
Clive Rosfield, of Final Fantasy 16 fame, is the first guest character in Tekken 8 — and the final part of the game's first season pass.
Armed with his trusty blade and a slew of Eikon-based superpowers, Clive would feel far more at home in SoulCalibur than Tekken. But much like Noctis in Tekken 7 — also a DLC addition — Clive has been superbly recreated in Bandai Namco's current-gen fighter.
Seriously, the amount of effort that's been poured into this character is astounding. From his animations, to his moveset, to the sound effects that accompany his attacks — the Tekken team have gone above and beyond. Even his unique intros and win quotes are a perfect reflection of the Clive that fans of Final Fantasy 16 will be so familiar with.
Doing any guest character justice in a modern fighting game is going to be difficult, but Clive's arsenal must have made for an especially tricky adaptation. After all, Final Fantasy 16 is essentially an action title, with Clive unlocking all kinds of magical abilities as the story progresses.
By the end of his adventure, Clive is a one-man army — a demigod capable of switching between devastating elemental attacks at will. But somehow, Tekken 8 manages to take those abilities and weave them into a cohesive — and more importantly, coherent — set of moves. It really is one hell of an achievement from a design perspective.
Needless to say, Clive is a lot of fun to actually play as. He's easy to use on a basic level, featuring a selection of simplistic combo strings to get you started, but as is the case with just about every character in Tekken 8, there's clear depth to his aggression.
For starters, you can utilise his Phoenix Shift to close the distance and apply instant pressure through a number of high, mid, and low attacks that basically put your opponent in the blender. What's more, he's got an airborne Bahamut stance, which seems great for situations where your opponent is on the ground, and they're being forced to get up in specific ways.
He's also got a handful of fast, long-reaching sword slashes that help you control space; another win for less experienced players who may not be too familiar with Tekken 8's movement mechanics.
And in Heat, Clive literally heats up by embracing his inner Ifrit. Being in Heat gives him a number of additional attacks, and you can even start chaining certain moves together with the help of Torgal — Clive's loyal wolf-like companion. Again, all of this stuff is brilliantly animated.
Then there's his Rage Art, which is the icing on the cake. Following a series of dramatic sword slices, Clive transforms into Ifrit, grabs his opponent in midair, and slams them into the ground with a massive explosion.
It's easily one of the most cinematic Rage Arts in Tekken 8, but the best thing about it, by far, is that if you happen to close a match with this thing, you get a special win pose where the victory music from Final Fantasy 16 plays. It's absolutely glorious.
We're big fans of Clive in Tekken 8, then, but we should also mention his stage, which is a separate download but is included with Clive himself. It's Phoenix Gate from the opening of Final Fantasy 16, and features Ifrit and Phoenix battling it out in the background. It's very nicely recreated, and provides a fairly large arena surrounded by flames.
When the match reaches its potential final round, you get a cinematic sequence where Ifrit catches Phoenix out of the air, and then punches the giant bird right in its chest. This results in a stage transition, whisking combatants away to the fiery depths of Clive's mind, where the two Ifrits duke it out.
You can practically see the budget pouring out of the screen, all while 'Find the Flame' from Final Fantasy 16's soundtrack injects the necessary hype. In fact, our only criticism of the DLC is that the Tekken sound team didn't (or couldn't get permission to) remix the borrowed music tracks.
The Final Fantasy 15 track that was remixed for Noctis' inclusion in Tekken 7 was an absolute banger — but at the same time, you could argue that Final Fantasy 16's themes are simply too good to tweak in the first place.
So, in summary, Tekken 8's first season of DLC comes to a rather epic conclusion. On paper, Clive may not be the best fit for the franchise in terms of fighting style, but Bandai Namco has done a ridiculously impressive job of adapting Ifrit's Dominant.
Have you played as Clive in Tekken 8? Find your own flames in the comments section below.
Comments 41
Still upset it wasn't Tifa 😭
I had a laugh seeing Clive in Tekken 8 until I realized he's not that out of place since Noctis was in 7.
Also I would've loved to see Tifa instead of Clive but I can understand why he was picked over her, since FF16 is the newest numbered entry in the series.
Clive is one of the best MC of all FF. It was a pity that the game was not up to par.
