Hiya!

Street Fighter 6‘s latest DLC character, C. Viper, has been out for a good while now. Like any dutiful fan, I’ve been testing her out to see what Capcom had done to her. The last time we saw C. Viper was way back in Street Fighter IV and, back then, she was one of the most execution heavy characters to control! A lot of her combo routes had you pressing buttons to cancel special moves or doing special moves before she could jump. You know, things you don’t really need to do with more straightforward characters!

I was super curious to see if Capcom would dumb her down to make her more newbie friendly. I wanted to see if she would be playable for someone who can’t handle the mental stack of doing all that. Well, Capcom did make it much easier to do most of her tricks. Even with that, however, I just can’t use her properly and perform all of the things needed to make C. Viper the unique character she is. What’s strange is, despite knowing this, I’m pretty okay knowing this.

So, first off, let’s take a look at the character herself. C. Viper new design is neat but I also don’t really like it that much. Ther are some things which I do approve. I like her new “poofy “big” hairstyle rather than the weird mohawk thingie she had back in Street Fighter IV. I also like her new glasses as I felt her original safety goggles look was ugly! I’m definitely okay with her showing off more skin. I love the “chest window”, the high cut skirt and high-heeled boots. The things which throw me off is the draping coat and the gloves. The coat just feels unnecessary and distracting. I’m actually amazed it never falls off during a fight. I mean, she’s not exactly wearing it! The gloves are just dumb. They look like she has sleeves on for some reason! What was wrong with the sleek form fitting gloves she used to have? Honestly, if there was an option to remove the coat, I would have that turned on all the time!

Now that we’ve got the aesthetics, let’s talk about the meat and potatoes of every Street Fighter character: her moveset. C. Viper’s normals don’t have the best range. She has some decent pokes revolving around both her standing and crouching medium kicks. Both of them, however, don’t cancel to special moves… normally. We’ll talk about that later. She has an overhead with her forward and medium punch. It has some range but is slow and reactable. Her best button, much like most of this latest season of DLC characters, is her standing medium punch. This is plus on block, can link to her standing light kick or crouching medium punch and, unlike some of the other DLC characters this season, can cancel to special attacks. When it comes to her jumping normals, C. Viper’s jumping heavy kick is a gem as it can cross up opponents! Having a heavy button which can cross up is a very rare things these days!

Then again, her normals isn’t what makes C. Viper a good character. Her special attacks and her central gimmick are what makes her special. First off, her Thunder Knuckle. In all honesty, the only one I use is the heavy version of C. Viper’s Thunder Knuckle because it’s a godlike anti-air! The other ones, the light and medium punch buttons are good combo enders and you have a mixup if either of them hit. I usually go for something like her light Burning Kick or the light Seismic Hammer because of they knock down, though.

Speaking of which, her Burning Kick isn’t the godlike move it was back in Street Fighter IV. It’s still good and is even safe on block. It’s just that you’re negative if that’s the case and you’ll lose your turn. You can mitigate this by using her Double Burn follow-up but, if you telegraph this, it comes out slow enough for your opponent to react with a Drive Impact. The Overdrive version of Burning Kick, on the other hand, is great as a combo ender but, if this is blocked, you can get punished.

I love how her Seismic Hammer is a true low attack now! I’ve caught a bunch of opponents trying to walk away with this! You do have to “aim” it with what punch button you press, though. There’s also a ton of recovery from this move so, if the opponent reacts to it and jumps at you, prepare to eat a jump-in combo. If it connect, however, your opponent will get launched in the air and you can chase then down with one of C. Viper’s unique gimmicks, her High Jump. We’ll talk more about that later, though.

Her final special attack is both something old and something new. Focus Force harkens back to Street Fighter IV as it sort of works like a Focus Attack, the gameplay mechanic from that game. It’s a counter move, meaning, if the opponent tries to hit you with a strike, C. Viper will automatically counter with a spinning kick. You can even cancel out of Focus Force with a forward dash, just like Street Fighter IV! This is a great new addition as she didn’t have a reversal move before. With this, she has one… for strikes. It’s not an invincible wake-up attack but it’s something.

