Tekken 8 Xbox achievements mirror the game’s newbie friendly nature

Tekken 8 is now available on Xbox Series X|S, offering players another shot at punching their way through The King of Iron Fist Tournament. It’s a highly accessible entry into the series for newcomers, however, and its Xbox achievements reflect that by being accessible for completionists thinking about trying their hand at a fighting game.

When watching trailers or glancing at screenshots, it’s very hard not to be seduced by Tekken 8’s visuals, from stunning character models to stylish combo animations. Everything about the way it looks tempted me to play, despite the fact that I suck at fighting games and struggle to stay interested long enough to get good. If you find yourself in a similar position and don’t fancy putting your precious completion percentage on the line for the sake of dabbling with the dark arts of fighting games, I’m pleased to say that the Tekken 8 achievements are just as accessible for new players as the gameplay.

There are 49 achievements in Tekken 8, and it looks like it’s a similar list to the Tekken 7 achievements, which have an estimated completion percentage of around ten hours. Much like its predecessor, one achievement is for unlocking every other achievement, and you’ll need to try everything Tekken 8 has to offer, so you will need to dip your toes into online PvP if you want to nab a completion, but it’s a fairly painless experience.

As a new player, Arcade Quest is a great place to start to learn the basics of fighting, many of Tekken 8’s features, and learn the best moves for your chosen character. It takes a similar amount of time to complete as the story mode but features many easy fights that act very much like training wheels. Three achievements are directly linked to Arcade Quest, and you’ll also need to play through it to unlock Super Ghost Battle, which has another four achievements, the hardest of which will likely be All is Vanity for beating another player’s ghost. Both Arcade Quest and Super Ghost Battles reward you with experience for the three promotion achievements.

Those two modes will likely be your largest grind. I fought around 60 battles on my way through both modes but spent a lot of my time fighting all of the random arcade players. By using Super Ghost Battles to fight higher-ranked battles for considerably more XP, you’ll be able to cut that number by almost half I’d imagine. Your time fighting through those modes will unlock the majority of the miscellaneous achievements, but if not, you’ll likely finish the list during the story mode.

Tekken 8’s story mode is called The Dark Awakens, featuring 15 acts filled with long cutscenes, which can be skipped if that’s what you’re into, and have four achievements directly linked to it. When set on easy, which was helpful for my skill level, The Dark Awakens isn’t punishing at all, so it’s well worth considering playing on the lowest difficulty.

With both those modes out of the way, all that’s left is to complete ten Character Episodes, which feature five back-to-back battles each, and fight through the eight Arcade Battles (easy difficulty is available) for the I’ll put an end to this achievement. You’ll also need to spend five minutes destroying a dummy character with consecutive Rage Arts in Practice — this is where you can complete the first combo challenge for five different characters for the Do you want to learn Marshall Arts achievement. The Tekken Ball mode tasks you with performing 20 Devilish hits, which is a high-powered hit. I unlocked it after around three matches, so it’s not too difficult.

As with Tekken 7, the achievements most likely to cause trouble task you with facing off with other players. Thankfully, you don’t need to do much for a completion. Jumping into Ranked and winning one match will unlock Just Relax, You Can Do It, while winning a base PvP will unlock I’ll give you a rematch anytime, guv, and group matches can be found in the Tekken Fight Lounge. You’ll likely have unlocked the ten online matches needed for Excellent! after that, but if not it’s just a case of casually playing a few more to finish off.

Tekken 8 is now available on Xbox Series X|S. Check out our Tekken 8 review to see what we thought of this punchy fighter.