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Street Fighter V: A Shadow Falls Review thread

G

Gren

Member
Neoxon said:
But then we wouldn't have the luxury of being able to change the costumes for the cutscenes.
Click to expand...

Wait, the PS4 version gave users that option? Or were you referring to PC players being able to use mods?

Still puzzled why PC didn't have a setting for it. Thought that was the only reason, in addition to compression-free visuals, for them to present everything in real-time. I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that using FMVs were easier.
 
S

SephLuis

Member
It was stupid as hell and I loved because of it. While the lore of SF has some interesting tidbits, they weren't going to show that in this story mode and it would need a much better story construction for SF V to start making sense.

Still, that whole mess of a story was fun. I laughed in a lot of moments.

I just wished they had maintained some ideas from the firsts trailers like Bsion x Nash being one big fight and Necalli vs Ryu, with Necalli being actually a threat and not a punching bag.
 
K

katsubento

Member
SF2 Animated Movie still greatest SF adaption ever. 5 out of 5

SF2 V TV series almost as good. 4 out of 5

Other SF Anime - Blech 2 out of 5

SFV Story - 3 out of 5.
 
D

DracoBlade

Member
I did a review with a colleague of mine for our website if anyone's interested in a more informal discussion. We go full analytical (as much as you can for a fighting game story) and appreciated most of the SFV charm with some sour note on the utter flub that is Necalli/Nash arc. All in all we still enjoyed it though! Defintely lived up to my SF2 the movie expectations and even succeeded them in regards to some genuinely moving sub plots!
(RASHID!)

Here's the review if anyone's interested/wants to post it in the OP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X1UpIe052Y
(Biyabyte.com)
 
Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus

Member
Finaika said:
What exactly makes MK's story mode better?
Click to expand...

Better camera work, better assets, more elaborate animation and set pieces, better dialogue and banter, better streaming/loading so that you go seamlessly between cutscenes and battles with FMV to mask the loading on location changes, more substantial banter and story specific dialogue in the midst of the fights, longer, more challenging battles, more characters, more fight locales, longer run time... And I say this as somebody who has always had much more love for Street Fighter than the juggalo nonsense of MK. Netherrealm just really upped their game with MK9 and what came after and Capcom just... hasn't.
 
S

Slamtastic

Member
Finaika said:
What exactly makes MK's story mode better?
Click to expand...

MK9 started at the beginning and introduced everything. To appreciate SFV, you had to already know who everyone was, what they were fighting for, etc. via arcade mode endings of 10+ year old games. Most of the SFV story is fanservice that will fall flat to everyone who hasn't seen the SF3 story enough to recognize the girl Chun Li takes care of, or doesn't remember the existence of the dolls.

MK9 and X also feel like more care was put into choosing characters for the game based on their plot.

SFV is missing so many characters who would be important to the death of Bison and Ryu overcoming the Satsui no Hado. Where's Rose? Where's Evil Ryu for a Ryu vs E.Ryu fight? Where's Akuma?

But they put in Zangief, Mika, Laura first for other reasons, and then had to craft a story mode with the playable characters they already had, whereas MK feel like thought was put into who to include based on the story they were going to tell.

And of course, SFV's loading screens are much worse than MK's seamless FMV to gameplay transitions.

Also, poor use of costumes. Where was Bison's ripped up outfit you can buy after he got blown up? Where was Hot Ryu? Didn't they say that costume was a part of the story they were going to tell? If Guile was dressed like a cop, why couldn't Chun use her cop outfit?

And the default difficulty is basically non-interactive.

Jangowuzhere said:
MK had a main character for one.
Click to expand...

Who is it? It could be Liu Kang, or Raiden, or Johnny.

(X had a clearer main character in Cassie)
 
M

Mechanized

Member
I played up to act 2. It was so bad I just had to stop and never returned to it. The dialogue, story, all of it is really reallly bad. It just reinforces what I always knew deep down inside; Street Fighter has the worst story in fighting games. It's just convoluted and paper thin at the same time. It's not enjoyable on any level.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Cindi Mayweather said:
How is this worse than MK?
Click to expand...

Finaika said:
What exactly makes MK's story mode better?
Click to expand...

