Kinda random but I was watching this video discussing Tekken 4's darker sinister atmosphere and I felt so liberated somebody basically said everything I thought about the game and its music and presentation xD
i hope for Tekken 8 they get this atmosphere back, in Tekken 7 they didn't quite nail it and I feel like in terms of bosses they dropped Azazel who was the pinnacle of a sinister boss and started really not caring with characters like Devil Kazumi who aren't much like that.
I have to explain about Tekken 4 a bit as it is my second favorite of the franchise, right behind 2.
Despite certain nuances (i.e. Julia voiced by an older woman past her age), Namco did capture a much "realistic" presentation of the game. The atmosphere was similar to the storyline of 2 and it had the balance with dark tones with some melancholy, some uplifting and some comedic. One thing I should mention is that the writing and development of the characters were on point at the time before 5 jumped the shark (with Jin's canon ending suddenly said "Hey, let's make 6 Tekken 2 2.0 and make it worse if Jin becomes head of Mishima Zaibatsu.") The intros of the cast story and the artwork was so fitting! It couldn't compare to 5 and 6.
At first, the music to me wasn't that grand until I listened to the soundtrack as a whole and I began to notice its entirely and how it fits with the stages. (Then, you have the unreleased Arcade soundtrack that made it even better!)
However, die-hard, pro and hardcore fans made it the black sheep because of the gameplay and the environment. I think most fans didn't like 4 because what people didn't see it but I think Namco at the time was scared off by.. Dead or Alive in terms of graphics. DOA2 brought in the multi-tiered stages and people were loving it! This game came out when DOA3 was coming out that even blew DOA2 away. So the Tekken team did this experiment with 4 with the uneven floor and multi-tiered environments with destructible objects to bring some realism to the franchise. It was also the only game when we can actually move around before the fight starts, similar to DOA2 onwards. The character designs of the cast were applauded.
While the game was praised, it didn't work for the pros and hardcore fans because Jin with his new Karate fighting style and Steve being right behind him being OP. With the upgraded technology at the time, fans were disappointed not seeing other characters like Anna being added in and simply went back to Tag Tournament 1 because of the returned cast and its gameplay. Then you have the position changes, which really wasn't needed.
The fans just want to go back what it was to 3 and that's how 5 came about but that's also when I saw the bloat and the quality of writing began to decline. Stages began to closed off to become like shapes and we're back to infinite stages. Honestly, when 6 began the multi-tiered stages, I didn't like how it flows with the gameplay and couldn't even matches how DOA does their stages. It makes me always jump right back to 4 because how this experimental game could've gave Namco a better competition presentation-wise and they could had continue onwards if Harada and the team didn't jump back to the Tekken 3 nostalgia wagon with 5.