So you're new in Tekken. You're playing for the first time, and you're tackling what might be the most difficult fighting game out there right now. With all the characters to take on, and their encyclopedic number of moves each, it is definitely a daunting task.
What makes a good beginner character?
1. Easy to Pick Up
To be able to do this, you're going to need a good character, but not just any good character. You're going to need a character that's simple to use. Not too many notations or executions that might make your wrists hurt.
2. Fundamentally Sound
You're also going to need a character that can teach you the basics in offense and defense, or the fundamentals of the game. The character should be designed in such a way as to help you learn the ins and outs of the game. In short he or she should be a good teacher of sorts.
3. Effective Weapons to Work With
A good beginner character also needs great weapons to work with. The character will be helping newbies into the game, after all. So the newbies are going to need effective weapons to help them go toe to toe with more seasoned players.
4. The Learning Curve
Lastly, the character should embody the spirit of Tekken, or any fighting game for that matter. He or she should be easy to pick up, but relatively hard to master. If you do manage to climb the mountain to the top, the character should give you a great sense of satisfaction and achievement. This will be your ultimate motivation to keep playing the game.
All the things I mentioned above define what a great starting character should be in Tekken 7. It's probably what a good starting character should be for any game. It's these categories that define a good beginner character in Tekken 7. These same categories will also define the Top 10 best beginner characters in the game. I'll be counting them down from #10, all the way to #1.
As always, this list is just my humble opinion. Mileage may vary, and you may have your own Top 10 in mind. That's all well and good, but I think this list is a pretty good representation of the 10 best beginner characters in the game. Now, without further ado, here are my Top 10 best beginner characters in Tekken 7!
10. Lucky Chloe
A Beginner's Guide to Playing Lucky Chloe
The Mishima pop star just makes the list at #10. Chloe has a great combination of relatively simple moves and a simple but effective offensive game to just make it to the Top 10.
Easy to Pick Up
While it is true that her most damaging combo, and some key moves do take some time and practice to get down, most of her moves are pretty simple and straightforward. Her backturn move is just B-LK+RK. To start the combo, she just needs to press F-LK+RK from her back turned to the opponent. If these kicks hit, the combo can go as high as 103 damage!
Fundamentally Sound
While such huge damage is a mouth-watering concept, this is still Tekken 7 and nothing is for free. For the combo and her other key moves to hit, Chloe must play a great spacing game with a lot of patience. It's here where she teaches the beginner some very important fundamentals of the game. Patience, spacing, and whiff punishing. A lot of Chloe's game revolves around making space and getting your opponent to whiff their attacks. When they miss their attacks, Chloe can whiff punish them to death. This rewards the beginner's patience and teaches him that Tekken is a patient man's game.
Effective Weapons To Work With
Chloe doesn't have a lot of moves, but the moves she does have, are efficient and reward the patient player. Her backturned diving kicks mentioned above can be devastating, and she also has a lot of simple moves off her left and double twist moves. Left twist is simply DB-LK and double twist is DB-LK, RK. She also has her C Windmill kick strings that start with D-LK+RK, and continue with more D-LK+RK kicks. While this seems simple, the buttons have to be pressed with a certain rhythm for them to hit. It's not really that hard, and players used to rhythm games will easily master it, and a few more of her rhythm-based moves.
Learning Curve
It's these and a few other moves with some difficulty that keep her at the flat 10th spot. While her concept and play style are easy to grasp, there is a learning curve to her. The learning curve is a little hard, but once you master it, she becomes one of the most efficient characters any newbie could pick up.
9. Kazumi
A set of matches between Fahkumram and Kazumi.
Kazumi is one of the most well-rounded characters in the game. With her great running game and Warrior stances, she's a consistent pick for players looking for a simple, efficient character.
Easy to Pick Up
The wife of Heihachi is one of the easier characters to pick up in the game. She doesn't really have any complicated moves that require tough notations to pull off. Her moves are pretty straightforward and she does have a good set of moves all around. Her LP,LP, RP string is notable as it is easy to do, a good poke starter, and a great all-around punishing string.
Fundamentally Sound
Kazumi is one of the simplest and most efficient characters to work with. Her game is all about spacing and patience. Waiting for the opponent to make a wrong move, and if the time and space are right, going for one of her running moves. It's a simple and fundamentally sound game that a beginner will easily understand.
Effective Weapons to Work With
Aside from her LP,LP,RP string Kazumi has some pretty simple but effective tools to work with. Her DB-RK is a great, fast and unseeable low that can be used for poking games. Her moves off her Fearless Warrior stance F-LK+RK, and Last Warrior stance B-LK+RK provide great pressure and evasion. And all these moves are simple and effective. Perhaps her trickiest moves to pull off are her Tiger's Demon's Gate and Tiger Demon's Breath strings both of which start with BF RP, and LP. Gate ends with RK while Breath ends with LP+RP. These are usually her enders to combos. Two of her best moves though are her running moves. Dash forward with either LP a high, or RP a mid. Mix them up and add a wall for insane pressure. Overall, great tools that a beginner can pick up relatively easily.