MKX has higher production values in general, the cut-scenes are much better with higher quality facial animation and animation in general, and just better fucking made from every possible vantage point. Better written for goddamn sure. I remember the story actually making some kind of sense (unlike SFV's), there's a proper feeling of progression and pace. It gives most characters cool moments. For a fighting game its story mode is pretty awesome. Oh and hey, fights actually last two rounds.

SFV is just some cheap, half-baked, near-zero-effort low-budget crap. I don't really know if it's "better than nothing." Maybe nothing would be better.
 
J

Jangowuzhere

Banned
NCR Redslayer said:
Wait what?
Click to expand...

Raiden in MK9

MKX doesn't have an individual main character, but the focus is definitely on Cassie Cage's group.

Street Fighter just jumps all over the place and doesn't give a fuck.

Slamtastic said:
Who is it? It could be Liu Kang, or Raiden, or Johnny.

(X had a clearer main character in Cassie)
Click to expand...

Dude, it's Raiden. He kickstarts the plot, pushes the story along, and he ends the story with a final confrontation with the main villain.
 
F

fernoca

Member
Finaika said:
What exactly makes MK's story mode better?
Click to expand...

Pyrrhus said:
Better camera work, better assets, more elaborate animation and set pieces, better dialogue and banter, better streaming/loading so that you go seamlessly between cutscenes and battles with FMV to mask the loading on location changes, more substantial banter and story specific dialogue in the midst of the fights, longer, more challenging battles, more characters, more fight locales, longer run time...
Click to expand...
Slamtastic said:
MK9 started at the beginning and introduced everything. To appreciate SFV, you had to already know who everyone was, what they were fighting for, etc. via arcade mode endings of 10+ year old games. Most of the SFV story is fanservice that will fall flat to everyone who hasn't seen the SF3 story enough to recognize the girl Chun Li takes care of, or doesn't remember the existence of the dolls.

MK9 and X also feel like more care was put into choosing characters for the game based on their plot.

SFV is missing so many characters who would be important to the death of Bison and Ryu overcoming the Satsui no Hado. Where's Rose? Where's Evil Ryu for a Ryu vs E.Ryu fight? Where's Akuma?

But they put in Zangief, Mika, Laura first for other reasons, and then had to craft a story mode with the playable characters they already had, whereas MK feel like thought was put into who to include based on the story they were going to tell.

And of course, SFV's loading screens are much worse than MK's seamless FMV to gameplay transitions.

Also, poor use of costumes. Where was Bison's ripped up outfit you can buy after he got blown up? Where was Hot Ryu? Didn't they say that costume was a part of the story they were going to tell? If Guile was dressed like a cop, why couldn't Chun use her cop outfit?

And the default difficulty is basically non-interactive.
Click to expand...

Pretty much.
The least I expected was seamless transitions between cutscenes and fights. But even those had a loading.

It really detracts from the overall experience.

In MKvsDC, 2011, Injustice and MKX; is basically:
-Cutscene
-Blah blah blah
-Fight
-Blah blah blah
-Cutscene

In SFV, is like:
-Cutscene
-Loading
-Blah blah blah
-Loading
-Fight
-Loading
-Blah blah blah
-Loading
-Cutscene

The final acts in SFV were even worse because there were more cutscenes and fights, so more interruptions of loadings...sometimes to just have 2 characters stare at each other, or just show one running.

Still enjoyed it and had good moments like Chun Li and Cammy talking while watching Ken play with his son.

But, hopefully things will just improve there.
 
D

Durden77

Member
Most of those reviews are positive except Destuctoid and pretty spot on. It's nothing spectacular, but if you're a fan of the characters and Street Fighter in general it's fun and welcome. The only thing I would've really liked was better transitions, but the engine doesn't seem built for that. I had a great time with it.
 
E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
It's not even getting bad reviews. Other than the Destructoid review most people like it and agree for a free story DLC Capcom put in more work than they imagined.
 
M

Mechanized

Member
fernoca said:
Still enjoyed it and had good moments like Chun Li and Cammy talking while watching Ken play with his son.

But, hopefully things will just improve there.
Click to expand...

I hated that scene. They did nothing to earn that tone. They did barely anything to establish the characters, their history, the world that they're in. It felt like melodramatic going through the motions. "We gotta show depth here guys this is what depth in a character is like, right? Saw this in a movie once."

Like that scene where Chun is apologizing to Cammy for fighting Bison. The fuck was that shit? This warrior that trained her whole life to avenge her father, lore-wise she's a total bad ass. Then they make her this apologetic, unskilled, simp.

