Tekken Tag Tournament is a killer fighting game. A great experience overall.
That's basically what we have in Tekken Tag Tournament, a non-canonical (that's a fancy way of saying not part of the main Tekken storyline) compilation game, is basically the Tekken series' equivilent to Mortal Kombat Trilogy. The gameplay of Tekken Tag Tournament is basically identical to Tekken 3, with one big difference.
As the name suggests, the new tag team mechanic was introduced in this game. You start by picking two characters. By pressing any of the shoulder buttons, or the right analog stick during a fight, you can switch. Double teams can be pulled off easily, and strategic tags are the order of the day, as characters can recover some health when they aren't in the fight. It's pretty similar to Dead or Alive, but I've always thought the Tekken series was superior to DOA, so this is kinda Tekken beating DOA at its own game in my opinion.
Tekken Tag includes every character from the first three characters, along with two new ones. Although, both of the new characters are only characters that steal fighting styles from other characters. Tetsujin is an alternate costume to Mokujin, the tree-like dude from Tekken 3 that uses a different character's fighting style each round. The only completely new character is the final boss, Unknown.
Unknown is the only female final boss in the Tekken series so far, and she's a pretty compelling character. She doesn't have a fighting style of her own, but she can use every other character's fighting style. The difference is, unlike Mokujin/Tetsujin, Unknown can change fighting styles as many times as she wants during the fight. The AI Unknown changes fighting styles pretty much every few seconds, so you never know what moves are coming next. She's also the only opponent that fights solo in tag mode, sorta. She's got this wolf-like devil ghost behind her, mimicking her every move during the fight. Even though she can't tag out, fighting Unknown is really like fighting two characters at once, since she has about twice as much health as a normal character. It takes forever to beat her. The fight against Unknown is also only a one-round affair, unlike every other Tekken fight which by default is a best of three rounds. All this stuff makes the final boss fight against Unknown very unique and interesting.
The main thing I loved about Tekken Tag, though, is the fact that the Tekken 2 fighters and the Tekken 3 fighters were finally united. So Kazuya Mishima, Baek Doo San and Bruce Irving could be pitted against (or team with) Eddy Gordo, Hwoarang or Bryan Fury. All the different combinations of characters make for a lot of hours of gameplay. Then again, if you aren't into the whole tag team mode, don't despair. There's also a traditional 1-on-1 fighting mode.
The PS2 version of Tekken Tag also included a bowling minigame called Tekken Bowl. Bowling and video games generally don't go too well together, at least not with a standard controller. Tekken's version of bowling is okay. One cool thing is that the characters all have different stats. So, the more powerful characters may have a more powerful throw, but their accuracy wouldn't be as good, while some characters have the opposite. That's cool, but I have a few serious issues with Tekken Bowl. First of all, it's extremely difficult to line up a shot to pick up a spare. All I want to know is if I throw the ball perfectly straight, where will it go? Unfortunately, there's no way to tell. The camera angle is partly to blame for that, and it would've been nice to have some kind of indicator. Also, the load times for this mode can be kinda long, and the replays are sometimes drawn out. Still, it's a surprisingly fun minigame.
My biggest problem with Tekken Tag Tournment as a whole is it isn't nearly as big of an improvement as Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 were before it. Still, that doesn't really matter, because Tekken Tag was more meant to be an interesting experiment and a fan service, not to mention a great way to bring the Tekken series to the PS2 for the first time. After all, this was a PS2 launch title. Tekken Tag Tournament was by far the best of the PS2 launch titles.
Tekken Tag Tournament may not have set the fighting world on its ear the way previous games did, but it was an incredible game, and a game I'd highly recommend to any fan of the series or of fighting games in general. All the characters, the new tag mechanics, even the bowling minigame. It adds up to a great experience overall. The awesome final boss just caps it all off. All in all, Tekken Tag Tournament is a killer fighting game.