Jin Kazama - Reception

Reception

Video game publications have mostly praised Jin's character, topping various lists. In Gamest's 1997 Heroes Collection, Jin was voted as the staff's 31st favorite character (sharing the spot with three Street Fighter characters, Charlie, and Yang). Gaming Target rated him as the fourth best Tekken character in a list, commenting on his popular heroic and demonic traits which caused comparison between him and other fighting game protagonists. In Game Informer's "Top Ten Best Fighting Game Characters" Jin was fourth with comments comparing him to Star Wars character Luke Skywalker. In IGN's "Franchise Players 2: Reader's Choice", Jin was one of the video game characters voted to be featured in a live-action movie with the site commenting his role in the Tekken series noting that it could be the "focal point" of any film. The staff from site did not choose as a result of the poor quality from films based on fighting games. In the book Trigger Happy, writer Steven Poole labelled Jin as an amalgam of "body-building action grunts" including popular martial arts film protagonists.

Multiple reactions were made in response to Jin's special moves and their changes across the series, mostly in Tekken 4. His initial moveset was noted to be based on his relatives' techniques, with the change shown in Tekken 4 labelled as a "nice touch" by Leon Hunt in the book Kung Fu Cult Masters as it demonstrates the character's feeling towards Kazuya and Heihachi. GameSpot shared similar comments, stating that Jin was one of the most notable changed characters from Tekken 4. Other publishers such as IGN and Computer and Video Games came to regard Jin's incarnation from Tekken 4 as a character almost completely different from his original form although both shared different opinions regarding the result. While the former site found such modifications entertaining as it meant learning new moves, the latter criticized the change as it made the practice from veteran players pointless. Nevertheless, Computer and Video Games still called Jin the "top-ranked character" from Tekken 4 because of his balanced movesets.

Capcom's senior community manager Seth Killian has found the character too powerful to the point that his constant defeats with him led him to quit the Tekken series. In regards to Jin's Tekken 5 fighting style, GameSpy stated that now players would need to be patient playing as him, as he lost his overpowered moves. Because of such change in Tekken 5 regarding Jin's moves, the same site recommended players to use Devil Jin's incarnation in such game if they missed his original techniques. While promoting Tekken 6 Namco Bandai featured various trailers with Jin as the focus. Jin's design in the trailers has received positive response by GameSpot as the character "has never looked better." According to GamesRadar, a fight between Devil Jin and Evil Ryu was written as one of the ones players wanted to see in Street Fighter X Tekken as the two are evil alter egos of the two main characters and poster boys of their respective series, also sharing similar designs and movesets to their original forms. Cheat Code Central included Devil Jin on the 2012 list of top ten hidden characters in fighting games, chosen for his "sheer awesomeness factor."