Street Fighter V Is Still Alive

The Evo 2019 fighting game tournament is still primarily a tournament, but the event attracts so many participating fighting game players and spectators (local and online) that publishers have made it a habit to provide fighting game-related announcements there. But some announcements planned for large events occasionally seep through the cracks before publishers want to. Capcom is the newest company to find this out the hard way.

The Evo trailer for Street Fighter V was uploaded to the Steam page too early. Once a few social media and message board users noticed, it took mere minutes for word about it to spread around the entire internet. Instead of pretending it didn’t happen outside producer Yoshinori Ono’s first tweet displaying how alarmed he was, Capcom went ahead and uploaded the trailer themselves.

Three new characters are coming to SFV after more than seven months of near-silence from Capcom, outside a few outfits and short free periods. E. Honda from Street Fighter II is returning in another game, a character who was more requested than you may think. He’ll be joined by one of the most surprising returning characters to grace this game: Lucia Morgan from Final Fight 3, both of which are obscure by classic Capcom game standards. Third will be Poison from Final Fight, Street Fighter x Tekken, and Ultra Street Fighter IV, a character highly requested by several vocal fans who didn’t expect to get their wish.

Honda doesn’t appear to have changed much from previous games outside some new combos, whose adjustments are due to SFV’s unique gameplay and mechanics properties. His V-Trigger techniques give him even more combos. His first VT makes his headbutt more powerful, by making it a two-hit attack if it hits close to the opponent. It can also potentially break a character’s guard and make them vulnerable for a quick second. The second VT gives him a chance to perform a throw that takes the opponent to the arena’s wall, and puts them in a crumpling state for another attack.

The Street Fighter team was able to get creative with Lucia, who’s making her first fighting game appearance, and really, her first appearance in any game outside Final Fight 3. She retains several techniques from that game, including her lightning legs-like attack that doesn’t quite compare to Chun-Li’s. Her first VT gives her access to a baton, while the second gives some of her kicking attacks flame properties, both of which enhance her combo possibilities. It’s tough to tell precisely how she works from this video, but she looks like a fun character. Of course, they all look fun from these trailers.

Poison has changed more than expected compared to her USFIV and SFxTk self. For one, she has a full whip here, which gives her an option to a very good ranged attack from the ground and air. It also gives her a swinging kick attack, which I’ll never stop calling the “Poison Swing” given how similar it looks to Spider-Man’s Spider Swing from Capcom’s Marvel games. It’s, of course, also reminiscent of Whip’s swing in the King of Fighters games. In exchange, she’s lost her Rekka-like attacks, a peculiar decision in a game with characters short on them; her projectile is also gone. Her first VT provides the option to throw at least two Molotov Cocktails, which will temporarily stun the opponent if they land. The second gives her more whip attacks. She looks more fun than her USFIV counterpart, but again, these trailers have a habit of doing that.

By the way: I really appreciate the Final Fight characters keeping their 80s-style punk hair, as seen by Poison and Lucia in her Story outfit.

It’s great that SFV has more life left in it than some of us expected (I feared the worst with last Friday’s post), given the quality of the characters. It’s better than getting really lower-effort characters like, say, Oni and Decapre. (Note: I like Decapre.) But none of this explains why Capcom needed to go silent for so long. What was the logic in only releasing Kage in December to start the season, and releasing nothing but outfits for more than half a year? Stretching out the release period like this gave the player base the wrong impression that it was near death, which caused them to dedicate less playtime to it — if not drop it entirely.

I do feel bad for Ono here, whose Twitter feed suggests that he isn’t taking the leaks well at all after he was hoping to save this announcement for Evo’s finals period. He also implied that he was planning on making an appearance at Evo, as he always does, and cancelled the trip following this. The disappointment even spilled over into this morning, where he said he didn’t “feel like doing anything” today. Leaks usually aren’t a big deal, but it’s tough when the face behind them is an endearing one. It sounds like Capcom doesn’t have any other announcements planned for the event, so don’t expect to see that Darkstalkers revival this year — if ever.

The three new characters will release on August 4th, possibly before or after the finals at Evo. They’ll arrive as part of a bundle on the next day. The prices should be confirmed soon, presumably before they go live.