foot.
We know we have a little while to wait until the Tekken 8 release date rolls around, but we can’t help but get excited about Reina joining the Tekken 8 roster. She’s one of the final Tekken 8 characters to be confirmed and, despite it not seeming too obvious at first, she’s seemingly related to legendary Tekken character Heihachi Mishima – his daughter, in fact, if the rumors are true. We know that doesn’t make a difference when it comes to whether this is one of the best fighting games available or not, but it does make a huge difference for long-time fans of the franchise.
Although, that part of things isn’t quite confirmed just yet. However, almost everyone is in agreement that Reina is most-likely Heihachi’s daughter – or, at least, a relation – and the moves on display in the following gameplay trailer seem to support that.
While not identical to what we’ve seen of Heihachi in Tekken 7, lightning is something Heihachi takes full advantage of when kicking opponents and Reina displays similar effects from her attacks. It’s also very clear from the brief snippets of dialogue we see that she’s familiar with quite a few characters in Tekken 8 – which, someone related to Heihachi would most-likely be.
Where do we think Reina will sit on our Tekken 8 tier list, though? Well, relation to Heihachi aside, she looks like she’s going to be a firm favorite for quite a few fighting game fans when this game arrives and she’s available to use.
From what this short snippet of gameplay shows, her combos are quick and often alternate where they strike – be that low, mid, or high. This could make them tricky to defend against if you’re not familiar with how each one plays out and open up opponents to further attack quite frequently. We don’t know the damage values just yet, but her heavier attacks look particularly punishing and able to disarm opponents by knocking them to the ground. We also see several attacks that involve flipping and directional changes – things that could be easy to misread. All of this, when taken advantage of properly, will make Reina an excellent fighter to use.
Only time will tell, though, how effective these combos really are. We don’t know how hard each one hits, or how complicated they are to input. While this is often a sign that a character is better, that is not always the case – if they’re too complicated, they could just prove too difficult to use effectively. Either way, though, we can expect to see quite a lot more from Reina if she is indeed related to Heihachi and the Mishima clan in some way.
If not, she still looks like she’s going to weild an awesome power in the King of the Iron Fist Tournament – which is far from a bad thing.
Those of you interested in new PS5 games and new Xbox games like Tekken 8 should make sure you have one of the best Xbox expansion cards or best PS5 SSDs ready for when it drops. Tekken 7 was around 60 GB and we don’t think this will be any smaller than that. The recent closed beta, though, was only 20 GB. So, we could be lucky in that regard.