Street Fighter V Review

Street Fighter V Review

Robert Knuckles

“Time to Rise Up!!”

            Capcom’s legendary fighting franchise has return and it’s ready to make a huge impact!! It feels like yesterday that we just got Street Fighter IV Omega Edition man does time fly for a lot of us but no need to feel soppy the day is finally here that Street Fighter V has arrived.

            This is Capcom’s first fighting game to make it to the next gen system and boy does it look beautiful. Street Fighter V features a diverse cast of 16 characters. Fan favorites Ryu, Ken, Cammy, Chun-Li and others return with the roster. Also returning are Street Fighter Alpha characters such as Charlie, R. Mika, Karin and Birdie. Now of course we all new Capcom will be releasing some new characters as well. Newcomers Laura aka Sean’s older sister is a close range grapple character that has electric attacks that remind fans of Blanka and you have another new character F.A.N.G. who’s a keep away character that has poison attacks that can slowly decrease the characters health.

            I will say that almost every returning character from the previous one plays different in this game. For example Vega and M.Bison have quarter circle moves. Vega has always been a charge character but that has drastically changed. He feels like a new character with these new inputs. Chun-Li has changed up a bit as well. Her famous kicking move is now quarter circle which was the same input in Street Fighter X Tekken. Other than that she’s still a beast.

            Now let’s dive into the gameplay of Street Fighter V. It plays different from the previous which is no surprise. IT feels a bit slower but still plays great but with it with it moving slower fireballs are not as affective in this one. They are decent but the recovery time seems slower. Players still can perform EX moves and Super Arts but the biggest thing that separates this game from the previous one is that there are no focus attacks and Ultras. That is replaced by the V-Gauge. The V-Gauge features V-Skill, V-Reversal and V-Trigger. The V-Skill gives characters special moves such as Ryu being able to parry and Bison giving the ability to reflect projectiles. The V-Reversal lets players use a counter while they are being and attack. The V-Trigger which uses the whole gauge gives characters unique abilities. Each has different ability. All of Ken’s super moves have fire damage, Cammys cannon drill gives multiple hits and can leave them in a juggle and Karin can perform Guren Ken that can lead to cross ups. Now by all means the V-Gauge isn’t a huge comeback mechanic but players will have to strategize to use them to deliver huge damage. The V-gauge definitely makes this a different game and not an exact copy of the previous one. It’s going to be interesting as time goes on to see what the pros do with this new mechanic.

            Street Fighter V currently has two offline modes and those are Story Mode and Survival. Now the story isn’t the best thing right now. It only has a few easy battles and the reason why I say that is because the player starts off with a full gauge of V and Super Art against each computer. In the story you see a few animated cut scenes but another to watch in story mode is that you see other Street Characters like Ibuki, Juri and Guile which are going to be DLC later on but you also see others like C. Viper and Sakura who haven’t been announced as DLC but we can only hope. The story is a bit confusing and still leaves unanswered questions. In the end this current story mode is a small appetizer until we get the main FULL story mode later this year. Now granted players will still get fight money for completing each characters story and can use that to buy costumes and characters.

            Survival mode is another offline mode that players can use. Survival mode is just like any other survival modes but with a few twists. There’s easy mode where players will have to defeat 10 characters to unlock a new color. After a win players can choose different power ups for the next round such as raising attack power, defense up and more. Each difficulty requires a different amount of characters to defeat. This mode is the best way to get each characters color. It also kind of forces players to try out each character.

            There is another Offline mode called Challenges which is currently unavailable. We can only guess that Challenge mode requires players to perform a characters combo which is in every Challenge mode but I’m sure there will be more stuff. Challenge mode will be a free feature in March.

            Online mode is where players will be at the most if they have PlayStation Plus. Online features the classic ranked and casual matches but the step up can be kind of tricky and the reason I say that because is that players will have to fill out their battle settings. There players can choose their FAVORITE CHARACTER which is going to be the character they will be using in ranked and casual matches. There is no character select so players will have to be careful.

            Battle Lounge let’s players either create a room or go to a room setting up different matchmaking rules. Players can choose from amount of rounds, times, victory requirements and a couple more settings. The issue with the Battle Lounge is that you can only have a room of two people. Past Street Fighter games players can have up to eight people. Two fighting and the other six watching. Hopefully this is something Capcom will fix in the future because a room with only two people is not very exciting.

            Now the Capcom Fighters Network is a new feature where players can view favorite fighter profiles, replays, rivals and look at rankings.

            The connection between is pretty good there’s a few bugs here but the biggest issue can be players will sometimes have to wait a bit for the match to load..

            In the End Street Fighter V is a fun game for what they have right now. It’s easy to get into especially players new to the series but that’s not to say you don’t need skill to be good at this game which you really need to have a lot of to be successful in this game. 16 characters is a decent amount to start off and we’ll be getting more with DLC starting next month and so on. Every character plays different and it’s good to see Alpha characters return. We haven’t seen them in over 10 years so they feel like new characters. The music is great too just like any other Street Fighter game. The online is okay. The connection is great but it seems like they are missing other features such as a tournament, team battle and a room that can have up to eight people. Right now this game feels incomplete but we know Capcom is far from finished with this game. So right now Street Fighter V is going to receive 7 out of 10.