So I got a Top 11 finish in Tetris 99, and I thought “I’m not gonna beat that one for a while. Time to test my luck in Street Fighter V.”
Which, to be clear, is a thought I only had because I was still salty over getting hit with a Raging Demon last week and stewed over that loss for days on end. So let’s hit it.
There was a time when I was willing and eager to drop Falke in favor of the “new hotness” that was G, the self-proclaimed president of the earth or whatever. That didn’t pan out. No sooner had I pledged my allegiance did my brother swoop and and decide to take G for himself -- and since I have a staunch, unspoken rule about never using anyone he uses (something about them having “his stench”), plans fell through in an instant.
In exchange? Since I grabbed the season pass (don’t judge me), I could still play as the other five characters for Season 3 -- at least on my account. Thanks to the sunk cost fallacy, I ended up putting an inordinate amount of time into learning Falke, a character who was as rare a unicorn in the online space as a seven-leaf clover. Near as I could tell, everyone wrote her off -- but a chance encounter with the one online warrior I met (at the time) who used her convinced me to give her an honest try in the first place. These days? Falke is the only character I play, period.
That might actually be because I don’t know how to play anyone else, but whatever. She’s got 2B’s voice actress, so I’m not complaining.
I’ve been playing Falke exclusively since July 2018 -- off on and, granted, as whole seasons have passed between my solo Street Fighter V sessions. But I was surprised to check my stats one day and discover that I’d logged way more matches with the Guardian Hawk than any other character. That’s kind of to be expected, in hindsight; I spent a decent amount of time soul-searching, on a quest to find the one character in the game I could main. Because of that, I lost more league ranking points than I care to admit, and stayed firmly locked in the Bronze tier for geologic ages. But I’ve been playing more recently, and sticking with someone I know instead of bumbling with new blood.
I’m firmly in the Silver league now. That’s not very impressive given the higher ranks that exist, but I’m pretty sure I’m creeping toward Super Silver. I guess my perseverance with the game -- and the genre as a whole -- is finally paying off. Even if there are still plenty of people who can cremate me in a matter of seconds, it’s rare for me to believe that any given match is a lost cause. I’ve accumulated just enough skill, knowledge, and guts to stand my ground. Still more to learn, but my win percentage is holding relatively steady at about 51%. The coin flip is slightly in my favor. Slightly.
I owe whatever wins I can scrape up to Falke. Part of that comes from her character; I tend to do best with characters I resonate with on some level, be it with their gameplay, story, persona, or simply design. Once I set my eyes on a fighter I like, I’ll generally stick with them no matter what. It’s the plight of a character loyalist; I’d sooner lose with someone I love than win with someone I hate. Tier lists be damned; no need for AE Yun when there’s a perfectly “good” Dee Jay right over there.
But since this is a game we’re talking about? Yes, Falke speaks to me precisely because of her gameplay. For the most part, she gives me what I need. I value range in a lot of my characters because it allows me to control the match if used properly; zoning, spacing, the works. My game plan and general reasoning is this: if I can take away the opponent’s primary offensive tools, then they can’t fight at full strength. They’ll get frustrated. Sloppy. And, ultimately, they’ll waltz right into my defenses so I can grind them down into dust.
When I use her properly, Falke has a lot of things going for her. Her staff gives her an extra bit of range on her normals, so I can check opponents from a greater distance than the standard. She’s got access to very low grounded fireballs and air fireballs -- with the tradeoff being that you have to charge up first (via negative edge), but it’s a price worth paying. With the exception of her Critical Art, her special move inputs don’t need the stick to activate -- so the probability of getting an accidental DP is practically gone. And with her air stomp, she can go into a lot of side-switching, cross-up shenanigans that open enemy defenses. Potentially, at least. Savvy foes can still blow her up.
But hey. No one can be savvy and blow up a character that’s only seen once a millennium online. *taps head*
Right now, I have three weaknesses that need tending to. First: I need to stop testing opponents with moves that are unsafe on block. That’s a consequence of me committing to move inputs (the only way I can be sure they come out), but tagging the end of a normal string with Falke’s lunge kick tends to put me in a bad spot. Second: I have to stop assuming that every opponent that manages to jump in (assuming I don’t anti-air them first) will go for a grab; otherwise, I’ll just end up eating a combo.
But my biggest weakness across all fighting games is a glaring one: all told, I don’t have much in the way of raw, explosive damage output. In the context of SFV, I don’t know if it’s a Falke problem or a Voltech problem, but I’m guessing it’s the latter. Even if I can do some decent damage in one shot, I don’t do it consistently per match, or at least not often enough to clinch a cornucopia of victories. Whether I land a good combo or not, in most cases I find myself falling on what I’m comfortable with -- pokes, range, defense, zoning, projectiles, etc. It can work, but if and when a foe slips through my defenses…well, it’s a mess.