They made Necalli really lame and weird with his slime man "devour" grunty noise bullshit too.

I'd say this story negatively impacts the series as a whole it's so bad. This game is a fucking wreck.
 
E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
Mechanized said:
I hated that scene. They did nothing to earn that tone. They did barely anything to establish the characters, their history, the world that they're in. It felt like melodramatic going through the motions. "We gotta show depth here guys this is what depth in a character is like, right? Saw this in a movie once."

Like that scene where Chun is apologizing to Cammy for fighting Bison. The fuck was that shit? This warrior that trained her whole life to avenge her father, lore-wise she's a total bad ass. Then they make her this apologetic, unskilled, simp.

They made Necalli really lame and weird with his slime man "devour" grunty noise bullshit too.

I'd say this story negatively impacts the series as a whole it's so bad. This game is a fucking wreck.
Click to expand...

Did you forget that the black moon was powering up Bison by the time Chun was fighting him?
 
J

J_ToSaveTheDay

Member
My entire life I've always viewed Mortal Kombat as sort of lower-tier (but still highly enjoyable) stuff compared to Capcom's output...

Between story modes, largely they're the same from a gameplay perspective -- watch a few minutes of cutscenes, do a fight, etc...

But I still feel like Street Fighter V's story mode here is mostly dull and flat. There's some aspects that I like, but nothing that really saves the experience of having to actually play through it. For instance, I do like that Rashid and Karin are some of the biggest participants in the story, but ultimately that doesn't make it all that fun to get through -- despite both of those characters having charismatic appeal, they're not actually written to have any sort of satisfying character moments throughout the story.

Mortal Kombat is filled with deliciously cheesy moments throughout for me, and I have almost no prior personal investment in any of them from past games. The story modes in 9 and X are so much better than Street Fighter's for the sheer entertainment value, even if they play identically... And for me, that's kind of a shame, because I do actually kind of care about Street Fighter characters lore-wise... But meh, A Shadow Falls is just boring, and its payout versus time investment in terms of fight money is so bad (much like most of the FM payouts in the game).
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Cindi Mayweather said:
I'll watch MK9 and X story modes on youtube so I can be more informed on this discussion.
Click to expand...
You'll notice immediately that the budget was much better, better mocap, better pacing, neat minigames, i'm excited for Injustice 2 because I liked the story mode of Injustice a lot, it knew when to be cheesy, when to be dramatic, the devs understood the characters quite a bit and the vast majority of them had a purpose, that coupled with some good gags. It's absolutely no contest. I barely know anything about comics besides the basics and could follow the story of Injustice because it wasn't too complex for it's own good, neither were the MK story modes. I mean capcom oked this:
6lCAojA.gif
Click to expand...

^
This is a 2016 Capcom game in their most well known franchise.
 
M

Megawarrior

Member
I loved it as a first effort because I was expecting much worse. I would love a season 2 story to see what happens next and see if they could improve it.
 
T

T.O.P

Banned
Played it for about 30 minutes then headed back to ranked

It was too damn boring, MKX did this much much better
 
ethomaz

ethomaz

Banned
These stories modes in a fighting game are a hell of boring. I should prefer a movie over to play some boring matches inside it.

6/10 for this mode.

SFV is still a 9/10 game due better launch modes.
 
P

Peru

Member
People do seem to love shitting on this game. Story modes in fighting games feel like a bonus to me, some cheesy attempt at stringing together a series of fights in a narrative you can chuckle at while playing through.
 
S

Shadoken

Member
I loved the setup in Act 2.
Like how Rashid,Nash and Juri were a team who were going to take down shadaloo from behind the scenes. I really liked that Urien scene , for once I thought there was going to be some cool plot. But nope , just ur usual Ryu saves the day BS

Then it was just downhill from there , they did very little with certain characters. And many core characters were missing. The roster selection really held them back , too many characters ended up becoming just jobbers because of that. Some of the scenes of said jobbers completely ruined some parts with some very dumb fights.

But what can you expect , SF has many light hearted fighters unlike MK where everyone has serious motivations to fight and their own sub plots. Something which SF really needed , everyone has a beef with Bison which becomes a problem. Ryu should have had his own Sub plot with Akuma,Necalli..etc.

Overall I found it much more enjoyable than MKX , but not MK9.
 
