Street Fighter V Review

Face Your Rival:

Street Fighter V is a game I’ve been ridiculously excited about since its announcement. As a huge, long time Street Fighter devotee I was eager to get my hands on a brand new, numbered iteration rather than the incremental and expected Super, Turbo and Ultra editions that typically follow a Street Fighter release.

Is SFV the new King of Fighters, or are Capcom pulling their punches?

Gameplay:

Upon first booting up Street Fighter V and hopping into my first few matches, I was surprised at just how pared back the fighting system seemed at first brush. A lot of my favourite mechanics from SFIV – including the really interesting Focus attack – are gone. Regardless, these early matches were great fun, and showcased how Capcom are top of their game when it comes to 2D fighters, even when played at a base level – that is, before I came to grips with what SFV offered under the hood.

Fights are a fantastically paced affair that makes every action and reaction an important decision. Rather than locking into a long combo and letting muscle memory do the talking, Street Fighter V asks you pay attention, take your time and not do anything rash. To outsiders it might seem slow paced, but inside the fight is, more often than not, a tense battle that relies on mind games, zoning and split-second decision making as much as it does dexterity and reaction time.

After dabbling with the roster I began to peel back the layers of Street Fighter V, and found it just as in depth and full of potential as its predecessors. After coming to grips with the new additions, I found SFV just different enough. I doubt there’s anything that will rock the community in a big a way as past game changers, but every new feature I learnt excited me with possibilities for some really fun matches.

The V-Trigger is a new gauge you can activate nearly every round, should you get the chance, and each character utilizes it differently. Chun-Li doubles up on attacks for instance whilst Ken’s allows combos that would otherwise be impossible. Knowing the abilities of not only your player character but also your opponents is of paramount importance, and it’s this knowledge that can give you an edge over an ignorant foe.

It’s not the only new system to SF5. Characters have a bunch of reversals, counters and special attacks that are wholly unique to them, and it’s going to be a huge part of the meta-game studying these abilities so you’re never surprised in a fight. It’s implementations like these that make me excited for this year’s Evo tournament, to see how the best fighters in the world continue to develop the game long after Capcom have taken their hands off the project.
Despite these exciting changes, however, Street Fighter V is a criminally anorexic game – which is a real shame when you consider how strong the core gameplay is. The fighting is obviously the most important part of the game, and it’s great that seemingly all development time went into perfecting it and delivering an absolutely kick ass roster, but the lack of anything to do besides player vs. player is a flaw that can’t be overlooked.

Each character has a story mode that lasts all of ten minutes, illustrated with shockingly simple (and quite ugly) single frame ‘cutscenes’, and once that’s over you can mess around in the gauntlet that is survival mode – a relentless onslaught of AI opponents with only a single health bar to take as many down as possible – but this will not keep many players around for long should online matchups not interest them (or start to get new players down). My absolute favourite mode from SFIV, and easily the most beneficial mode for newbies to learn the ropes, Combo Trials, is entirely absent. Without this dojo teaching newcomers and vets alike their main’s bread-and-butter combos, players will have to read additional materials online or hop into versus to get started with their characters – an intimidating prospect for a lot of people. It’s an annoying additional step that will put a lot of people off. At every turn SFV acts in this non-welcoming way, and consequently tailors itself only to pros and vets.