Thoughts on Street Fighter V

I’ve been playing SFV since it became available in early access/beta. I’ve always loved the Street Fighter series but SFV is probably my favourite one to play. Now, even though nothing has been announced, it feels like we’re closing in on moving on to the next game soon.

There are still some characters that’s been announced that has not yet been released and development have probably been delayed because of Covid-19, so there should be at least a year left for Street Fighter V.

My biggest flaw when it comes to fighting games have always been execution. The timing, reflexes and dexterity you need to perform the most optimal combos in Third Strike and SFIV truly baffles and astonishes me. Big respect to the top players who can perform such feats constantly. Street Fighter V is by far the most user friendly Street Fighter in that department, being more forgiving with timing and not including any extremely tight button links.

That is the reason I like playing the game, because I feel like I can perform most stuff that I see a pro perform. I’ve also come to understand that a simplified system is one reason many dislike the game because it allegedly lowers the roof for how good you can become. I don’t neccesarily agree with that statement since removing some of the execution puts greater weight on strategy, tactics and mind games. Taking the game closer to a chess match mentality.

Finding a main character is always super tough. There are too many fun characters to play and I want a character that both appeal to me aesthetically and mechanicly. I started out using Birdie when the game was new, a slow moving grappler with good buttons and dirty tricks and now I’m playing Ed, a well-rounded character with a punk kid attitude. I’ve tried to migrate to characters I would prefer to play, like Sagat, but when playing more serious matches it never really works out well because of my poor reactions and executions. The good thing about Ed is that he has a lot of one-button special attacks, which mitigates some of the reaction requirements.

Fighting games really is at its best when you have a community to play in. I have my own little fighting game family at work, and it makes it so much more rewarding and fun to put some times into the games. We’ve also been playing in a “swedes only” tournament that’s been arranged during this fall. An online tournament of course because, there was plans of doing a offline finally but that was canceled because of increased restrictions from Covid. Meeting new local players is also a great motivator to continue playing.

I have no ambitions of ever becoming good enough to compete in any high level matches, but every victory feels good. Fighting games is chess on speed where every player has their own set of pieces, so it keeps me interested in the same way that card games do.

Street Fighter will probably always be my favourite fighting game series but I hope that Capcom shapes up when it comes to the tech side of development. The loading times are horrible and the netcode is so-so, there is a lot of room for improvement there. Hopefully it will all be better in the next installation down the line.