Hiya!

It’s been a really long wait but, finally! After a year long delay, Street Fighter V is out on store shelves! But was it worth the wait? Well, I certainly hope so! Reportedly, Capcom had to delay the game for this obscene length of time because the game had some really glaring issues with it. There were rumors of their online system not being all that good throughout the beta. There were also complaints about some characters who were able to snuff out jump ins by using either their light punch or light kick attacks! How ridiculous is that! There’s no way Capcom would have released the game with anti-air jabs!

Anyway, after a year’s delay, it’s finally out and I’ve gotten my hands on the game and, well, here are my thoughts and reactions to Street Fighter V, both the good and the bad. First, the good…

The fighting system is pretty smooth and rather intuitive. It’s plays really well and it’s easy to do combos. Maybe a little too easy at times, actually. Some characters can simply pump out the damage at ridiculous levels (I’m looking at you, Necalli and Ryu!) and can beat their opponents in around two or three solid combos. On the other hand, some characters take a while to peck at their opponent’s health bar and struggle to dish out the punishment. This is mostly because, while the high damaging characters can use their V-Trigger to extend their combos, characters with single use V-Triggers can only use them to add another attack, not a totally new string of combos. Makes me really feel sad for characters like Rashid.

I do love all the options Capcom implemented for online fighting. There’s the usual Ranked matches where you fight for points. If you just want to have fun against random opponents from all over the world, pick Casual mode. There’s also a Battle Lounge, which is a neat idea because you can invite friends to go here and face off against them instead of having a chance encounter with them once in a while. I also have to applaud what Capcom has been doing regarding people who rage quit. Docking points against these rage quitters is going to hurt them more! You’ll also get banned for a limited time.

But the best things about Street Fighter V’s anti-rage quit system is that rage quitters only can face off against rage quitters! I guess it becomes a battle of who can rage quit the fastest then! Also, they get branded with some kind of symbol on their profile, warning the just players against these unjust foes. Because of this, I haven’t seen any rage quitters… ever!

The fighting system is impeccable and the online experience is dreamy. All of this gives Street Fighter V a fantastic foundation for a really good fighting game. However, leave it to Capcom to construct a solid skeleton but create a flimsy body as Street Fighter V gets a lot of things wrong.

The single player experience is a weird mixed bag of good and bad. Each character has been given their own short story but the experience leaves you wondering if Capcom actually put any effort in constructing this part of the game! First off, they didn’t even bother animating the cutscenes. Instead, they just give you still images of the characters talking and… disappearing when they walk out of frame. Oh, and these still images look ugly! I mean, they’re horrendous, lacking in any detail whatsoever. It’s almost laughable that Capcom thought this would be passable for a high budget game!

Also, despite the game coming with a stunning roster of 22 characters, 6 of which you have to “purchase” (more on this later), you can probably breeze through all of 22 character stories in less than an hour! Not only are they incredibly short, with maybe 2 to 3 single round matches breaking up the horrible still images, the computer hardly puts up a fight! I bet even a baby could beat it… wait. It already happened.

But at least going through each and every character’s story mode earns you Fight Money. It’s is a weird commodity as, while it may seem useful, I question if you can really earn enough Fight Money to purchase all of the in-game stuff. But, if you want to unlock all the characters in the game, like Urien and Guile, you gotta rack up that Fight Money. It’s an absurd way of unlocking more characters as you have to go through multiple story modes, challenges, trials, and survival modes just to earn enough Fight Money to buy these characters! Capcom should’ve made them unlockable by finishing the game’s Arcade Mode.

Oh, wait. They forgot to include an Arcade Mode! Well, isn’t that pleasant? Street Fighter V was delayed for an entire year but Capcom failed to put in a proper Arcade Mode? What a stupid decision! I bet that they though the cinematic story, A Shadow Falls, was supposed to suffice. But why didn’t they put the story mode on the disc? Why do I even have to go on the Internet and download it? And, guess what? A Shadow Falls isn’t even all that good! It’s fun but the story is totally lame.

Let’s go back to the Fight Money aspect again. Street Fighter V practically gives it away early on as you seemingly earn a lot of it very quickly. But the prices for items in the Capcom store are just exorbitant! Each new character and new stage is 40,000 on average! Costumes also cost the same high price! That’s just too much! I bet this is intentional so that Capcom will force more and more players to buy these items with real money instead.

I also have to mention that some characters just seem too strong. Oddly enough (or coincidentally), most of the seemingly more powerful characters are the unlockable ones. Akuma may have low health but he’s got some really long combos that can destroy his opponents in a flash. I’m actually fine with Akuma being super strong because of his low health. Guile also seems a bit too powerful for his own good, especially since he’s got a very useful V-Trigger that only takes 2 bars to fill. But the most powerful character right now has to be Urien. It seems like you can really play a braindead match with him and still win thanks to his really good normal button attacks. His normal hard punch has tremendous range, comes out rather fast and just seems to outprioritize most normals. Hopefully, they nerf Urien and his chop, chop, chop attack soon!

Even with all these problems, I still think Street Fighter V is a good game. All the mechanics are solid and the fighting is fun. I just wish Capcom would’ve made sure that they also worked on adding more stuff, like an actual Arcade mode. After all, they had a whole extra year to work on this game. Makes me wonder how they were spending all their time. What the heck were they doing for that entire year? Planning out new characters for their upcoming Season 1 DLC characters?

Not gonna lie, though. Kolin looks hawt!

Byee!

How do you think people would’ve reacted to Street Fighter if it was released with all of the patches and fixes? Let me know in the comments section below!