If you know the basics already, I highly recommend this youtube playlist: That Blasted Salami.

It's for Tekken 7 but remains the best introduction to Tekken fundamentals yet. It'll teach you what most character guides take for granted, and you'll learn what Tekken is actually about, what a Tekken match actually plays like. 

The devil jin guide is optional, but I suggest you still check it out. The combo section is obviously outdated, but Mishimas are the heart of Tekken, and learning his gameplan and movelist will be enlightening.

just play the game even if u know nothing about it you get purple ranks, when u have played it for around 10 hours its fujin

Find a good discord server for your character and never come back here.

In addition to these other answers:

A lot of Aris (avoidingthepuddle) content for TTT2 and T7 is still relevant, you can find videos and playlists on youtube.

There are a lot of beginner guides, written and videos. I'd recommend the videos of TheMainManSWE , Diaphone, and PhiDX.

This query on youtube will get you far: tekken beginner guide - YouTube

It's a lot of homework, but to enjoy Tekken is to enjoy the homework.

As a new Tekken player myself I would recommend learning your on the ground moves. Waking up properly will keep you from being combod once you hit the ground and players in the lower ranks get caught by these moves often.

Jumped into the wider FGC off MK myself, these are some basic pointers that could be useful:

-Movement will be weird, due to the 3D nature of it and until it's muscle memory can feel unintuitive.

-Don't try to memorise the entire move list of the character you want to play. There are plenty of guides that highlight key moves and give a blueprint for gameplan.

-You will get knowledge checked, hard. There are things you just have to learn eventually. Due to this it's much harder to bruteforce matchup knowledge compared to MK.

-Try to learn throw breaking, it's probably the single largest boost to your play in Tekken

I'll suggest you to watch mainman and tekken players in general. The play and try to recognize whatever these players were saying or doing in the video. That's how I learned tekken.

Buy it if it looks fun. Well, I'll try my best.

• In Tekken, defense is king. Spamming WILL get you destroyed once you hone your skills.

• Learn to break throws. It'll be very hard and frustrating, but just know that it'll save you so much time in the future, and win more games.

• the control scheme is very different. It's a 3D fighter, with 4 buttons each corresponding to a different limb. In order, it's 1 (left arm), 2(right arm), 3 (left leg) and 4(right leg). Because of this, there are usually at least 80 unique moves for each character. But don't be overwhelmed, you really only need to know about 25 essential ones. The remaining ones are more there for niche situations or to confuse the opponent.

Have fun and good luck!

PhiDX has good guides

It’s more accessible than Tekken 7. The move list is organized to help you pick up and play (sort of) and the arcade quest is a decent guide to learn the game.

That being said, the game isn’t easy at all. You will get smoked even at the lowest ranked. You need to REALLY put in the time to know your main buttons, launchers and at least 2 combos.

It's easier than Street Fighter at least.

Very. There are SO many tools to learn Tekken. It’s all in the game and really accessible. I just wish my friends would bother learning

Do all characters have the same button combos, or is each character 100% different?

In short, execution is really low, you can figure out a bnb in less that 30 minutes. But the knowledge check is really high.

The hardest part is knowing what moves to use and learning how to block/punish the opponents.

So you can get easily stomped by other beginners spamming their cheap strong moves. But at the same time, you can easily do the same to them.

Probably that beginners are just spamming buttons and don’t fully understand how to control their character, when you’re intermediate you try to get away from mashing but you’re still not fully in control of your character because your skill isn’t developed.

Until you get to an advanced level (fully in control of your character), you’re going to lose to mashers.

This is just my take, I’m a beginner to Tekken and fighting games, but as I’ve played and developed in the past few months, it’s a trend I notice in other fighting games. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Pick the character that you like the most and stick with them. Tekken is a deep game and playing multiple characters can slow you down.

Begin from Arcade Quest.

For Honor definetly honed your Reaction and your immunity to toxicity. Tekken will ask a steep toll Till you really enjoy it.

When learning side step start with side walk even though that might sound counter intuitive. That's up up hold or down down hold

Pick a character that suits your play style

Before even thinking of playing rank,play quick matches so you can get familiar with how other characters play

LAB your character, learn your pokes and punish moves.

Regarding labbing, practice your combos and wall combos, optimize all your damage and make them count

Don’t mash, you will get punish so play with patience

If you are a beginner beginner my best advise would be pick a character you like and just enjoy the game. If you enjoy the game you will learn automatically. I have been playing since T6 and always just enjoy learning matchups with my main.

