On Monday I found out late in the evening that the Street Fighter V March update was available for players to download. The original plan for Street Fighter V’s DLC was that content would be released on a monthly basis and the first piece of new content would be available in “March”. If you recall our review of the base game, you’ll know that Street Fighter V launched as a solid fighting game that was missing some of the features and modes that fans of the genre have come to expect both from Street Fighter and from fighting games generally. Combo challenges and multiplayer lobbies were some of the more obvious omissions – present in Super Street Fighter IV, SFIII: Third Strike Online Edition and even Street Fighter X Tekken, but not here. Even though they aren’t essential features necessary to enjoy the core experience, the shallow offering of extra modes left Street Fighter V players thinking that the game had been rushed out to coincide with the big competitive gaming events happening around launch. Worse still, when people discovered that this content would be coming in “March” they were hoping that it might arrive at the beginning of the month, but discovering that the Street Fighter V March update wasn’t available until the last week of the month might affect the confidence fans have in Capcom’s ability to deliver content regularly and smoothly, especially after those fans had already experienced errors and issues during the betas and the first week or so of the full game being available.
Street Fighter V March update – Challenges
Happily, the online experience of Street Fighter V is much better today than it was originally, and the first new content in the Street Fighter V March update is definitely a step in the right direction. Not everything planned for the update is available right now – returning character Alex is visible on the character select screen but not yet playable until later, and the ingame shop is not active at the moment – but there are new features in the Challenge menu and it looks like the Battle Lounge mode has been updated as well. The Challenge menu has a Trials mode which should be familiar to SFIV fans, and also a Demonstration mode that has rolling gameplay demos of various concepts crucial to improving at SFV. As I’ve been playing Rashid more than any other character I went through his challenges first. Unlike SFIV where you are taught special move inputs, then unique attacks and finally combos, Rashid’s challenge list is nothing but combos, but the generous motion detection and my familiarity with the character made it an enjoyable experience. Another welcome change is the ability to show commands for moves in the challenge display, rather than names of moves. If you’re like me and you forget what to press in order to get EX Eagle Spike->Flap Spin->EX Spinning Mixer, you can flip this option and see the commands in the form of those traditional symbols we’re all familiar with. The Demonstrations are also worth a mention; whilst I originally criticised the game’s tutorial for omitting certain crucial gameplay concepts, the demonstrations in the Street Fighter V March update are more in-depth, covering everything from counters and chip to cross-ups and anti-airs.
Street Fighter V March update – Lounges
I didn’t get a lot of time to play with the updated Battle Lounge, but it looks as though it’s the same as the old Battle Lounge but with seven more player slots. However, this is fine – it’s all anyone really wanted from the game in the first place. You might have a bunch of people playing Street Fighter V on your friends list, but trying to organise group battles before would have been a mess, with players having to enter a party and continually drop in and out of two-player lounges or whatever. If the netcode holds up well in these eight-player lobbies, it could lead to a lot of fun late night SFV sessions over weekends. Anyway, that’s all there is to say about the current state of Street Fighter V right now – it had a lot of issues to begin with and there might still be dropped connection errors or other things to grumble about in the future, but the Street Fighter V March update is definitely a move in the right direction.
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