Characters

Mandatory originals make a return such as Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim and more. Unfortunately though, some quintessential characters aren’t available from the get go, such as Guile, Balrog and Alex. So far Blanka hasn’t even been mentioned. Some characters will eventually become available to purchase with in-game currency.

The reasoning for some characters not being available is because a few of them have similar fighting styles. Looking at the game from an e-Sports point of view, Capcom wanted Street Fighter V to have a good balance of characters from launch.

Some new faces in Street Fighter V are the Brazilian step-in for Blanka, Laura; Necalli, an Aztec looking man with markings on his face; and Rashid, a Middle-Eastern male with a green eyepiece on his left eye.

Game Modes

To many fans distaste, there is no Arcade mode. Instead it has been replaced by a Story mode. This is the series’ first full story mode for gamers to play through.

At the moment there is no difficulty setting for the Story mode which makes for relatively quick sit-down sessions, however the stories you follow for each character give a good little insight into their backgrounds and personalities.

The Story mode (at present) is told through a series of still drawings with fully voice-acted dialogue and subtitles. To my pleasant surprise, you can choose to listen to the dialogue in Japanese but read the English as subtitles. The English voice acting is actually quite terrible and sounds so forced and wooden that I thought Capcom were having me on.

Capcom announced a while back that the story modes will eventually be animated as full cinematic cut-scenes in June via a free update. Below is an example video of what the cinematic Story mode will look like.

As you can see, the Story modes will eventually become quite epic with amazing cinematics depicting familiar and unfamiliar Street Fighter scenes.

Other game modes apart from the usual Training and Challenge modes, are Ranked and Casual play. Ranked puts you up against other players online to compete for League Points to level up your League Rank. Casual matches are online fights that don’t count towards your League Rank.

In Ranked, you fight using a pre-selected character. You choose who that character is by setting them as your favourite fighter in your profile. So if you want to change fighters, you’ll have to update your profile. Seems a bit odd to not be given the option to choose before a fight, but then again it adds a bit of mystery to who you’ll be up against and saves time when waiting for a match.

Being an Aussie player I tried my hand at finding an online ranked match at around five in the afternoon and found myself waiting a good ten minutes before finding someone to face off against. After losing miserably to them, I changed fighter and tried again. Ten minutes later found myself against the exact same player again… Embarrassing.

Aesthetic Charm

As I said at the beginning of the review, Street Fighter V’s graphics don’t fall too far from the Street Fighter IV tree which is great to see. Street Fighter IV was a pioneer in terms of graphics in a fighting game. The artistic paint brush strokes added to fighter’s movements were beautiful, and with Street Fighter V, they have been joined by a watery style which looks just as gorgeous.

Musically you won’t be disappointed as familiar soundtracks play to stroke your nostalgia bone, and in-game voice acting sounds great. The Japanese voice acting is hands down, way better than the English so I highly recommend you change your settings.

Final Thoughts

Street Fighter V is getting a lot of mixed reviews around the internet which confuses me. I mean, I understand that there are hardcore e-Sports fanatics who get angry at Capcom for changing certain mechanics they’ve become used to, but change is necessary. If it weren’t for change, we could never become better.

The game itself sticks very loyally to it’s origins and introduces some great new characters to it’s roster. It’s a shame to see some characters are missing, but reading that Capcom haven’t altogether given up on said characters gives hope that we’ll be able to play our old favourites someday in the future.

Being a release on PC and PS4, Street Fighter V is more widely accessible to gamers. In the online fights, you can even choose to go up against someone from either a PC or PS4!

Street Fighter V is a great new iteration on a familiar and well-loved series that doesn’t fail to live up to it’s expectations. I’m very proud to see that this sequel is yet again another great success. Well done Capcom!

Score

4 stars – great sequel but missing a few quintessential characters and game modes from the beginning