More technical advise would be just learn the moves your main has and try to implement them when needed. Ones you know your mains moves you can learn your characters combos and punishers.

Also keep calm. Try not to panic and mash and look at the opponents moves. Panicking makes you lose focus and you will lose games. Just keep calm and pay attention to you opponent. And again just enjoy the game :)

If you can't punish a move with a jab (square on ps), it's probably safe. If an opponent finishes a string, it's very likely punishable at least with your own jab string. 

If a low attack has an animation where your character's animation also crouches down while performing it, it will be guaranteed to avoid incoming high attacks. Tekken(for the most part) is pretty consistent with the animations and hurtboxes, so if an attack look like it could evade moves, it probably can do that.

Play the game as casual as you like, you'll probably figure things out on the way and get better naturally. That's when you probably be able to comfortably use your character. It's important, becasue when you're not struggling with your character's moveset, you'll be able to only pay attention to the opponent, and see what you need to figure out and lab.

If you see a cool combo, feel free to steal it for your own use. 

It's cool to sometimes go through your character's movelist again, that way you might find a useful attack that you forgot about.

Turn off the game if you're not having fun. Some days you'll feel like playing, but you perform worse and get frustrated. It's okay to not continue, you'll just get more frustrated and perform even worse. Or just calm down and play defensive lol.

Play quick match, it has infinite rematch option and there is no downside of losing. 

Ggs mate

There's so much stuff to learn in this game it's hard to give generic advice, anything in particular that didn't make sense to you ?

Literally play Arcade Quest - it teaches you the fundamentals

Basic advice is to spend 30-50 hours in practice just learning how to move and do basic strings. Preferably forgetting about playing ranked or against random people. Try finding a sparring partner instead. 'Learning naturally' may be a bad idea in your case since there's a lot of information to absorb first. Learning as you fight without trying to understand the game may prolong the beginner/learning period to thousands of hours. Once you get the hang of it (understand the mechanics), "learning naturally" becomes something different.

Check out Applay's Tekken Library. It has cheat sheets for all characters with basic combos and stuff. However, learning staple combos from YouTube guides (RyzingSol or TheFury) is highly recommended. Check out wavu wiki if you really want to understand the game and not afraid of reading.

i wouldn't recommend Kazuya for a beginner. he's a fundamental character (which is great for beginners) but all of his best moves are locked behind execution (bad for beginners).

to start, you should find a character with an easy 15f launcher and easy whiff punisher. also, it should not be a gimmicky character like bears, robots, dancers, since you'll be carried by them at all ranks until the higher ones.

every time you lose, you need to hit the lab to see what you could have done. tekken is a knowledge check heavy game. there are many players that only know their flow charts. if you know the strings that are being used, and when to duck or side step them, you will shut them down entirely.

eventually, instead of just labbing defense, you should play as other characters as well. that's the best way to understand their strategy. are they a poke heavy character? do they rely on landing counterhits? are they evasive? are they tricky/unpredictable? once you understand the strategy to win as that character, you can formulate the defense.

if all of this sounds exhausting, it's because it is. getting better at the game can totally destroy any joy or fun you get out of it. but if being good at the game is the joy/fun you get from this game, then like anything else in life, you need to put in the time to get good at it.

Kazuya is a good choice. One of the hardest characters in the game but rewarding to learn. I'm sure what you'll learn with Kazuya can carry over in any Tekken game you'll play.

What I'd recommend doing first is learning how to move around.

Get comfortable backdash cancelling, wavedashing (since you're going to be playing Kazuya), dash blocking (double-tapping forward to dash into holding back to block), and sidestep blocking out of these options.

After that, just focus on getting one combo down, you can worry about optimizing combos for damage, wall-carry, or oki later.

For a beginning combo with Kazuya I'd recommend:

EWGF -> 3,1,4 -> df1,df2 (just hold down forward when pressing 1 and 2), -> 3,1,4 hold df and press 3.

If you need clarification on inputs or notation, there should be guides littered all over the internet.

