Tekken 8: Clive Rosfield Guide

Tekken 8 has finally released its first guest character, and it’s Clive Rosfield from Final Fantasy 16. Clive is the protagonist of Final Fantasy 16 and the heir of the Rosaria domain. There’s a ton we could get into about his backstory and lore, but unfortunately, a lot of it would be pretty big spoilers for the game itself. So all we can say is that Clive has the ability to control multiple Eikons, he’s the Dominant of the Eikon of fire, Ifrit, and there’s even more to him than that.

Mechanically in Tekken 8, Clive is a fantastic guest character. At the time of writing this Clive is pretty brand new, he actually just got out of Early Access for Fighter Pass players, but early impressions are that he’s not overpowered or absurdly dominating like Eddy Gordo was on release, and while easy to pick up, he’s pretty difficult to fully master thanks to his Stances. Visually, Clive is also the most visually bombastic character in Tekken 8’s roster, by a pretty big margin. So, if you like flashy moves, Stances, & are a Final Fantasy fan, Clive is absolutely a character you’ll want to give a look.

Clive Rosfield

The Dominant of Ifrit

Clive Rosfield is the protagonist of Final Fantasy 16 as well as Tekken 8’s first guest character. While characters like Noctis (from Final Fantasy 15) and Negan (from The Walking Dead) stuck out a ton in Tekken 7, Clive somehow manages to stick out even more in Tekken 8. Granted, characters like Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya exist who can fight in space without any problem, but Clive’s transformations, multiple Eikon abilities, and even summoning his faithful Frost Wolf Torgal have Clive somehow managing to stick out more than the giant bears using Martial Arts or the 8 foot+ tall giant robotic men.

Disclaimer:
To talk about Clive’s moveset in depth, we do need to spoil a bit about his character. So for those who haven’t played
Final Fantasy 16
yet, be careful reading below.

To go a bit into his background, Clive is the Dominant of the Dark Eikon, Ifrit, and also has a mysterious ability (explained in FF16) to absorb the essence of other Eikons that he comes into contact with the Dominants of. This is why, in Tekken 8, you’ll see Clive using Ifrit, Phoenix, Garuda, Ramuh, Titan, Bahamut, Shiva, Odin, and Leviathan respectively. This is the best part of him being a guest character in a fighting game, as these abilities are capable of destroying the world as a whole, but in Tekken 8 they’re typically described as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ not based on their power but by their use, frames of animations, and more. Regardless, Clive Rosfield is one of the most powerful Final Fantasy protagonists ever introduced in the franchise, having 9 different Eikon abilities at his disposal and then some.

And Specific Notation For Clive

Now before we break down Clive on an in-depth level, let’s talk about how Tekken players notate their combos and inputs. Unlike other fighting games that often use High Kick, Low Kick, High Punch, and Low Punch (or something similar), Tekken uses a 1, 2, 3, 4, system and a shorthand system to denote different actions. While it might look like gibberish or way too complicated at first, it’s actually a super efficient and easy-to-use system. We’ll be using this notation system when describing all of Clive’s inputs below, so let’s break down at least all the ones related to Clive’s moves:

Again, this is only about maybe half of the symbols and abbreviations that Tekken fans use, but these are the only ones that are needed to understand everything in this guide. For Clive specifically, he transitions into and out of multiple Stances during a lot of his combos, so breaking down his notation is extra important.

Clive’s Playstyle & Overall Mechanics

Eikon Switching & a Lot of Stances

Now let’s talk a bit about Clive’s playstyle in Tekken 8 and what kind of ‘character’ he boils down to. At first glance, it might seem like Clive is a very simplistic or rather, ‘easy to use, hard to master’ character like Viktor, but that’s actually not true. Clive’s long combo string that only uses his 2 inputs is the primary reason for this deception, but once you start taking a closer look at Clive’s moves and tools, you’ll realize he’s a pretty complex stance-based character.

This is seen in a few different ways, such as his Zantetsuken that eliminates recoverable health like a Rage Art would, his Phoenix Stance that he can transition to at the end of many different moves, his Wings of Light flying stance that has the ability to fire a projectile, and of course his two different parries for lows and highs. If you try to play Clive without utilizing any of these stances, you’ll find yourself struggling pretty heavily, you’re going to need to learn his stances to really get the hang of him and his combos. The best way we can describe Clive is that he’s easy to pick up, awkward to control initially (due to his bad lows and some odd animations), and incredibly strong once understood.

Clive Rosfield’s Rage Art

Hellfire

Clive’s Rage Art is literally so over-the-top that some people are actually reporting big drops in performance during his Rage Art. Ignoring that, the Rage Art itself is incredibly bombastic with Clive himself Priming Ifrit, slashing you silly with his sword before summoning Ifrit itself which picks up the opponent and absolutely slams them into the ground with a fiery explosion. It’s basically a big cinematic, so much so it actually feels like more of one than all the other Rage Arts.

From there, you simply need to press the Rage Art specific input as can be seen in the Controller Setup, or alternatively, use d/f 1+2 (Down and Forward + Left & Right Punch). As far as what the actual move is, it’s a middle-hitting attack that must be used at a pretty close range, so keep that in mind as most Rage Arts are best used with a hit confirm beforehand.

Clive’s In-Depth Stance Explanations

Phoenix Stance, Wings of Light Stance, & More

We talked about these a bit earlier, but Clive Rosfield has a lot of Stances and complex mechanics. Again, at first, he might not seem that complex, but his Wings of Light Stance and Phoenix Stance all have a variety of moves he can use in them, his Zantetsuken has a unique mechanic no other character has (and can only be charged with certain moves), and he of course has his different parries. So, let’s break down what each of these Stances does and how to best use them or transition into them:

Unlike a few other characters with Stances that aren’t ‘foundational’ to the ability to play them, you pretty much need to learn and understand Clive’s Stances in order to utilize him to a ‘decent’ level. You’ll want to know what exactly charges Zantetsuken, you’ll want to know all of your options when in Phoenix Stance, you’ll want to learn which moves you can hold forward after transitioning into Phoenix Stance, you’ll want to know how to best utilize and enter the Wings of Light Stance, and much much more.

Combo Breakdowns

Some Starter Combos To Get You Off The Ground

Lastly, let’s go over a few of Clive’s early combos that are either found in his Combo Challenges in-game or have already been pieced together by the Tekken 8 fanatics. One of Clive’s best features as a character overall is the ease of use with his combos. Compared to many other characters in Tekken 8 where their best combos require some pretty heavy mechanical execution, Clive’s are relatively easy to perform. So, without further ado, these are some of his best combo options:

And then to cap things off with Clive’s biggest downside (at least that we’ve found so far, he’s still very new at the time of writing this), we’ve found him to be pretty lacking when it comes to good low moves. Clive’s d1 is decent, his db1 is good but a bit slow, and most of his other options are either even more slow or even less useful. Because of this, it’s not as easy to mix opponents up with Clive, especially the ones who know his moveset, and in that case, it’s going to be an uphill battle to win each round.