- Primary Subject: Fighting Game Combo Mechanics (Modern Genre Analysis featuring Tekken 8)
- Key Update: A critical look at how modern "wall-to-wall" combos and 9-second cinematics are reducing player agency and hurting the core neutral-game experience.
- Status: Confirmed (Design Analysis)
- Last Verified: January 21, 2026
- Quick Answer: Combos have become too long, effectively turning two-player matches into "single-player" cinematics that prioritize visual flash over the strategic back-and-forth of the neutral game.
Street Fighter 2 first introduced the concept of a fighting game combo in 1991. Back then, combos were nothing more than a system bug that the developers overlooked.
Chaining moves and juggling your opponent wasn’t the vision that game developers initially had in mind when making fighting games, but the concept was immediately beloved by the fans. Of course, at the time, combos were nothing more than a few moves chained together to squeeze out just a little bit more damage.
Fast forward years later, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a full combo that doesn’t feel like an eternity. And I’m here to tell you that it’s a bad thing.
Back to the Action
One of the biggest gripes that I have with combos being too long is that, for a few seconds, the game effectively becomes a single-player game. Sure, for the attacker, they’re squeezing out the most damage they can from a launcher that they earned. But for the defender, it’ll be a few seconds of sitting down with their stick in their hand, watching as their character gets juggled to oblivion. If I already feel this in Tekken 8, then I shudder at what Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 players feel knowing that their combo hits go up to triple digits. It is not a fun experience.
I have recently had the pleasure of revisiting one of the greatest fighting games of all time, Tekken 5, and I was immediately baffled by the length of the combos. There were no tailspins, no bounds, just hits strung together to get the most out of a launcher. Each staple combo took just a little over or below 10 hits, giving each player enough breathing room to get back into neutral. I believe that fighting games should get back to neutral as fast as possible because that is where both players have the most agency, attacking and defending instead of just floating and taking the damage.
All Flash
Negan’s reveal as a DLC character for Tekken 7 was one of the most flashy and unexpected reveals in fighting game history. We’re talking about a cinematic that paid homage to many of the TV show’s iconic scenes, but mixed in with Tekken’s iconic characters. The entire reveal felt like you were watching a movie, and for better or for worse, so did his gameplay. Negan’s 12.6-second-long rage art (the longest in Tekken 7) was fun to watch the first few times, but after a while, the novelty of the rage art wore off, and those 12 seconds started to feel like an eternity.
As per one Redditor’s insane statistics, it has been found that rage arts in Tekken 8 take, on average, 9 seconds to finish. Couple that with insane combo-extension mechanics like heat burts, strong aerial tailspins, and stage transitions, and you would have an absolute slog of a combo system. As with Negan’s rage art, all these insanely long combos were impressive at first, but the novelty quickly falls off when you’re on the receiving end. There is a part of me that is afraid that cinematic and flashy moves and supers are where modern fighting games are headed, and I can only hope that the devs realize that more does not always mean better. I am putting all my faith in you, Virtua Fighter.
Skill Expression
One of the most common arguments I’ve heard in defense of longer combos is that this forms a part of a player’s skill expression. Real professional players would learn how to adapt and extend their combos on the fly, depending on a myriad of factors like wall distance, okizeme, and damage. I have seen combo artists online extend their combo from one wall to the other, linking frame-perfect attacks together like it’s nothing. Although you won’t be getting bodied like that on the ladder any time soon, it’s in these moments that you can differentiate a casual player from a professional player.
But I would also like to argue that combo length isn’t what makes these long combos impressive. What really makes them impressive comes down to timing and space awareness. Being able to tightly link moves together and getting good positioning at the end of your combo should be considered enough for a player’s skill expression. Taking a look back at Tekken 5, I found that the most satisfying part of combos was landing a tight FF2 combo ender for Bryan’s bread and butter. All this to say that skill expression can exist without combos being too long.
Fighting games are a two-player game, and that is why players always come back. The moment you take away another player’s agency for too long, the entire appeal of fighting games is lost. With that said, yes, I will still be hitting the lab to make sure my wall-to-wall combo is as consistent as can be. Hold this fat L.
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