After getting this combo down, I'd recommend looking into what other moves you'd wanna use in a match. You can look for high level replays of Kazuya's and seeing what they do. Typically though youre going to want to use:

1 - fast high

1,1,2 - doing the first two jabs is safe, only confirm into the 2 if you see that it hits the opponent, not if they block it

df1 - standard mid poke that has strong follow ups

df1,2 - mid, high heat engaging string thats 0 on block, meaning you can act at the same time as your opponent if they block it, and will give you a free heat mixup on hit

df1,df2 - mid, mid string which will pop people up on hit and is also safe on block, although you wont be able to act as quickly as your opponent if this is blocked

db1,2 - highly unsafe but long reaching heat engager if someone does a long range, unsafe move

df2 - counter-hit launcher (if they press a button and you hit them with this before their move connects onto you, you get a full combo), mildly unsafe

f,f2 - god button, can be stepped either direction but an insanely far-reaching heat engager thats safe on block and leads to a free mixup if it hits

cd2 / EWGF - insanely powerful tool, probably one of the best buttons in the game, but obviously you'll need a lot of practice to do it consistently. The just-frame (actual electric effect) is +5 on block, meaning you can press just about anything and beat whatever move your opponent does, is jab punishable on block if you miss the just-frame. Still an incredibly strong move as it leads to your most damaging combos

db3 - good evasive low poke, i think its mildly unsafe so dont uae it too often, but a good tool for getting some poke damage on your opponent every once in a while

f,f3 - one of your main 50/50 tools, hits mid (if the duck) on launches on normal hit for a full combo

db4 - your main low poke, unsafe on block but pretty fast and does good damage

cd4 / hellsweep - other main tool of your 50/50. Incredibly unsafe on block but will lead to a good situation for Kazuya on hit, and is easily loopable if the opponent keeps getting up at the same timing. If they atart ducking to block it, start using ff3 to launch them for big damage

cd1+2 - incredible button, slower to come out but is +5 on block, once again meaning you can do just about anything and have it come out before the enemy can do anything

f4 - another god button, linear move but gives you +3 on block, which can lead to devastating counter-hit launches if the opponent decides to press something

After you get comfy using these moves, the only way to proceed is to hop online and get your ass beat. If theres a specific character that's giving you trouble, once you're done for the day, hop into the replays.

From there, find the move or string or whatever that was giving you problems, and find a solultion to it. Typically you'll want to check if the option is:

• Unsafe (can punish when you block it)

• Can be side-stepped (when theyre doing it, try sidestepping or side walking it to see if you can avoid it that way)

• Can be interrupted (a bit risky but still an option available)

• If its a string that ends in a high, you can duck it on reaction and punish them for it

so on and so forth. Tekken is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, so dont feel like you're behind if you lab a character a lot but then still lose to that same thing online the next day. It takes a LOT of time to implement the stuff you practice, and it taking time is entirely normal!

Blue with kazuya on keyboard and started 3 months ago i would really recommend mainmanswe or phidx youtube guide on kazuya as a starting point

Would recommend playing through arcade quest as it will give you a very basic run down of the mechanics as well as some beginner tips for whatever character you choose. Enough to get you up and running at least. After that, I would recommend watching a few videos going over the fundamentals of Tekken (movement, block punishing, frame advantages, turns, etc.). I'll leave the community to make recommendations for who to watch.

After that hop online and do your best. Don't expect immediate results, you will suck for a long time. But the more you play, the better your execution will become, and eventually some things will become second nature.

There will be times where it will feel like you've hit a wall, at that point you'll want to use the replay feature to see where you're going wrong. It'll tell you what you're doing vs what you're opponent is doing and make recommendations for actions you could have taken. Be sure to lab and experiment.

And most important if all: have fun. Don't worry about ranks. If you find yourself getting angry or frustrated because you're on a losing streak turn off the game and come back later. There have been days where I'm in the zone and others where I just keep making mistakes. This happens to everyone, don't let it put you down. As long as you are seeing some improvement in your play, you're headed in the right direction.

I hope everyone enjoys and learn from it

awesome stuff !

Great beginners guide, I didn't know a bunch of this stuff till now.

I got this game solely for Clive and im one that hates fighting games and still have some fun with this and T7 sometimes, congrats 🙌

Nice, and congratulations on the plat! 🙌 I rarely play fighting games, myself. It’s just that I don’t have the feel for it. But I did like the review you wrote!

Congrats on the platinum!

Man, i am just hoping the pc port on steam is not shit....im getting excited but man, i have a feeling sf6 is still going to be my game.

Mk1 was not a good port and havent touched it since....so hopefully this is going to be great.

Very good video for beginners.

I'm in love with Tekken 8's advertising campaign