The Learning Curve
While Kazumi is easy to pick up, truly mastering her can be a challenge. She has simple and efficient moves, but if you're not careful, she can get overwhelmed by the characters that love to pressure like Steve or Hwoarang. They are after all, usually the bane of simple, beginner friendly characters. That, and her running game does take some getting used to, keep her at the #9 spot.
8. Katarina
A beginner's guide to using Katarina in Tekken 7.
Easy to Pick Up
Katarina is definitely easy to pick up. When introduced to the character, it becomes very clear that the beginner is given a whole host of quick, simple to use, and deadly weapons. The 2 hallmarks of Kat's game are blinding speed, and a fearsome 50/50 mix-up game. To be truly efficient, Kat has to be in the opponent's face, pressuring him and making him guess constantly if she will do a high, mid, or low. Her speed gives her a lot of room to play that pressuring, guessing game.
Fundamentally Sound
This is where it starts to get a little strange for Kat. Despite or perhaps because of her blistering offense, her game doesn't lend itself too well for defense. Kat isn't really preoccupied with patience or spacing, and would rather be up close and personal with the opponent. And while this doesn't really take away from her deadliness, it does make her a little less fundamentally sound, as a character. Beginners will be given a whole host of options to play with offensively with Kat. The drawback however, is that they probably won't learn too much defense with her. They'll be too busy pressuring the opponent to think about defense. This keeps her from being a top option for beginners.
Effective Weapons to Work With
This is the department where Katarina truly shines. Her Harrier stance has just about every offensive weapon a beginner or even a veteran player could ever ask for. It's criminally easy to do at F-RK, and can be chained with other moves and strings. You can do quick highs, mids, lows and even buffer a grab after it. The sheer speed and ease that Kat can do the Harrier stance can give the opponent 50/50 nightmares. Even if she can be launch punished if guessed correctly, it is still a very easy, deadly and efficient stance.
The Learning Curve
Offensively, it is very easy to learn Katarina. She gives a simple and deadly guessing game that's easy to pick up. However, playing her defensively is a little tricky as the whole focus of her character is offensive. By no means does this make her a bad character. But it does limit her potential to teach the newbies the finer points of the game, and it keeps her at the 8th spot.
Katarina being customized in the customization menu of Tekken 7.
7. Shaheen
A demonstration of how Shaheen's moves can make a difference in a game.
Shaheen's name loosely translates to “hawk” or “falcon” and as one of the game's easiest characters to pick up and play, he definitely flies high.
Easy to Pick Up
As one of the easier characters to pick up, Shaheen is pretty much the definition of pick up and play. His moves and gameplay are simple and straightforward. Just one look at Shaheen and you pretty much know what the game plan should be.
Fundamentally Sound
Shaheen again pretty much defines the fundamentally sound character in every way. He doesn't have too many flashy moves, but the simple moves he has will take care of just about every situation. His gameplay is all about spacing and waiting for the right time to strike. He can play some pressure and offense, but he's much more effective playing patiently and being fundamentally sound.
Effective Weapons to Work With
With Lee and Law, Shaheen is probably one of only three characters with a standing slide that can slide towards the opponent. While crouching, tap forward then press RK to do the slide. It's a simple but efficient move that can also be used to set up a guessing game with his WR- RP. His hopkick UF-RK is also simple, quick and has fairly good range for a hopkick. These are only a few of his good moves but they can all be used to patiently chip away at the opponent while keeping a good distance.
The Learning Curve
For Shaheen it's not the execution of the moves that will prove to be a challenge. It's his small damage output and the bane of most of the characters in this list. He can also easily be pressured by offensive characters like Steve or Hwoarang. It's these things that will challenge the newbie picking up Shaheen.
6. Claudio
A video showing Claudio brutality.
Claudio is another simple and effective character for beginners out there. His style is pretty straightforward and focuses more on offense but also needs good reads and defense, to truly excel.
Easy to Pick Up
Aside from his running RP Claudio doesn't really have any difficult moves to execute. And even that move is fairly straightforward. Claudio is pretty simple to pick up and play. Perhaps the key thing that new players should get about Claudio is his starburst. More of a state than a stance, when he's in starburst some of his key moves change properties. This can give him access to some longer combos and more damage.
Fundamentally Sound
Claudio is another character that defines being fundamentally sound. His game revolves around patience and waiting for the right time to strike, especially with his running RP and his hopkick that is also pretty quick for a standard hopkick.
