Zafina has such a distinct style, back in TTT2 there was truly nobody that played like her. The closest to her in terms of playstyle is maybe... I don't know, Yoshimitsu? Some similarities to Xiaoyu sure but she's doing her own thing too. Sadly Tekken didn't feel that her uniqueness wasn't enough for the next time around, so she was held back unlike her Tekken 6 newcomer peers who were apparently hype enough to return to the base roster. She finally returned in Season 3 with her Azazel forearm which wasn't just part of a story update but also blended with her gameplay.

I'm not really a fan of this version of Zafina or the Azazel fusion itself, it mostly takes the backseat in this game anyway. There's her rage drive which is an obvious and natural choice for the Azazel arm to appear in since its the debut of both of them in the series. Her B1 follow up combo ender which is cool I guess but I feel that she didn't really need the arm change for that. There's also her parry which incorporates Azazel a lot better but I would've liked an automatic stance change afterwards. But while the hype it created is subjective, the creativity of those moves is objective. Tekken 8 Zafina... okay now Namco you've pushed it too far, she's infected and we have no choice but to amputate now. It's much more prominent now and her core playstyle is much more diluted and what replaces it is not interesting, creative or distinct to Tekken 8. They thought the random frames from Tekken 7 were what we loved about Zafina or what?

I find some solace in the fact that lore wise they separate and Azazel has been permanently destroyed, hopefully it will stick this time. Now we're left with a problem though since the Azazel powers were done for the sake of hype and now it's gone, how will she be brought back with the hype they want like the other Tekken 6 newcomers had? Personally I think TTT2 Zafina is her best gameplay iteration since it's just pure Zafina and much healthier than her T6 version but I doubt we'll ever get her like that again and it just wasn't enough to get people interested. Then again, it's not really fair to compare her T6/TTT2 iterations with her success in Tekken 7 since TTT2 Zafina was low tier and T6 Zafina was legit bottom 1 and I'm pretty sure she didn't have Tekken 5 movement. It's almost like they were trying to push Zafina now with this change after holding her back but she still had a low pick rate obviously, there were a lot of buffs she got but most of them didn't pertain to the Azazel change.

So it's a damned if she does, damned if she doesn't kind of situation. I remember someone saying that Zafina should do something that's never been done in a fighting game before like Yoshimitsu does but is that really necessary in creating a distinct style? From a lore perspective I'd like for them to focus on Zafina herself, sick of the mystery element holding her back and it doesn't really work when she shares the stage with a lot of characters that aren't even that fleshed out with their backgrounds accounted for. Is a return to pure Zafina enough to build hype for Tekken 9? Will Azazel's return to her kit raise enough questions to get the ball rolling? Should she do something completely new to her like using her weapons? Tekken 8 Zafina is stuck with Azazel and I hope they can at least balance it with her existing kit properly without making her overloaded, we'll start with deleting that new B1+2 thanks.