Street Fighter V is a game that should have been delayed and released when it was actually finished. As it stands now the title sits in an unfinished state that completely undermines what Capcom was trying to do with it. To properly explain what I mean, we need to understand a question that has been plaguing the fighting games community for a long time: Why aren’t fighting games more popular? The current consensus is that fighting games are too hard to master in a multiplayer environment. And there is some truth to this notion. In order to be able to compete against human opponents, the only way to really get the level of skill necessary to truly compete is to fight (and lose) against human opponents. However, to truly be competitive in most fighting games, you have to master the advanced skills. In the case of Street Fighter IV this means not only mastering the game’s systems but also complex one frame links that can make you nearly unstoppable. When Capcom started development for Street Fighter 5 they set out to make the genre more accessible. However, In the state Street Fighter V was released, it is likely to only appeal to their more hardcore fans, and those casual fans that do bother to pick the game will be disappointed.
Don’t believe the Internet, man.
The problem that plagues the latest entry into the venerable franchise is the lack of single player content. As of this review, Street Fighter V has the following content available: The online multiplayer (divided between casual and ranked matches), a survival mode, training mode, and a laughable story mode which is supposed to be a prologue for the free update in June. It does not have an arcade mode. Training mode is good to learn commands and get a general feel for the character’s combos, but it lacks the kind of pressure that you will get in a match where there is a loss state even if you can make your opponent as aggressive as you wish. Survival mode is marginally better, as at least the enemies will try to attack and work in a scaling difficulty, giving you time to get accustomed to the character, but they are short one round fights that even at their most difficult don’t force you to rely on advance techniques. As for story mode, well, just watch:
Laura’s story mode is the longest of the pack, by the way. Some of them are as short as two one-round fights. You can complete all of the available characters in under two hours. If you are thinking “Man, Lucio played like a scrub and still curb stomped the AI.” you would be right. You can adjust the difficulty, but even at their most difficult, single player options are shallow, disappointing, and insufficient for learning the basics of the characters.
This means a new player has even fewer tools to learn the game before going online than the had in previous entries in the franchise. There are other strange choices that Capcom made that affect the experience. For example, for casual and ranked matches there is no character selection screen. Rather you pick a main, and that’s who you will use during these fights. It can be argued that this was done to address people using match ups, i.e. character that are particularly good against the one you picked. However, in the lobbies Capcom already found a way to eliminate this problem by not showing you which character your enemy picked until you picked yours. The UI is generally cluttered and a pain to navigate. It has some strangely long loading times not only for matches but even when navigating menus which can take as much as twenty seconds to load on average.
Story mode is filled with cameos of beloved characters you can’t play!
Since Street Fighter V is cross platform, Capcom has you making your own Street Fighter ID when you start the game up. Unfortunately this means there is no way to see who you fought against outside of the Capcom ecosystem. There is also no way to message anyone, or to chat unless you are friends and in a program outside the ecosystem. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one had it feels like it takes away from the experience to have a very close, intense match with someone and not being able to send them a “GG” at the end of it. On the other hand, the Street Fighter community has, in my experience, been incredibly salty. I don’t think there is a game where I’ve received more angry private messages than Street Fighter IV.
Luckily it was easy to find my friends when looking for specific players, although it will require that you know their names to do so. The netcode for online play was very rough when it started, and although it does take time to find people to fight, once you are in game it performs as well as it can be expected. I’ve had more than a few matches where the connection resulted in choppy, unplayable matches, but in general the quality of the connection is much better than it was when it was just launched.
Look at my Cammy pre-order costume. Yes, I’m part of the problem.
Despite all the problems and weird design decisions I’ve described above, Street Fighter V does have a saving grace; the actual gameplay is superb. Faster than its predecessor and with a greater focus on fundamentals, the game does feel like it is easier to pick up and play than most other fighting games, but these are small improvements that don’t supersede the overall requirement that players spend time learning the game. It is a shame that by releasing a bare-bones package like this, newbies are still likely to get turned off by running into veterans who are still strong in fundamentals and can pick up advanced strategies faster.
The good news is that the groundwork for a great fighting game exists in Street Fighter V. Capcom has promised that they will continue to add content to the game, with a challenge mode and more characters promised for March, and a fully fledged story mode promised for June. There is also an ominous store that is currently not available in the main menu. Capcom promises that you will be able to earn in-game currency to make purchases there, but that micro-transactions will also be available so it remains to be seen just how exploitative this will be. Perhaps Capcom will make good on its promise and slowly release brilliant content for the game as the year goes on, as Nintendo did with Splatoon. But the fact remains that Street Fighter V feels like it should have been released in June. It feels like an early access game, except you are paying $60 for it with the possibility of micro-transactions on top of that. We will revisit the game later in the year, and maybe then it will be the amazing game its gameplay promised it could be. However, I recommend that all but the die-hards skip it for now.