All of that’s fine and good. However, C. Viper’s specials are only half of what makes the character. The other part is her unique gimmicks. The first is her ability to feint her Thunder Knuckle and Seismic Hammer. Base level tech would involve tricking your opponents with the feints. You can, for example, feint a Seismic Hammer, which you trick your opponent to try to jump and counter the attack, leaving them vulnerable to an anti-air. However, what really makes the feints deadly is if you use it in the middle of a combo. That’s because you can combo into the startup of her heavy Thunder Knuckle from a crouching heavy punch. Then cancel the startup of the heavy Thunder Knuckle to link into her crouching medium punch! This means you can perform long link normal combos as long as you have the ability to cancel these specials!

However, the crown jewel of C. Viper’s gimmicks would be her High Jump. The High Jump is pretty much what it sounds like: it makes her jump high. On paper, this just means she can cover ground quickly and, coupled with her jumping Burning Kick, can do things like control her jump distance or attack with a cross up. That, however, is kid’s stuff! What makes High Jump really good is you can cancel it practically any of her normals, even the ones you cannot cancel into special moves! You can cancel into High Jump and then cancel the prejump frames with a Tiger Knee motion for whatever special move to get them to come out! Capcom even tells you this is how to use C. Viper as the gimmick becomes essential to completing her combo trials!

However, Capcom decided to put limits to her gimmicks as, each time you do her High Jump or any of her follow up attacks from her Burning Kick and Thunder Knuckle, you’ll have to use up a bar of your Drive Gauge. This does mean C. Viper players have to balance out whether or not to dish out damage or risk entering Burnout.

I do have to say C. Viper’s Super Arts are very underwhelming. Her best one is her Level 1, the Limit Decoupler. It’s strike and throw invincible. It’s also a good anti-air. What makes this really good is, if it connects, adds an install on her, enabling to perform High Jumps without burning Drive Gauge. A seasoned C. Viper player should be able to utilize not having to conserve Drive Gauge to its fullest. Her Level 2 and Level 3/Critical Art, Mission Complete and Hard Luck Rejector, respectively, can kind of be used interchangeably. They both have the same frame data and practically the same range. I guess this is because Capcom thought most C. Viper players won’t really have Level 3 in stock as they’re going to be using Limit Decoupler most of the time for the install buff.

With all of that said, C. Viper seems like a cool character, right? I’ll admit, she is. The problem is I can’t use her! Capcom did some things to ease up her difficulty as there are tricks to doing her gimmicks. Like I said, you can Tiger Knee her specials from her High Jump. This took some getting used to but doable, even for someone at my skill level. What really throws me off are the feints! The official command for cancelling is pressing a kick button during the startup of either her Thunder Knuckle or Seismic Hammer. There is a shortcut to this as, if you hold down any kick button while performing the special attack motion, C. Viper will still perform the feint. No timing necessary!

Even with the knowledge of all this new tech and how Capcom made her much easier than before, I am still unable to complete all of C. Viper’s trials! My problem is the mental stack involved of doing all of these High Jump cancels into feints in one smooth motion! I know it’s possible and even a disabled person can complete them. Even so, my normal hands can’t just move fast enough! Shoutouts to that guy, by the way! He’s an inspiration and maybe one day I’ll be able to do it. Then again, there are even some older Street Fighter 6 combo trials I’ve yet to complete even to this day! Bet he already finished them before me!

I don’t think I’ll be maining C. Viper. A huge part of what makes her good is her ability to do these feints and cancels. So, I don’t really think it would be fruitful for me to use her when I can’t use her to the best of her potential. Maybe I can in the future but I would have to sink a ton of time into getting all that muscle memory trained in my hands. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort. Still, I do think she’s a worthy addition to Street Fighter 6 and I can’t wait to see what the pros will do with her. She may be too tough for me to use but I don’t think I have to be good with every character.

Byee!

What do you think of C. Viper? Is she too hard for you to use? Were you able to complete her trials? Let me know in the comments section below!