Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition More Than Makes Up For Its Rocky Beginnings

Despite the fact that I absolutely loved Street Fighter V, even I was disappointed by the Story Mode, and with plenty other fighting games arriving since, it quickly slid into irrelevance. Things improved slightly with the Season 1 DLC, which added favourites such as Alex and Guile, but Capcom pulled a Street Fighter III: The New Challengers on us with Season 2’s roster of newcomers. Suddenly, only the dedicated players were engaging with Street Fighter V.

So when it was announced that Street Fighter V would be updated to have an “Arcade Edition”, which would be a mostly free update to current owners and a bundled download for new players, I wondered how much content could be added beyond the much requested arcade mode. After downloading a huge wave of updates, I jumped into Arcade Mode to see what’s new in Street Fighter V.

Perhaps to celebrate Street Fighter’s 30^th Anniversary, Arcade Mode has you first pick from a different era of the series, and then a character that featured in those games. Each is has their own number of matches, ending art that seems based on the original game, and even uses remixes of the classic music between fights. It’s not exactly the same, especially since some characters are missing, certain characters are used as proxies for older designs (Balrog instead of “Mike”), and Sagat hasn’t been released yet. It obviously still uses the Street Fighter V engine, but with the waves of DLC costumes and stages it at least attempts to look like the classic games aesthetically.

This leads me onto the second biggest change in Arcade Edition, and that’s with the fighting system itself. Every single character, no matter if they’re old or new, has a second V-Trigger that is selectable before fighting. These new V-Triggers give certain characters a bit more utility that they may have been missing before: Ken’s Shinryuken is a key example.

This, like the second Ultra Combos added to Super Street Fighter IV, adds a bit more complexity to approaching a fight. Ryu’s original V-Trigger relied on charging electrified Hadouken blasts, while his new one is essentially a beefed up counter attack. Instead of having R.Mika’s tag partner dive kick, her new V-Trigger has her tag partner clock the opponent with a steel chair, which had me unashamedly channelling my inner Jim Ross (JR).

Arcade Mode fleshes out the experience significantly for those looking for more offline offerings, but that’s not all the game offers for offline players. There’s also Extra Battle challenges that rotate every so often and require fight money to participate in, as well as Team Battles for those looking for a different spin on fighting games.

Season 3’s DLC roster, sold separately from Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition as a DLC bundle, includes a far smarter line-up that mixes old favourites and newcomers. Having one of the fan favourites Sakura headline the additions upon launch, and even giving her design an overhaul to match her age, shows that Capcom are at the very least addressing the key criticisms.

There’s so much now in the game that’s it’s impossible to say that Street Fighter V is barebones anymore. With the inclusions present, there’s incentive for both new and older players to get into Capcom’s marquee fighting game title, but the core game is still as good as it ever was. Yes, Story Mode was a disappointment, but Arcade Mode really does feel like the main course.