What are the worst features of Street Fighter V?

Each Street Fighter game has a lot of legacy on its shoulders upon release, and a lot to live up to. Street Fighter 6 appears to be just what everyone wished for and more, but let’s go back to the current competitive game for the moment.

Street Fighter V is an amazing game right now, but it wasn’t like that when it was released, at all. And despite all the great improvements, there are still things that are pretty bad about the game, so let’s discuss them.

10. Real Money Is Worth More

The game has a lot of cool stuff that you can spend your money on. From skins to colors, and from stages to actual characters, there’s no shortage of options.

The great thing about this is that you can win fictional Fight Money to buy most of these things, but unfortunately some of them can only be bought with actual real money.

How To Make It Better: Make more things be purchasable with Fight Money so players get better rewarded for playing more.

9. Challenge Trials Are Inconsistent

Combo trials are a fighting game trope that just can’t go wrong. It is just too much fun to spend minutes, hours, or days trying to complete tough combos.

SFV, like so many other fighting games, does have a combo trial mode, but the difficulty could be more consistent. Some of the combos are hilariously easy while others are made to simply frustrate you, and the order in which each type appears seems to be plain random.

How To Make It Better: Adjust the difficulty so that the combos actually get increasingly harder as you move on in the trial with each character.

8. Ranked Match Streak Points

The Ranked Match experience is really flawed in this game, as it appears to punish you for doing long sets. 

The game makes you rank up really fast if you maintain a winning streak, but when you’re not continuously winning, you can rank down super fast.

How To Make It Better: If you’re playing a First-to-2 Set, then losing a match should not interrupt your streak if you win the set

7. The Arcade Experience Is Lackluster

Having started as an arcade title, Street Fighter has been known for its fantastically tough arcade modes.

Street Fighter V allows you to play recreations of all main SF titles’ arcade modes, but they all feel completely lackluster.

How To Make It Better: Make the arcade mode fights much harder, especially the bosses, and get properly animated endings for the SFV Arcade Mode.

6. Character Story Mode Is Too Easy

Character Story in Street Fighter V is so easy that a 5-year-old could easily beat each character’s story with ease.

The number of fights is also really low, as most of the cast only gets about 3 fights to their story mode, and once you finish it, there’s no real ending.

How To Make It Better: Develop a proper Story Mode where you can pick each character and go through several bouts, all of them full matches (the current mode only lets you fight one round), and where you get rewarded with story endings upon completion.

5. Eleven Is Banned From Competition

Eleven is a character that will randomly transform into any character from the cast with random V-Skill and V-Trigger. Unfortunately, he is banned from tournament play.

While one can make the argument that such a character is against the spirit of competition, it also prevents top players like Momochi or Punk from really showcasing their mastery over different characters and the opportunity to create memorable matches.

How To Make It Better: Just unban him.

4. Offense Is Too Heavily Rewarded

In Street Fighter V, offense is heavily rewarded in contrast to defense.

This is a bad feature in a game like Street Fighter, known for its ground-based nature, footsies gameplay, and decision-making.

How To Make It Better: Implement more ways a character can use to not just escape but interrupt a steamrolling offensive pressure from the opponent and turn the tables.

3. Special Moves Can’t Kill With Chip Damage

Being able to kill the opponent with special moves even when they’re blocking is a trend that’s been around in Street Fighter since its very dawn.

However, this has been entirely removed in SFV, where only Critical Arts can kill by chip, making comebacks tremendously easier and less exciting, especially when you already have a big comeback mechanic in V-Trigger.

How To Make It Better: Make special moves able to kill with chip damage again.

2. There Are No True Zoners

Even though there are 46 characters in the roster, each with completely different mechanics and features, they mostly share a similar gameplan.

Traditionally, zoner characters have less damage output and are fairly vulnerable at close range. However, that’s not the case in SFV where folks like Dhalsim and Poison are tremendous offensive machines.

How To Make It Better: Reduce the zoner’s offensive power, both in terms of damage output and okizeme opportunities.

1. Luke Is Too Good

Luke is the latest character being added to the Street Fighter V roster, and he sure has been a problem since his debut.

The issue with Luke is that despite the nerfs he got, he’s really good at everything that a character must be good at in this game, and he doesn’t seem to have any particular bad match-up.

How To Make It Better: The issue could be solved if the character’s damage output were to be significantly reduced, allowing him to still play the same and still be one of the best characters, but not overpowered. 

Again, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition is a truly incredible game and many call it one of the greatest in the franchise. But like anything it has some pretty bad things that could be redone in a different way.

Hopefully, this list provided you with insight into some of the features of Street Fighter V that affect the game negatively and how they could be improved.

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