Tifa is the Waluigi of Tekken, lmao
meh, I could care less if Tifa is in it or not but I'm happy for Clive. He's a bit out of place at first (he's more of a Soul Calibur guest character imo) but seeing Maximillian Dood try the character made me think otherwise
God I can't wait to get my hands on Tekken 8 for this character
I really need to get back to this game!
I watched the trailer. It is actually impressive. FF16 is a great title. Some people just hate for being exclusive and for not being a turn-based.
@mrbone couldn't care less about exclusivity and prefer real-time to turn-based any day. FF16 is garbage.
Nerf please, this character is broken
Shoulda been Tifa
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@BloodyBlact New to fighting game DLC i see.
As a HUGE fan of Final Fantasy XVI, I’m seriously thinking about picking Tekken 8 up just for Clive!
He's an interesting choice and that's enough for me. I wish SF6 got some more interesting guests than just other fighting game characters. If it's going to be a guest character I'd rather it be a not as straightforward pick like Clive for Tekken 8.
No offense to Tifa but I'm glad it was Clive instead.😄
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Damn might have to go back and play once again
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@Korgon Nah, I'm glad that SF6's two guests are grounded choices. Stuff like a FF character in T8 (and flippin' Negan in T7) pulls me right out of the fiction.
MK1 feels like an advertising platform for WB TV/film characters at this stage.
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@MrPeanutbutterz Tekken is universe that has Angel's and Devil's yet a FF character is too much?
MK1 guest characters barely use anyone WB owns. Omni-Man and Homelander are Amazon, Scream is Universal i think, the T-1000 is Fox i think though not 100% sure on Terminator rights as they flip flop all the time, as for Conan not 100% who owns Arnie's Conan. Peacemaker is the only WB owned guest though.
@DennisReynolds well they did sell 3 million copies in the first several weeks so I wouldn’t say barely anyone played it. If they hadn’t had such a ridiculous budget it would have been a sales success. I actually really enjoyed the game though so I wanted to add a little positivity to the conversation 🤣
@DennisReynolds I think Ben Starr did excellent job with voicing Clive. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of FF XVI and the characters in it, including Clive. Gameplay started kind of slow, but improved a lot by the end.
Anyway, I'm more of a Street Fighter player myself, but I do own Tekken 8 as well. I'm certainly interested in this new character, seems like a lot of fun.
@IamJT It officially bombed, 3M-5M isn't great for a mainline FF.
@KoopaTheGamer Everytime Clive spoke i couldn't help but cringe. There was zero emotion in his voice and zero range. Ralph Ineson acted circles around him and it really made me wish Cid was the lead as he was better acted, had far more depth and was a far better character.
@DennisReynolds His acting fitted the character and writing quite well I think. Besides, I think it's ultimately voice director's responsibility to, well, direct the actors. Clearly they wanted Clive to sound kind of gruff and edgy (for the lack of better word). And I honestly think that is for the best, since I can't imagine him sounding super joyful based on his character history.
As for the showing of emotion, I have no idea what you're talking about. Plenty of emotional scenes in the game and he did sound convincingly emotional.
I agree that Cid's voice actor was amazing as well, though.
@MrPeanutbutterz
I get that. That never bothered me much though since I don't really care about story in a fighting game. I like when devs have to get creative to come up with a move set for a guest character so when it's just another fighting game character...well it doesn't take much imagination to figure out most of their move set.
Plus I can't say I agree that Clive doesn't fit in Tekken considering Tekken has a friggin bear and a Panda as playable characters along with dudes turning into demon forms of themselves with eye lasers and whatnot.
A guy with a sword and magic powers and a pet dog seems to fit in nicely if you ask me. 😄
@DennisReynolds Yes, a FF character is too much. It breaks the fiction of the Tekken universe by dumping a completely unrelated character in it for no reason other than a marketing agreement between two companies.
I'm clearly incorrect about who WB owns, but my real point there is the same as above - throwing all these seemingly random and completely unrelated characters into MK dilutes the fiction of that universe.
@Korgon I don't play fighting games for the story either (I've my main character in Master rank in Street Fighter 6, and several sub characters in Diamond with about 520 hours played overall), but dropping random characters from completely unrelated franchises into the game undermines the fiction of that game.