Effective Weapons to Work With
His running RP and his fast hopkick are his most notable weapons to work with, but Claudio also has some simple, good pokes to complement them. His LP, LK string with a variation of LP,RP is good for poking and punishing respectively. His F-RP,RP is also a quick punishing string that instantly puts him in starburst when it hits.
The Learning Curve
Claudio's learning curve isn't as steep as the others. It's all about timing and knowing what moves gets him into starburst and what to do after. It's pretty simple and straightforward, with his only weakness being a little vulnerable to offensive characters that won't stop pressuring him.
5. Negan
A Tekken World Tour Match featuring a high level Leo player versus a strong Negan player.
There's not much to be said about Negan. It's friggin 'Negan from the Walking Dead. Somehow, Namco got the rights to get him to appear in Tekken 7. His coolness factor is off the roof of course, but he's also one of the best beginner-friendly characters.
Easy to Pick Up
It's clear from the get-go what Namco is trying to do with Negan. They're clearly trying to somehow get fans of the show to play Tekken 7. Because of this Negan is notoriously easy to pick up and play. His moves require little execution to pull off and are brutally effective. All you need to do is just play the patience and spacing game. When up close, pressure the opponent with his plus frame moves, and bully him to get your way.
Fundamentally Sound
Negan is all about patience and spacing while waiting for the right time to get up close and bully the opponent. It's a very solid and fundamentally sound game. Negan is a great character to teach new players the intricacies of the game, right off the bat. And yes, that last line was well, pun unintended.
Effective Weapons to Work With
A lot of his effective weapons are so easy to pull off. His Wretched Hammer, B-LP+RP on block gives plus frames, and on hit gives a launch. One of his launchers, DF-LP+RP, gives great damage on launch, and is an armor move. His intimidation stance LK+RK is also very easy to use and provides great moves while auto-parrying most low attacks.
The Learning Curve
Negan's learning curve is pretty low, as it is easy to pick him up and get what he needs to do. Unfortunately, your main obstacles to greatness with Negan will be as always, oppressive characters that like to poke and get in your face. Negan is fast for a big character, but he is still very vulnerable. There is some irony to this. Negan likes to bully and pressure people, but he himself is susceptible to being bullied and pressured. Perhaps, it's the old story of the schoolyard bully all over again. The bully is pretty tough and scary, but if you stand up to him, you've got a good chance to beat him.
4. Jack
The Power Jack's defensive gameplay shown in this match.
One of my personal favorites on this list, and for the longest time, my main character in Tekken 7, Jack 7 takes the #4 spot on the list.
Easy to Pick Up
As long as you're good with his slow mobility Jack is actually pretty easy to pick up. He has a few high execution moves like his Spark Uppercut HCF-LP, but all of them have been pretty much nerfed. So there's really no pressing need to master his more difficult moves. Jack's game is pretty simple. Space out the opponent, wait for the right time, and punish them hard.
Fundamentally Sound
Jack plays a very patient waiting game, relying on spacing to wait for the opponent to whiff. From there, he usually goes for his staple DF-RP launcher, or his all-around go-to move the Jack Hammer, F-F-LP. It's actually a pretty cheap but efficient defensive game. Defensive? Yes. Some would even argue that it's a boring kind of game, and they would have some merit to this. But there's no arguing that when he's on, it's a very effective game.
Effective Weapons to Work With
Jack has a lot of good weapons to work with. Aside from his aforementioned DF-RP launcher and Jack Hammer, he also has the Debugger, HCF-LP, which is a relatively fast chunky low. He also has his unseeable DB-LP which is a very effective and unseeable low poke.
The Learning Curve
Jack has always been a relatively simple character at heart. All that seems to be poised to change in Tekken 8 with his new moves but we're not there yet. For now, he is still quite simple and relatively easy to pick up. His main obstacles will be as usual the offensive and oppressive characters that love to rush down their opponents. When Jack can't move around, his slow and ponderous movement can play against him. It's this kind of rushdown offense that is the biggest problem to really mastering Tekken's resident robot.
3. Asuka
Another high level Tekken World Tour featuring strong Asuka Players.
Asuka is one of the most devastating female characters, plain and simple. Although some of her combos might be as damaging as other characters, she is very defensive and gets rewarded handsomely for her defensive play.
Easy to Pick Up
Asuka has always been one of the easier characters to pick up. Her moves don't really require much execution. Perhaps her button layouts are a little awkward as she does have sabakis and strings that require the LK and the RP or the LP and the RP pressed together. However, it's nothing arcade sticks with large buttons or simple configurations can't fix. Her key moves are usually pretty easy to figure out and pull off. They're usually straightforward and get the job done.
Fundamentally Sound
Because of her array of counters and parries, Asuka is a naturally defensive character. Add to that her being the slowest of the female characters, and Asuka will teach you a basic waiting game of patience. Her results for being patient do border on being a little too rewarding, but that can only be a good thing for the newbie picking her up.
