Street Fighter V Review

As a whole, the V-System is a brilliant replacement for Street Fighter 4’s Ultra meter.

Combat, while familiar, has been improved.

All of this surrounding context can overwhelm discussion of the on-the-field play, which, even at this nascent stage, offers a classic interpretation of Street Fighter. There’s the Character Story mode, which serves as a brief introduction to each fighter in the form of two or three fights connected by illustrated, visual novel-style cutscenes. It was a great, well-made game, but there was something about it that just didn’t light my fire, like most past iterations managed to do nearly instantly. Ryu’s Hadouken is an excellent move to try this out on. That being said, if you have your eye on Capcom‘s Street Fighter V and you’re wondering which version you should get, check out the video above put together by the folks at Digital Foundry who have compared the graphics side-by-side. He aligns nicely with the moves and abilities you’d expect from a Street Fighter character, but his style – a combination of strength and scratch – is uniquely his. For example, Ryu’s V-Trigger electrifies his special moves and increases how stunned his opponents become following an attack.

Besides the standard two player “Versus” mode, the main mode is “Story”. This isn’t the traditional kind of story mode, instead, it will delve into the backgrounds and motivations of various characters. While the “V-Skill” character abilities (Dhalsim can float, Ken has a quick step, Bison reflects projectiles) don’t consume V-Gauge, “V-Triggers” use the entire bar at once to perform a separate ability unique to each character.

The pacing sums up Street Fighter V perfectly – the initial impression is that everything feels toned down, nearly a lesser version of the experience USFIV offers – slower, less characters, less strict frame requirements on combos and cancels, it sounds like the game we’ve been playing but a more casual incarnation. When you happen to click on the key binding menu by mistake, you can’t back out but have to select “exit” in the menu, and when a fight is over only Player 1 can choose if it should be a rematch or whether there’ll be a chance to select new characters. The idea is to keep people playing to work towards a meta-goal, which, honestly, is what fighting game players do anyway, and there’s still a premium option like before (it’s called Zenny). The core of Street Fighter is still there, and is as good as ever, but unfortunately these problems – plus lacking options in single player – mean there’s not a lot else. This is the biggest downfall of Street Fighter V, and we have to hope that the downloadable content is worth the wait.

Street Fighter V is a welcome, refreshing game, especially after Street Fighter IV.

Now, to the online modes. Jumps are punishable with anti-air moves and can leave you open. That has led to countless unplanned return battles where someone exclaims that they wanted to change fighter. Accordingly, it’s far more likely to be used by all levels of player – not just those at the competitive end of online leaderboards. While we encourage you to read our review for a deeper dive into the gameplay mechanics and a general overview of the out-of-the-box content options, we thought that it was important, on the eve of launch, to provide a little more intel about the game’s release roadmap. Playing on PC, most of my online matches were played against PS4 users that had more than likely acquired the game early, and not once did I encounter any issues that sullied our tentative battles. You could modify AI behaviour in the game’s Training mode. The company knows, however, that if today’s headline is that Street Fighter V’s servers can’t cope with demands, or that the net-code is riddled with match-fudging lag, it will have lost the war. The Capcom Fighters Network shows replays of past fights, which can be refined by player ID, allowing players to study how others play. Of course, if you want to be lazy you can also spend real cash and unlock stuff that way.