Previously I said the OP was right. Now I'd like to elaborate slightly.
Many people just don't understand that Street Fighter V is a duelling game about one hit kills.
Everything else is just a glancing hit or a near miss.
It's a game about mastering space and controlling the opponent, as well as making the right guesses based on their behaviour. Countering all this (guessing the guess) is of course the full circle of the loop.
SFV's "crush counter" is such a double edged sword, but it's a beautiful thing. For me, I really disagree with the opinions of this game as aggression heavy and I think the CC promotes defence. It's why I tell new players never to play as Shotos. They kill themselves with DPs. In SFV, the DP has to be used smartly or completely randomly. The latter rarely works against an experienced player consistently. The former is very hard to achieve for many players. So this is a big change and I see where it would piss people off, but effectively it's making the thought behind mechanics more meaningful.
So when you play SF at a high level, you expect to lose / win at any moment. The next hit could always kill. That's the idea. Fair not to like it, but moreso I feel it is intensely misunderstood. Potentially, SF has *always* been like this - have to think about it more - it's just SFV really focused down on it.
A lot of players, and this is partially a generational thing as well, have a hard time accepting their failure and how easily it seems to come. They don't want to spend the time to get better, and the truth is the internet is really misleading for them in a lot of ways. At locals I recently played a Ken who had been at it maybe 1 year. His fundamentals were absolutely awful. He had watched a lot of videos about tech and was so focused on "setups" and getting in in weird creative ways that I just sonned him so hard, over and over again. And no, I don't have setups either. He was a nice guy and we talked a lot and tried to impart on him some simple wisdom. SFV is mostly about movement. The offence is really hard to see past, but your ultimate goal isn't to be "good at offence". On top of that, because of the extreme echo chamber effect, there is too little belief in defence, which is still a core skill in this game. Don't believe me? Go online and just downback. Don't press anything. Throw anyone that comes close. You just made it to Super Silver with your eyes closed.
For me, SFV is without a doubt my favourite fighting game of the last decade. I've played fighting games since SFII, almost always very casually with brothers and friends, and tried pretty much every major release. VF, Smash, Tekken, SC, BB, GG, MvC and many others. Personally, I've never played a FG I didn't have fun with to some extent, but I have very few that really stuck with me.
From what I see, SFV is a harder game that most SFs have been when it comes to winning consistently. Rush down is extremely easy to blow up at a certain point and so the game falls back on a neutral wish really punishes bad decisions. I think a lot of people spent a lot of time playing the game with very near-sighted goals (I want to win!) and were mad at the game for it not being easy. When that happened, they got even angrier that the SP-side was light.
SFV is a masterpiece in my estimation. The release was a massive failure, but the game is excellent.
- Lots of new unique characters which are actually cool and, you know, UNIQUE. Most fighting games go their entire lives without adding 1 new character to their original roster that is good.
- The legacy characters are beautifully recreated with a passion and eye for detail that is generally unheard of. I've said this before, but, go watch the "Vega hitbox in slow mo" video and tell me that isn't the most beautiful application of ballet and dance you've ever seen in a game. He's a work of art all himself and that's 1 character. Dhalsim, Chun Li, etc. Many of them look and feel incredible.
- Stages. The quiet, moody stages in this game are the best since SFIII and The Last Blade 2.
- The music. FANG and Rashid are instant classic themes.
- Balance. Any character can win. Yes, some MUs are harder than others. But any character can win. Especially thanks to the CC system, you may be down, but never out. One of the most exciting aspects of SFV is when you have no health and the opponent is stacked. Usually, you'd think "well I'm toast". But because there is no death by chip (except super) and because of the CC system, things can feel very different. Most immature opponents will want to RTSD and close out the win, but this puts them at a huge disadvantage. Going in is risky, and so you have a great shot to take the round back. I'm sure everyone has examples of that happening to them, and SFV is a hell of a comeback game.
