The Case

Street Fighter. It’s the series that invented the quarter-circle forward and has managed to beat out competitors for more than two decades. Of those two decades, Street Fighter IV lasted almost one of them by itself with its span of 7 long years, but its time has finally come to be replaced with SF V. There’s been lots of talk about bugginess, censorship, microtransactions, slow gameplay, and a myriad of other issues, but even through all of that, Street Fighter V is the hottest new fighter on the market for a good reason.

The Trial

SF IV was Capcom’s most successful fighter ever, so it makes sense that SF V feels a lot like its predecessor. Focus attacks and Ultras are out, and they’ve been replaced with V-Trigger and R. Mika’s booty, but SF V is still a 3-button fighter where you kick, punch, and grapple your way to victory on a 2d plane against opponents from around the world. In other words, there’s some change, but the fundamentals are still as classic as they come.

Zangief is still a tank-sized mound of grappling muscle, Dhalsim is still annoying and floaty as ever, and Ryu still has more hadokens in him than Preston Garvey has settlement quests, but there’re a few very welcome newcomers too like Rashid and Necali that mix things up just enough. Not only that but everyone including the newcomers are available to play as soon as you boot the game…for now.

Capcom plans for SF V to live just as long, if not longer, than SF IV did, so they’ll be constantly adding in new characters, new patches, and new costumes for years to come. There’s a $30 Season Pass for a reason, and it’s because there’s going to be an unbelievable amount of content added to this game over the next year. Six DLC character, a full story mode, and 32 costumes. The game is out, but there’s a lot more of it to come still, but only if there’s still more to come from your wallet.

To be fair, there is an in-game currency called “Fight Money” that you can accumulate just by playing matches, and Capcom has said that all the extra content will be available to get through this in-game money, but nobody knows how expensive each costume, let alone a full character, will be. If you choose to go the Fight Money route, you’ll be spending a lot of time in survival mode and SF V ‘s other just awful offline content. These offline modes are phenomenal for getting rich in Fight Money, but they’re all as bare-bones as it gets.

There’s a training mode of course, but there’s also story and survival modes. Story mode is just a few pathetically easy matches with static art laid behind some text as brief hints of plot are dumped. Survival Mode isn’t much better since it trades the limited art and plot for grinding against wave after wave of easy enemy AI’s with no difficulty slider to adjust only for difficulty to spike each ten matches. These offline modes are totally optional of course, but for the casual players who don’t want to jump online right away or just want to learn a fighting game you might be better off with another fighter. It’s obvious that SF V wants to be friendly to new players since it took the steps of largely removing charge moves and one-frame links, but without a proper tutorial mode or at least more single-player content there’s just not much there for the new player.

But judging a fighting game on its offline content is like judging a Call of Duty on its realism; the only thing that really matters is the online fighting right? And luckily, the online is solid. Lag is rare, matches come just as fast as other fighters like Mortal Kombat X, and the ranking seems to actually work. Right now the biggest issues are the lobbies which only work when they want to and the lack of a tournament mode, but knowing Capcom, that’s not going to last long.

The Verdict

Street Fighter V is failing in its attempt to casualize the fighting game experience through offline content for new players, but it’s still one of the best fighters on the market and a worthy successor to Street Fighter IV. V-Trigger is a fun new addition, and both the new and returning characters play brilliantly into their respective roles, making SF V the most personality filled Street Fighter game yet. Despite some early buginess and sinister DLC plans from Capcom, SF V is still as punchy as ever and is only going to get punchier as new world warriors are introduced or changed in the upcoming years. In the end, Street Fighter V offers a satisfying new home for gamers to brutalize each other in.