Street Fighter V Review

Kicks and punches are flying around in a quick and hectic battle between (currently) 16 characters in the most recent installment of this series. Street Fighter V brings some old and new action to the table in what is ultimately a high frenzied, fun but certainly not perfect time.

The basics:

This game pretty much requires an internet connection if you are going to enjoy much of it. You can do a lot of the single player stuff offline, but many of your rewards will not be given to you unless you're connected to the servers.

Through the various modes, as well as in online battles, you will earn fight money. At time of release of this article, you can't spend this money yet. There is going to be an update in March that includes the store, but as of yet you can't do anything with the money you earn, as well as a new mode called Challenge Mode.

This content will not be counted in my review, with the exception of the absence of the store when the game was released. That does weigh into my final score, on the sole basis of opinion.

As for the actual fighting, you've got rather standard controls for this series, which include low, medium, and high punches/kicks, throws, various special moves, etc..

New additions include the EX Special bar, and the V-Gauge, both of which give access to another layer of special moves.

Certain actions, such as characters reaching a certain level or completing certain other objectives will reward the player with titles, which only serve a vanity role.

From the top:

We'll start with story mode. Honestly it's not much to speak of. There are a small series of battles for each character that shows some various highlights about their life at the time of Street Fighter V. They are simplistic battles seem to be really meant for just introducing the player to the cast with some easy battles.

It's not like most (or really any?) are buying this game for the story, but masking this tutorial-type mode as a story mode seems insulting to the word 'story'. On the plus side, it is a pretty easy source of experience and fight money, if you're interested in either of those things.

Second mode:

The next mode available is the standard Versus Mode, which allows for vs. play with a second controller. There's not really much to say about this mode, pretty common for most games, especially arcade-style fighters.

Third Mode:

Your third single player mode will be Survival. This mode pits you against varying amounts of cpu controlled opponents one after another. The catch is that your health and EX Special bar are transferred from one round to the next. Between rounds the player is given a choice of boosts (called Battle Supplements) which aid in your progress through the battles. They include things like healing, increases damage, stun resistance, and the ability to earn more points, but the supplement for each category is random in every battle, meaning luck will also play its part. At the end of each battle you will be rewarded points based on health and time taken to complete the round. There are four difficulties. Easy, with 10 consecutive rounds, Normal with 30 consecutive rounds, Hard with 50 consecutive rounds and finally Hell/Extreme with 100 rounds. Lose at any time and you have to start again from 1, regardless of which difficulty.

This mode makes up the VAST majority of your single player time, and each time you complete a level with any given character you unlock new colors for that particular character's costume (with the exception of Hell/Extreme, which awards a title 'Back From Hell' regardless of who you complete it with the first time. Any subsequent completions with other characters will only give fight money and xp for that character, once again only the first time you complete it with that character).

Fourth Mode:

This last mode, which actually has multiple parts, is the bread and butter of this game when you get right down to it. This is the online fighting mode. There are a few different ways you can choose to fight. You can go into the battle lounge and set up rooms which allow you to invite others to play exhibition matches. You can also just queue up for a casual battle with a random opponent. The main online mode is going to be your ranked matches. When you go into the online matches you start as a rookie. From there are leagues, each with three levels within itself, that stretch from bronze to platinum, and some special spots that go above even the platinum.

Other details:

On release this mode was very unstable. It was hard to even get connected to the servers. And once you got connected it wasn't that strange to be disconnected before you could even complete a fight or two. On top of that, since some of the single player rewards require an internet connection to get, there was quite a lot of frustration going around. As of the writing of this article things have stabilized much better, and disconnects have happened to me MUCH less.

It would be remiss of me to not say I am disappointed to see this game released without at least the store content added in. It feels extremely weird to log in and see a store option that is blurred out and not usable. It gives the game a certain 'incomplete' feeling, which has been going around in games since the idea of DLC came into existence.

The heart of the matter:

This game is a lot of fun if arcade-style fighters are your thing. Maximum enjoyment is going to come from playing against others, whether that is with a second controller or battling for online supremacy. Fighting the AI isn't as fun, especially in the more difficult modes, because there's just too much input reading. It doesn't feel like a fight, it just feels like trying to find a way for the computer not to remind you that it already knows what attack is coming.

My overall score - 7 (with online or vs. play, would drop a lot with just single player)

If you would like to see some footage of this game, want some tips, or just want to support this blog you can head over to my Youtube channel and watch some of the videos there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjmasf7hzvOeqfjVtj_h4Qw

3/28 Update - Today the Challenge section of the game went live. All I can wonder is what the SFV developers were thinking. This is no challenge mode. This mode is what I was disappointed to see didn't exist in the training mode. All the Challenge mode is is 10 different combos for each character. Performing them once clears the level.

This is useful for training, don't get me wrong, but this is something that should have been part of training mode, not a separate game mode release.

New score: 5 (I'm sorry, but making the update seem like a big deal then releasing something even worse than story mode, it's lucky I don't take it lower than 5. Shame on you SFV developers and staff).