One of the cooler aspects of Tekken 3 are the variety of options you have to counter an opponent's attack. In fact, this is one of the first things to learn if you wish to become good at Tekken.
Blocking is fine, if you just want to stand there and wait for your opponent to do a move that'll give you a frame advantage. In that case, please use active blocking (Street Fighter II-style, pulling back or down-back). Passive blocking (holding neutral or down) just doesn't work against certain attacks and attack combinations.
A Tekken god, however, will poke at you incessantly, forcing you to block blow after blow until you screw
up and suffer damage, or get on the recieving end of a multithrow since you're turtling so much.
So, what are your other options? Well, there are several:
- back dash: double tap back, and your character will take a short hop back. Good against close range attacks. (e.g. Jin's Twin Pistons) Poor against long ranged attacks. (e.g. Hwoarang's Torpedo kick) Once your opponent attacks the air futilely at the end of his string, dash in and attack.
- Sidestep: tap up or down, and your character will take a step to the left or right. Good against straight forward attacks (e.g. Lei's punch rush) Poor against attacks with good tracking. (e.g. Law's Dragon Tail)
- Reversal: some characters have a reversal move, specific to that character and to the type of attack and attack range. Unfortunately the very best players can execute a move known as a "chicken" which will reverse your reversal.
- Parry: Similar to a reversal, but is unchickenable and does not attack back automatically. Still puts your opponent off balance, though, and can usually be followed up by one of the faster attacks.
- Counterhit: Most moves and combinations can be countered by pulling out a quick attack that hits the opponent first. A crouching left hand punch is one such move, but there are plenty of others. In fact, a lot of moves actually change when they land as a counterhit, such as Yoshimitsu's Blade Rush.
There are others, but they are mostly character-specific. (Sway, backflip)
Once the above is mastered, you can go on to range-based play, in which you constantly shift distance and orientation to your opponent to try to force an opening, or poking play, in which you experiment around for quick chains of mixup attacks to confuse and disorient your opponent.
The problem with this system is that once you've learned everything I've discussed above and figured out three to five different ways to deal with each and every attack in everyone's repetoire, and probably wasted three to five years of your life, you'll find that no-one wants to play against you anymore. Well, except the aforementioned Tekken gods, who've risen to juggling play, where they launch you in the air and pound you before you hit the ground.
That's the real problem with Tekken 3. The first step takes more effort than the whole rest of the game.