Alas, lacking funds at the mo, digital only PS5 doesn't help but I also have to pay for PS+ as my sub ran out (£120 for 1 game is a lot). So waiting for sale, whenever that will be.

Will main Lee when the time comes.

 I wanted to main Lee, but his gameplay is very "Just Frame" focused. I didn't play much of Tekken 7, so I don't remember if he was like that there too. Cool, thing tough, is that in heat mode all of his Just Frames auto happen. 

I just noticed that Julia isn't not in this game (yet).

Lee was better in 6, change to unreal engine changed how he played slightly in 7, not had the chance to play Lee here yet.

Lei, Eddy and Julia aren't in, a lot of Reddit Sub were pissed. Especially as we all know DLC will be them. I have a dislike in fighting game side of DLC, that being that essentially characters are DLC, it's standard right? But it is one of the only DLC in the gaming market where pay to win is accepted. like why? If a new character releases and is better than others (to sell) then it's unfair for those that pay. I think character (especially classic) should be free (or earnable with in game credits) then charge for cosmetic shite.

The game is fantastic.

Going to get it when it goes on sale on the next steam winter sale.

Started playing the story, it's so much fun! I think I will try out Reina first, she has some cool shit.

A budget cut.

Jun for sure. She was my main in Tag 2, and I couldn't be more happy with how they designed her in this one.

Well business model aside, when a series keeps adding new characters, at some point it stops being feasible to include all in the original development budget for the game.

The first Tekken roster started off like this:

And at this point there have been around 76 different playable characters throughout the series lifespan. (Counting all Jack versions as 1 character, etc).

Plus the original game didnt have a fraction of the modes that are in this one. Many of which are expected by today's standards.
And obviously, designing a single character today takes a lot longer than it did in 1996, both visually, and mechanically.

Guest characters are especially expensive and can be legally sensitive/difficult to arrange.

So at some point the budget baloons beyond what becomes reasonable for the expected return on the sales of the game.

In theory it's possible to monetize one thing through another. Such as with the cosmetic sales you mentioned.
Tekken has never sold costumes to my recollection though, and they instead offer a free character customization mode where people can create things like this:

But disregarding that, if Item A (a character in this case) that you give out for free is much more expensive to develop than Item B (a costume), which you are selling, or Item B is not as popular as Item A, then there's an increased risk of not making back the money you spent on developing Item A, than if you charge for Item A directly.

It's also more difficult to change course after the fact. If you've set a precedence that DLC characters will be free, and then after Fighter Pass 1 turns it out to be a commercial failure, if you then announce that you'll start charging for the characters directly in Battle Pass 2, it's going to cause a PR nightmare of complaints.

At the end of the day, Bandai Namco have to pay their developers to make these DLC characters, so I don't think it's wrong to charge for them in a business principle sense. I think the question is more if what they're offering in the base game as a package is worth the $70.
Or if they shoud have focused more on some areas, and less on others.

Though I understand your point about how this can cause a pay to win situation.
However, keep in mind that they're also constantly re-balancing the game (for free, even though that also costs money), and if one DLC character is overpowered, they will hopefully balance them out to be more in line with the others.

Tried the demo, found it shockingly fun - I say shockingly because the gameplay in 7 felt very meh imo.
I've purchased the full game now.

Very happy that the game (and demo) FINALLY has a "free VS battle mode", where you chose your character, chose your CPU and go at it until somebodies HP hits zero. This is where 90%+ of the replayability is for me.
I can recall my mind being blown after discovering that this basic mode was missing from Tekken 5 back in the day, yet somehow it still took another 19 years for it to be implemented.

I liked the story mode (minus OP Akuma fight) in Tekken 7.

The character stories were okay but I wish they were more like Street Fighter V's.

Hopefully T8 is like that.