Adi Reviews Street Fighter V

Disclaimer: I bought Street Fighter V out of my pocket. I have the PC version of the game and as such this review will reflect my experience on that version of the game.

Street Fighter V(AKA Street Fighter 5 or SFV for short) released about two weeks ago. I have been playing this game on PC for about two weeks and I am finally ready to give you my thoughts on this game.

From the off you are thrown into a sort of an anime-style graphic novel with some voice acting followed by a tutorial that shows you the basics of how to play. You can access this tutorial later on from the main menu. Some of the stuff that it teaches includes how to jump over a fireball or how to punish someone who is jumping in to attack you. A lot of these basic tactics will come in handy for when you play against other people so I would spend some time going through the tutorial (or at least do it two or three times over).

In story mode, you get to discover some of the story behind the characters of the game. You also have an option to hear the Japanese or English audio for each story. In the time that I’ve had to play the game, I have found the story mode to be far too easy. On top of that each of the fights that you have to do are one round only and there are only two or three of them for each character. Overall the story mode left me feeling short changed. I really wish Capcom had done a better job with this by putting in an option to change out the difficulty settings.

Don’t get me wrong, playing against somebody in the same room is all well and good. However, one of the core/important aspects of how good a fighting game, is how good the online multiplayer aspect is. This was also a very important question because Street Fighter V has cross-platform play meaning that people on PC will be able to play against people on the PlayStation 4. Thankfully the answer to this question is that it performs really well. I’ve had the chance to play a lot of matches online against other people and I have found the performance of the game to be very stable. In my testing I’ve not had anyone disconnect on me yet due to their internet being of a poor quality and I have been able to see really smooth performance during my matches. This was also the case when playing people on PlayStation 4.

To be fair there has only been one tiny little problem that I found in terms of getting into matches. More recently I have noticed that it takes longer for me to find a match. To remedy that Capcom has published a blog post with a workaround for this issue.

Clearly, Capcom took their time to think about online multiplayer. This was evident from the number of closed beta tests that happened before the game was released. This allowed them some time to try and ensure that the experience was as smooth as possible and it shows. To be fair SFV did have a few server problems after the game came out but most(if not all) of them have been resolved.

Street Fighter V also features a new ranking system where you win league points (LP) when you win a match and you lose LP if you lose a match. For me, I feel that this is quite a fair way to things. This way the player that wins feels like that they have gained big time without punishing the loser of a match.

If ranked matches are not your thing, then that’s OK because there’s also a “Casual match mode”. This is where you can play as much as you want without having to worry about rankings or league points. If you don’t want to play online and you just want to play with a friend in the same room then that’s OK as well. This is because there is also a basic versus mode where two people connected up to the same computer can play against each other as well. All your friend has to do is choose their controller.

How does Street Fighter V do in the graphics department? Thankfully I have to say that Street Fighter V looks really good. It’s clear to see that Capcom spent a lot of time in ensuring that the various stages look really good. I would have to say that a good example of this is the Forgotten Waterfall. This is because of how beautiful the waterfall itself looks along with all the sheep and the birds watching you and your opponent fighting. There is also a lot of detail on each of the stages being played in that you can see a lot of the people (or animals) in the background watch you fight or the buildings in the background. Needless to say, this is possibly the most beautiful iteration of Street Fighter that I have seen yet.

The soundtrack in this game is also fairly decent. Everything from the new versions of the Ryu, Zangief and Chun-Li themes to the hard rocking, super fast version of Ken’s theme. Even Cammy’s theme is pretty cool as well. Whether it’s rock, orchestral or another genre there really is a little something for everyone in terms of music in SFV.

Up next, I want to talk about the gameplay mechanics a bit.  In a recent interview, Yoshinori Ono said that the theme for SFV is “reset”. To oversimplify it, he basically said that the idea of this theme is to get a lot of newbie players into the game whilst keeping top players interested. At least in my experience this is definitely the case. A lot of experienced players will notice that some of the skills that they picked up with Ultra Street Fighter IV/4 are no longer relevant here. For example, the focus mechanic from Street Fighter IV is gone and the ultra meter is no longer there. A lot of players used to use a combo consisting of two light punches, a crouching medium kick and a hadouken/fireball. In SFV you will not be able to do that combo as it has been removed. Long story short you will basically need to try and learn some new things like the V system.

At least in my experience I was able to pick up some of the basic mechanics pretty quickly and win matches. Basically, SFV is a case of easier to pick up but harder to master. In fact, at the time of publishing this article I am still spending a lot of time in training mode trying to practise combos that I know whilst learning some new ones (including the usage of the all new V-trigger guage).

Speaking of which, the V Trigger meter is a new meter that fills up when you take damage or make effective use of your character’s V skills. Basically this gives characters some new skills. For example Ryu can deal more damage with this attacks when you activate V trigger mode. As for his V skill Ryu can basically parry an incoming attack, meaning that he does not take any damage (a la Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike). When playing Chun-Li you will be able to land more hits leading to longer combos.

However, the V trigger meter resets after a round so it’s a case of use it or lose it.

I have found this mechanic to be really useful towards the end of a round where I am low on health and need to make a comeback, and with V trigger it makes those clutch comebacks a possibility for both new and experienced players alike.

The cast of the game is also quite a varied one this time round. You have the big main-stays (e.g. Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li), completely new characters (such as FANG, Laura and Rashid) and classic characters (e.g. R. Mika, Karin and Nash). Each of them have their own unique style of fighting. For example, both Ryu and Ken can both throw dragon punches, fireballs, and hurricane kicks. Laura plays a bit like Blanka in that she has moves that can electrocute you but also has some grappler moves as well. Zangief is still his regular grappler character that you are used to. Again there is a lot to choose from in terms of fighting styles so it really is up to you to pick the character you want to play with and learn that one really well.

One of the more interesting decisions that Capcom has made with SFV is that all the DLC that will be released after the game has come out is going to be free. With every match that you play you will earn fight money (in-game currency). You will basically use this fight money to unlock various costumes and characters. At the time of publishing this review the in-game store was not available but I assume that will change when Capcom pushes out a patch. With that being said I think that this is a smart decision as players would have spent a lot of money on buying the game and the arcade stick/ controller of their choice.

Final score: 8.4 out of 10. Would I buy this game? I would definitely say yes. Sure the story mode may not be up to standards in terms of difficulty level. To be fair though the fact that the online multiplayer works really well, the free DLC that you can earn in-game and a fairly decent tutorial mode makes it a game that you should definitely pick up right now.

Here are the various ways that you can get Street Fighter V on PC and PlayStation 4.

PC – Steam: £44.99

PC – Amazon : £28.68 (affiliate link)

PlayStation 4 (UK PSN code – this requires a UK PSN account) – Amazon: £24.99 (affiliate link)

PlayStation 4- PSN Store: £49.99

If you are planning to buy the game on PC then here are the requirements:

Will you buy Street Fighter V? If you have then what were your experiences of this new game? Let me know in the comments!