Final Fight characters make perfect sense as that game originally started life as a sequel to Street Fighter (as Street Fighter '89) and is clearly in the same universe, shares a visual language. Terry and Mai make sense too for similar reasons - Fatal Fury was created by the same guy who created the original Street Fighter as his a spiritual sequel after he moved to SNK, and the characters have that same visual language, fit the tone of the game, etc. Now if you dropped say Scorpion from MK into SF, with his impaling people and burning their skin off, that absolutely does not fit the tone of the SF universe.
I'm not sure how random characters from other franchises force the developers to be more imaginative. Clive is a dude with a sword. Negan is a dude with a baseball bat. Plenty of fighting game characters and their movesets are way more original than them - AKI isn't exactly your typical fighting game character. Neither is Hakan. Neither is the uh, ballerina who does judo (Manon). I mean, have you played Guilty Gear at all? Bedman? Faust? Zappa? Bridget? Dizzy? They are all far more original than dudes with generic melee weapons.
Tekken is my favorite fighting series, and Clive is my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist. In a less busy world I would be all over this. Currently it’s on my list of games to play eventually.
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@MrPeanutbutterz You understand guest characters have been a thing in fighters since like forever? Also guests aren't even canon.
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@DennisReynolds I'm not insulting you, I'm criticising you, hows that? Anyway, I have been a bit heated recently, I'll give you that. What I said will get removed, gonna move on now. My original thought was you were being unfair to the actor, not because you thought he was boring, but because you said he hadn't got work after FF? That was just an outright lie. I'm not even a big Ben Starr fan or anything, I thought FFXVI was average. I still disagree with what you said. I try to offer a balanced opinion most of the time. Anyway lets agree to disagree, I take back any insults.
@MrPeanutbutterz
I think you might be misunderstanding my point a bit. I'm not saying original characters don't take as much creativity. My main in SF is AKI and she's great! Super creative and fun to play. And all those characters in GG you mentioned? Very creative indeed. If I had my way there would be no guest characters and all original characters.
However that just isn't realistic these days. Like it or not guest characters are here to stay in fighting games. So what I'm saying is if that's the case I would rather have a guest character from a non-fighting game instead of one from another fighting game because we have no idea how they will play...at all.
Take Mai for SF6. I can make an educated guess already at some of her move set just based off how her other fighting game iterations are without even seeing her in game yet. The flippy fire kick thing, fan throw, dive attack, forward moving elbow thing, etcetera.
Now take Guilty Gear Strive. (and I'm so glad you brought it up because this illustrates what I'm talking about perfectly) They have Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners coming. I haven't got a clue what her move set will look like. Will she use her monowire like a whip to be a zoner? Will she have some sort of crazy hacking abilities? Will she use a gun? Be a quick rush down character? I have no idea, and that's what makes it more exciting to me than if they just added someone who is already established from another fighting game series.
Basically all I'm saying is if we are going to do guest characters I prefer ones that force the dev to come up with original move sets for them instead of just implementing someone who already has a defined move set.
Nvm Clive I still want them to add Eevee to Tekken ever since that April Fools joke.
That's okay Clive can have his guest spot. He'll never be a gaming icon like Tifa. In twenty years' time people will still be talking about FF7 but FF16 will be long forgotten.
@DennisReynolds I've been playing fighting games since SF2 in the arcades circa 1991 and the first guest characters I can remember were Heihachi/Link/Spawn in Soul Calibur 2 over a decade later (maybe I'm mistaken but that's the first time I remember a crossover), so not quite "forever".
It also makes a rather neat point that I've been making - Link made sense thematically to SC2, Heihachi got a pass because he's from Namco's other fighting game, Spawn made absolutely no sense at all.
Guest characters not being canon is here nor there - ones that don't fit (like Negan) lessen the fiction of the parent game's universe.
@Korgon Okay dude that is indeed a very good point and I did misunderstand what you originally said.
And mentioning AKI makes a similar point also - with the SF6 DLC, we all had a rough idea of how Akuma would play, but had to sit and wait to see what AKI was like.
I might actually main AKI next. Been torn between her and Dhalsim (I've Blanka in Master and I think a bit of what got me over the line there is people not knowing how to deal with him. Been really enjoying only using the Shotos a bit exclusively to learn their matchups a bit better).
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