Street Fighter V is a 2.5D fighting game developed by Capcom as their latest installation of the Street Fighter franchise. It was “released” in 16th February of 2016 but I wouldn’t call the lack of content and game modes a proper release. Despite an underwhelming start, the release of Arcade Edition exactly 2 years from its initial release date makes the game feel like a complete package.
New to Street Fighter V is a spanking new V-System that gives every fighter a unique ability, a default character roster of 16 where you get to unlock up to 28 characters with an in game currency, and more surprisingly, updates and releases of new version will also be free to existing game owners unlike older installations of Street Fighter.
Lens of Elemental Tetrad
Aesthetics
In the case of a fighting game, Street Fighter V does a very good job in making each attack look and sound like it actually hurts your opponent. The overall feel and tempo of the game has been toned down to look less like an anime and more realistic.
Arcade Edition also brought forth an updated UI with bright grandstands and lavish gold hues that makes you feel like you’re playing in the grand finals of EVO at the comfort of your basement, along with an obnoxiously loud BGM that restarts every screen transition.
Story
Street Fighter V’s story mode takes you on every fighter’s story in poorly drawn comic strips that offers cheesy anime cliches and horrible dialogue. Crapcom pls.
Mechanics
There are tons of mechanics that comes with fighting games, but I’ll only talk about the V-System that is unique to Street Fighter V (geddit?).
The V-System is represented by the V-Gauge that has either 2 or 3 bars that players can fill up by performing V-Skills, taking damage, and landing counters, by which they can expend these bars on V-Reversals and V-Triggers.
- V-Skills are unique special moves that every fighter possess. For example, Ryu gets his classic Parry, and Birdie’s V-Skill lets you litter a banana peel on the ground.
- Much like V-Skills, V-Triggers are unique to each fighter and they are often used as combo extenders or to turn the tide of battle as a comeback mechanic.
- V-Reversals allow fighters to perform a counter attack, often as a safe option to stop the opponent’s pressure.
Lens of Skill
In a competitive fighting game, there will no doubt be an element of skill involved in the gameplay. You wouldn’t have a button mashing novice beating a competitive player, but for Street Fighter V, the skill gap was reduced considerably to make the game more accessible to a wider audience. Combos are a lot easier to pull off, and as a consequence, it reduced the diversity and variety of play styles in Street Fighter V across novice and expert players.
In the event where having two hands at your disposal is too much of an advantage, here’s a Street Fighter V combo video played with only one hand:
Lens of Head and Hands
Here’s a theory that ties in very well with this lens, and it categorizes players into 3 archetypes:
- Brains refers to the scientific player where hitbox and frame data is king, every move is calculated and optimized depending on the situation.
- Heart applies to the feeling based player who relies on mind games, making reads, and baiting their opponents.
- Body represents players known for their physical capabilities, where in fighting games refers to their execution and reactions.
In Street Fighter V, the skill ceiling for both mental and physical elements are very high. Hence it feels to me like the game serves as a canvas for players to achieve and strive in these aspects.
Lens of Competition
Street Fighter V is straightforward in the sense that it is 1-versus-1 and the goal is to defeat your opponent. The competitive aspect comes in when your opponent happens to be a human being who is also trying their best to defeat you. With the addition of player ranks and online leaderboards, it definitely brings out the competitiveness within players.
If self-motivation and bragging rights isn’t your cup of tea, then perhaps the prize pool of $380,000 USD as seen in Capcom Cup 2017 should do the trick. This also segues nicely to the next point.
Lens of Economy
What sets Street Fighter V apart is that new content updates such as Arcade Edition will be free for everyone who already owns the game, and with that comes the introduction of Fight Money.
Fight Money is an in-game currency that you can painfully earn through playing the game, and with enough currency, you can get access to unlockables such as maps, titles, color palettes, and new characters. That of course means that you can opt to use real world currency to unlock these items if you do not want to do it the hard way. It feels rather silly not be able to play the entire roster of characters but I suppose it is a necessary compromise in exchange for free content updates.