Trickster

Trickster

Member
Personally I enjoyed it, there were a lot of great moments in it as far as I am concerned. Of course, your perception might also depend on what you were expectinging out of the story mode.
 
Pejo

Pejo

Member
The actual story was pretty awful, but it was still enjoyable to sit through. My boy Necalli looked like a damn fool though. Agree with that Destructoid review, that it would have been a nice addition at launch without a big focus on it, but it was really bad when spotlighted.

Mn6XhmM.jpg
 
W

Wild Card

Member
I really enjoyed it, super cheesy with some great comedy. Lot more work and effort was put in than I was expecting. For a first effort, I'd say I was impressed. Also the amount of screentime Karin got, I approve.
 
S

Scientist Supreme!

Banned
It's just a terribly written story along with some of the worse editing even seen in a while.

For people saying it's on MK level I really can't take you seriously and I don't even like those.
 
B

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
Peru said:
People do seem to love shitting on this game. Story modes in fighting games feel like a bonus to me, some cheesy attempt at stringing together a series of fights in a narrative you can chuckle at while playing through.
Click to expand...

With the reception SFV got at launch, it became very easy to bandwagon on the hate.
I don't blame people for not buying it if there wasn't enough SP content for them, and I think Capcom deserves the slap on the wrist they got for not delivering 100% on their promises/goals.

But lately they've started to show us that they do care, and that SFV really does have legs as a platform. The latest update and the fact that they're considering tweaks to make unlocks more user-friendly shows that they're listening.

The new story mode is serviceable at worst, entertaining for many, and downright hilarious at best. I don't know what some of these stick-up-arse reviewers were expecting. This is a free couple of hours of harmless fun; it was never going to blow us away with its intricate plot or ingenious character development.

What the story does particularly well is cement the image of these characters for the player, and hopefully helps us relate to them (a kind of internal "roleplay") once we've learned how they work. Their interactions with one another and their mid-match banter offer a much more personal look at these "tools" that are otherwise nothing more than buttons, frame data and tier lists.

I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't at least get a chuckle out of the goofy humour, or is concentrating too hard on other agendas such as "this character offends my sensibilities," or "this mode should have been included at launch."
 
D

danmaku

Member
Sites are reviewing... a story mode? Wouldn't it be better to update the reviews of the game considering its current state?
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
Cindi Mayweather said:
How is this worse than MK?
Click to expand...

MK's story was coherent. SFV's story was a disjointed mass of stuff that happened.

"Oh look it's that annoying Necali guy. What's his point again?"
"He's just here to be kinda annoying."
"No seriously. Dhalsim made him sound relevant."
"Sorry. Totally useless to the plot."

"Why don't they just destroy the chess pieces? Why take them into the Shadowloo base?"
"Because shut up!"
 
V

VariantX

Member
Crossing Eden said:
You'll notice immediately that the budget was much better, better mocap, better pacing, neat minigames, i'm excited for Injustice 2 because I liked the story mode of Injustice a lot, it knew when to be cheesy, when to be dramatic, the devs understood the characters quite a bit and the vast majority of them had a purpose, that coupled with some good gags. It's absolutely no contest. I barely know anything about comics besides the basics and could follow the story of Injustice because it wasn't too complex for it's own good, neither were the MK story modes. I mean capcom oked this:


^
This is a 2016 Capcom game in their most well known franchise.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they clearly should have waited until they could get some better character models instead of ripping out background npc's from the kanzuki stage. Models meant for current gen hardware fighting shit that looks like it it was ripped straight out of the PS1 era just looks bad and slapdash on their part. Its depressing since every other set of models except these look fine.
 
I

Imperfected

Member
I liked it. Yes, as a "pure" narrative it's terrible, but fighting game stories aren't about the pure narrative, they're a character showcase; they're really just about cool hero moments for the characters and having them bounce off one another's personalities in interesting ways, with the plot itself being just a shoddy framework to make that happen.

Think of it more like a collection of connected Overwatch shorts, rather than a movie.
 
F

Ferrio

Banned
The story was bad, incredibly bad but entertaining in how stupid it was.

Though I'm a sucker for the credit sequence, <3 Kolin.

7ZabVzb.gif
 
D

DracoBlade

Member
Finaika said:
Welp, here's hoping KOFXIV's story mode fares better.
Click to expand...

If you like c tier VN fluff with maybe three illustrations per scene. Yes.