They say in SF that you can win if you make two or three correct “guesses” -- that is, if you can find a way to land your big-damage combos in spite of an opponent’s resistance. Other players can. I don’t, at least not reliably. That’s a problem.
It’s a problem I’m learning how to deal with, though. Having put so much time into Falke (to the point where I had to grind out 85,000 Fight Money to unlock her on my brother’s account), I’m evolving. My pressure strings are getting safer, my damage output is there when I need it most, and my anti-airs are one of the most reliable tools in my kit. As hard as it is to believe, I’m getting better at the game. It’s a far cry from where I was in the days of SFIV, or even SFV a year ago. Given that, I’m interested in seeing how far I can take the game in the days to come.
It’d be a real shame, then, if SFV suddenly died.
I have no idea what’s going on with the game. Apparently, the fighting game fanatics don’t either. There’s been a lot of dead air from Capcom involving future updates for the game; while we got a balance patch not too long ago and more costumes (several of which carry real-world price tags, because of course they do), there’s been no word on new characters. No word on expanding the story mode, save for the vague promise that “the story is not over”. No word on the litany of quality-of-life improvements that could stand to be made, because I’m kind of sick of losing to people with flags I’ve never seen before and thus bury me in jittery, lag-laden matches.
(This is Albania’s flag. Don’t fight any Albanians unless you live there.)
I still think SFV is a fun game, but I admit that it has some issues -- problems that should have been sorted out long ago. Smarter people than me can explain in full detail (I think? People in the comments seem to violently disagree); that said, sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that you’re just as likely to win, if not more so, if you play like an idiot. Get in there and attack, attack, attack, because why not? V-Reversals -- what should be a valuable defensive, get-off-me mechanic -- aren’t very reliable, and doing something like Falke’s EX uppercut (upperstaff?) is just as likely to guarantee a blow up as it is to save you.
I could go on with the nitty-gritty, but there’s one problem in particular that I want to focus on. See, in my personal experience, I’ve fought an onslaught of the same three characters -- a neverending stream of challengers who want to steal my points. Ryu, Ken, Akuma; those are the three I see again and again, with the stats logged in-game to prove it. Of those characters, a massive swath of their players have the exact same game plan. It feels like I’ve built my reserve of points on the corpses of Ken players who want to do full-screen tatsus and then go into the DP/throw mix-up (because they can), only they can’t even start that mix-up because I already anti-aired them out of it.
It’s been about three years since the game came out, and the roster has doubled in size. But if I were in Capcom’s shoes, I’d be just about ready to throw my hands up and storm out of HQ. What’s the point of adding new characters if everyone’s just going to jump back to Ryu, Ken, and Akuma? So basically, it’s an issue of incentivizing character diversity; it’s probably not as bad in the competitive scene, but as someone who’ll never EVER go to a tournament, I’m stuck with an army of shoto-loving dullards.
The words part about that is that, because I’m always stuck fighting shotos, I don’t have nearly enough experience and knowledge to take out other characters. I basically have to learn on the fly and adapt to the player behind the wheel -- which I’m technically supposed to do, but it’s an uphill climb when learning how to fight back means eating hits in the first place. That said, it’s more fun to actually fight against people besides the shotos because there’s more thought/effort involved; I wanted to jump for joy when I ran into an Alex player in the wild.
It feels like I have grounds to quit SFV based solely on the march of the Shoto Army, but I don’t want to give up on the game despite the frustrations (which, inevitably, include explosive damage from a stray, lucky hit). The problem now is whether or not Capcom and the FGC are willing to stick around. Complaints have orbited the game for years, but that hasn’t stopped it from once again securing a spot in the EVO roster…which may or may not be a result of the nepotism that comes from being a part of the SF dynasty.
If there was a quick fix here, Capcom would have thrown it in by now instead of pumping out the next Chun-Li costume. As it stands? I don’t know what the road map is for the game. I don’t know how there’s going to be a decent fix. SFV rubbed a lot of people the wrong way upon release thanks to its bare-bones package, features remained missing for months, radio silence happened on more than one occasion (like the sudden announcement of a delay for an incoming DLC character after zero communication), and lately it seems like the house that Mega Man built is more interested in nickel-and-diming as many payers players as possible with virtual toss…the best of which can’t be unlocked with Fight Money, making that whole grind-happy economy utterly pointless.
The conversation around the game is leaning towards the sunsetting of SFV and a gradual shift toward the inevitable SFVI. I can’t say whether or not that’s going to happen in a decent time frame; it’s not like we’ll suddenly have it drop in our laps after the EVO 2019 grand finals. Besides, SFV has problems now, and a new game in the future isn’t going to fix the problems now. Capcom needs to find a way to inject some fresh blood into their flagship fighter, because the market’s crowded as hell. Someone else -- anyone else -- is more than willing to take their place.
Urge to play…Tekken 7…riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing…
Well, that’ll do it for now. See you guys next time -- presumably, in the ring.
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