Street Fighter V brings good gameplay and great graphics, but gives the sensation of an incomplete game.
Street Fighter 5 has one again come to PS4 and PC to give fresh air to the famous franchise of fighting games from Capcom. After the successful attempt to revive the series with Street Fighter IV, the Japanese company invested now in a more accessible gameplay for beginners while still being challenging for the more experienced one.
The result is a title with great qualities and that carries a lot of potential but fails to deliver a complete user experience in its release. Check out our indepth review for more details:
Gameplay Reinvented
One of the major problems that Street Fighter V faced when trying to attract new players to the franchise was its gameplay. Some commands previously used to perform special attacks were not optimized for traditional controls. This happens because Street Fighter was designed as a arcade game, and not for the gaming consoles.
Until the release of Street Fighter 5, commands created in 1991 survived almost unchanged. Now controls maintains the more traditional combinations – as Hadouken, which is still half-move forward with punch button – but avoiding special moves are complicated to be performed in the islands, such as for Vega and Charlie attacks – and probably, Balrog and Guile in the future.
Furthermore, the combos happen more smoothly, since the punches are connected more easily than Street Fighter 4. However, this change alone is not enough to make the game too aggressive. This is because the window of vulnerability by running a scan has also been increased, then the defensive players can punish the aggressors if they play intelligently.
Diverse Cast
Another high point of the game is the diversity of their characters involved. If in previous editions some fighters were too similar to each other, the same cannot be said for Street Fighter V.
The difference here can be felt even between Ryu and Ken, and much of this is due to the V-Triggers, exclusive strokes of each character ranging from teleportation to modifiers that leave their faster attacks.
Also, the new additions to the cast are extremely charismatic and consistent with the universe of Street Fighter. More than that, they have new mechanics and ways to play.
Laura of Brazil, for example, moves in a unique way in the map and connects with falls punches referring to the Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Fang, on the other hand, brings poisonous blows and causes damage time unprecedented in relief.
Flawless look
Although the gameplay and characters are of good qualities, the most impressive thing in Street Fighter 5 is the graphics. With its own aesthetic between the real and the fantastic, it is safe to say that this is one of the richest visual experiences of the new generation.
With well-designed characters, intense camera movements during cutscenes, fluid animations, very rich scenarios, it shows the whim of the graphics team, delivering a flawless result. In addition, the story mode has once again attracted with the beautiful illustrations of Japanese artist Bengus that also steals the show.
This all gets even more interesting when you put the sound into the equation. The good track and great sound effects contribute to immersion, and the voice acting in story mode is well done, but do not count on audio in different languages (other than English). However, the subtitles give the job done for those who are not so familiar with English.
Little Content
It’s a shame that with so much potential, the experience is almost ruined by the lack of content on the release date. The game features versus game, casual match, ranked match, training, survival and an incomplete story mode.
For online experience, Street Fighter V meets very well with its function. During our evaluation we do not face any problem of latency, although it is expected that servers suffer a bit in the early days of the launch. Besides that, the cross-platform online games are a revolutionary innovation that should be the future trend.
If you search for a good individual experience, Street Fighter 5 can be a big disappointment. The released story mode is extremely short and lasts an average of four matches in one round for each character. The plot serves only context for the real story mode that will be released for free download in June. This context, while necessary, is uninteresting and sounds forced in many instances.
In addition, there is no difficulty setting for the mode matches that fail miserably to offer any kind of challenge. During the assessment, for example, it was possible to reset the story of Chun-li just by pressing random buttons without looking at the screen.
But the survival mode is a welcome addition and offers interesting challenges and introduces a good mechanical management points. Unfortunately the mode becomes repetitive quickly, and you need a solid patience to face the 100 consecutive fights with hell difficulty.
Conclusion
Street Fighter V is technically flawless, but the lack of single-player content conveys the impression that the title is in early access phase. Players who want to focus on online experience will have a great game in hand and should not regret their decision. If you’re looking for a complete experience to play alone, with a so rich history and fun challenges, it might be better to wait for the updates to avoid frustration with a game that would be perfect if it was completed.