For real SNK has the best FG mythos too! I hope we get to see it in a light that actually is fun/higher budget
 
B

BlizzKrut

Banned
For what it was, it was leagues better than MK, better VA, didn't took itself seriously like MK, and honestly, if you're complaining that the characters who've been around for over 20 years weren't introduced, it's your fault only.

It wasn't perfect, the clipping made it annoying but it was a very good first attempt and got some laughs off me.
 
G

gconsole

Member
Well, it's already exceed my expectation even though I didn't have much faith in story mode for fighting game in the first place. I mean it's a fighting game, you can't expect Oscar level of writing or script , right (Even by video game industry standard) ? It's really hard to come up with all story appropriately linked together when there is limit resource you have ( 16 fighters, all from different location, different background ). And when the thing has to always involve around 'fighting' each other, you know, just like story in porn movie when every character has to end up having sex. Just like that.

To be honest, apart from higher production value, I doubt there is much more they can do.
 
R

Raitaro

Member
Maybe it's my low expectations but I did enjoy what I've seen so far. I can't wait to finally finish my house move and delve in myself.

Compared to rival games, the SF games always have had a bit of a bargain bin shine to them when it comes to anything outside of the core fighting mechanics and characters. Stuff like stages and stage variations, special intro's/outro's, bonus modes, etc have always been quite lacking I find, especially compared to the huge amounts of polish and content companies like SNK put into their games back then.

Keep in mind that from SFII all the way to SSFII Turbo, Capcom only added 4 characters and stages but did not add anything else really except fighting related things such as moves, speed options and balancing updates (and redrawn endings I believe, which is something). In other words they've always been very cost effective (i.e. stingy) and core fighting focused with SF it seems (SF Alpha 3's console release and once in a life time world tour mode notwithstanding).

With that in mind, I can't help but feel appreciative of the fact that Capcom did indeed provide a story mode this time for SFV and that they are in fact adding more stuff like stages and stage alternatives. Sure, this appreciation - as said - stems mostly from low (series history driven) expecations, but that doesn't necessarily diminish my actual enjoyment or appreciation of the mode that is now offered.

All that said, hopefully they'll eventually manage to reach a slightly higher level of storytelling in potential new seasons, a level found for instance in their very own animated feature length movie. By higher level I mean a story with a strong(er) main plot that lets a handful of characters shine while others provide cool supporting roles. This seems smarter than trying to give each character equal screen time. MK9 and X might have done this slightly better (though overall I wouldn't call them significantly better either).
 
R

Raitaro

Member
Collingwood said:
I've been fine with it so far. I actually like the 1 Round match format.
Click to expand...

I think it would have been nice if they had provided us with the option to play more than one round, at least for the hard mode. The fights as they are do feel a bit inconsequential almost, like they don't matter at all compared to the cutscenes. Granted I haven't played or seen any hard mode footage, so maybe the fights will get tougher and more meaningful there.

By the way, can or can't you change character's costumes in the options? Can someone confirm? In some of the early footage / trailers people like Ibuki were wearing different costumes in each video I believe.
 
V

vg260

Member
Raitaro said:
I think it would have been nice if they had provided us with the option to play more than one round, at least for the hard mode. The fights as they are do feel a bit inconsequential almost, like they don't matter at all compared to the cutscenes. Granted I haven't played or seen any hard mode footage though, so maybe the fights will get tougher and more meaningful there.
Click to expand...

They are definitely harder, although some are still easier than others depending on the match-up. More so if you don't know much about the character you're playing. Oddly enough the first Nash vs ghost Bison fight seemed like one of the toughest. I really think those who played the hard mode end up happy for them only to be one round as they might have trouble getting past certain matches. But then again many are set up where your opponent has full meters.

The story had a lot of issues, and some big misses from the lore, but fighting game stories are usually nonsense because they have to make sense of the cast in the game, which is often determined for reasons other than story, and that was really apparent here.

I'm not a fan of these, big bloated story modes that have to incorporate everyone coming together in some ridiculous way on some big, overarching plot. They're almost always a mess, so I think it was just typical. The reviews for most of these end up being similarly divisive. Neither a big success nor a huge miss that people are saying. They always seem like a huge waste of resources, however on a fighting game to me, because it's just a 3-4 hour diversion at best that no one goes back to unlike the meat of the game.
 
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