Effective Weapons to Work With
Asuka has a lot of potent weapons to work with. Her B-RK is a safe launcher that is probably one of the easiest and most rewarding launchers in the game. Her F-RP has great range for a whiff punisher, and her infamous can-can kicks D-LK+RK, is a deadly low attack that usually counter hits. Her fearsome counter B-LP+LK or B-RP+RK can counter punches or kicks, and can be delayed to catch slower attacks. Add to that her sabakis like her B- LK+RP and LK+RP and you have a character that can parry or counter a lot of attacks in the game.
The Learning Curve
Asuka does have something of a strange learning curve in the game. While her moves are easy to pull off, her high damaging juggles usually require you to do a F,F-RP,LK string in the middle of the combo. This string is extremely slow and can be jarring to pull off in a fast combo. This makes the combos a little hard to pull off. If you can't do that slow string in the middle of the combo, her damage output gets severely restricted. This seems to have been fixed in Tekken 8, but that's still pretty uncertain. Add to this the fact that she isn't that fast, and it may take some time for the beginner to get the hang of her game. That still doesn't take away the fact that she is a good and rewarding beginner character.
Asuka Kazuma from Tekken 5.
2. Paul
One of the greatest Tekken players, Knee, showing everyone how to use Paul properly.
Paul is an absolute God in the game. It's that simple. He's always been that way in all his iterations, and that's no different here.
Easy to Pick Up
In some past iterations, Paul was just a little harder to pick up. That was because his Demolition man string, D-RK,RP,LP+RP used to be just frame timing. Now, it's a lot easier to perform and this makes all the difference. With the Demolition Man string execution out of the way, Paul has never been more accessible to newbies. It's one of his key moves or strings, and this paves the way for him being even more devastating. Sure the Ultimate Tackle string is still pretty hard to do, but Paul still has more than enough to compensate and encourage Newbies to pick him up.
Fundamentally Sound
Although Paul is slow and this will require you to be a little patient with him, his huge damage output more than makes up for this. His infamous Phoenix Smasher QCF-RP is of course one of the most devastating moves in the game. It's the move that defines the character and gives him so much damage. Because of this insane damage output Paul isn't really the most fundamentally sound character around. But who cares? With the huge reward for using him, it doesn't really matter.
Effective Weapons to Work With
All the moves I mentioned above are all part of Paul's deadly arsenal. His whole game revolves around hitting the Phoenix Smasher, or the opponent fearing getting hit and making a mistake. Either way, it's all about damage for Paul, and his huge damage guarantees he has effective weapons to work with.
The Learning Curve
Like I mentioned above, although Paul is a little slow, it hardly feels like he has to work for his hits. Some players have argued that Paul is broken, and I can't really debate. He is a little slow so there is that. Again, because of his huge damage output, that hardly feels relevant. All these things show that Paul's learning curve isn't that high. He's pretty easy to pick up and that's huge for beginners. I honestly can't see any reason why a beginner shouldn't at least try him out.
1. Leroy
Notable King player, Lil Majin, playing Leroy Smith.
We've finally reached the top spot on the list and the famous, or infamous Leroy Smith takes the top spot! When Leroy first came out, he was so strong that he almost broke the game wide open. No one could touch him and he was clearly miles better than everyone except Akuma. Several nerfs were rolled out that severely weakened Leroy. However, it's a testament to Leroy's design that he is still one of the top characters of the game. Despite all the nerfs Leroy is still the best character for a newbie to pick!
Easy to Pick Up
It's no secret that Leroy was designed to attract beginners to the game. From his eye-catching character design to his devastating moves that are easy to execute, Leroy is the definition of a pick up and play character. Despite the nerfs he is still very easy to pick up.
Fundamentally Sound
Another scary thing about Leroy is that just about all of his moves have a purpose. He is still the best well-rounded character in the game excelling in both offense and defense. The parries though will ensure that he will always specialize a little more on defensive play making him a very fundamentally sound character.
Effective Weapons to Work With
Despite all the nerfs, Leroy's weapons are all still very effective. His D-LK, RP is a string that starts with an unseeable low into the Hermit stance. This gives him a ton of guessing games in his favor, if it hits. His parries are all also very easy to execute with UF-LP, B-RP, DB-LP+RP or UB-RP. These are just a few of his moves, but they already cover both offensive and defensive situations. And they are all criminally easy to execute.
The Learning Curve
This is where the nerfs hit Leroy a little hard. Despite all his strengths, he has become a little risky. Some moves have lost some damage here and there, and some moves can now be punished more severely than before. Despite his ease and strength, the beginner will be forced to really play smart and take time and effort to master him. Ironically, he has developed a fairly high learning curve. Despite this, Leroy will still give beginners a huge reward if they invest the time to master him. And it's not like anything comes free in Tekken 7. So this still doesn't change anything. Leroy is the best character for a beginner!
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