Harada Interviewed About Tekken Unlimited Tag Tournament 2

Namco Bandai’s father of Tekken (or Katsuhiro Harada for short) did an interview with Japanese site 4Gamer where he gives a lot of insight on how the new systems in Tekken Unlimited Tag Tournament 2 work, especially focusing on single character use. Hit the jump to read about it!

Translation was done by Tekken Zaibatsu, original interview via 4Gamer. Here’s an excerpt:

– The complaints that people couldn’t win fights because they had to use a second character which wasn’t as good as their main was a significant inspiration of the new game play modes. If you aren’t as good with a second character, just stick with your main and not be stuck with a second character you don’t play as much. The development team will assure you that you won’t be at a complete disadvantage when you pick solo up against a tag team. With just your one character, you are able to concentrate more.

– Identifies how the transition of character’s play styles from the popular Tekken 3 to Tekken 4 is seen as a contributing factor to Tekken 4’s unpopularity.

– Things are much more easier in solo play too, you don’t have to take big steps in learning Tag assault, when to tag or not etc. Just pick solo play mode as you would normally play say Tekken 6 and when you’re ready to get deeper into the game you can take a step into the tag mode.

– Notes that roughly 70% of “Home” (People waiting on console versions) Tekken players are in the beginner to intermediate levels.

– With solo play, those newer players don’t have to take the time and effort to learn another character, just stick to what you were previously comfortable with. Harada cites a Paul player winning because of the ridiculous damage a Phoenix Smasher does against his opponent and now with the solo play feature he won’t have to give up on that with the new modes.

– There was sometimes situations that moves or positions would often times make a player too good, a notable example Harada used was Tekken 6 vanilla’s original rage settings and that eventually a business and household survey identified that this was not liked because players were finding that beginner and intermediate players were beating better players because of such a system and so they used that feedback in mind to tone it down for Bloodline Rebellion.

Check out the entire interview, here!