When it comes to Street Fighter 5, Capcom isn’t pulling any punches. Dithcing the over-inked visual aesthetic of Street Fighter 4, its predecessor, isn’t the only thing thats changed. While the base gameplay of two fighters duking it out in ridiculous one-on-one matches accross worldwide stages remains the same, the focus attacks and Ultras from the previous game have been thrown out in favor of the brand new V-Gauge. This new red bar sits atop the ever-present Super Gauge, which still function as it has in past entries, allowing you to execute powerful and flashy super moves (rebranded Critical Arts for this game) to take down your opponent.
The V-Gauge is filled up in one of two ways: being hit by your opponent or preforming special V-Skills. which are executed by pressing medium punch and medium kick at the same time. These are entirely character unique, with Ryu preforming a parry a la Street Fighter 3. V-Reversals, executed by hitting either all the punch or kick buttons while blocking, preform a special counterattack move at the cost of one segment of the V-Gauge. When you fill the gauge up to maximum, pressing hard punch and hard kick simultaneously will activate a character’s V-Trigger. These power V-Triggers are entirely character-unique, giving some characters stat boosts in various areas like speed or strength while allowing others to preform special techniques.
Unlike the Ultra Combos in Street Fighter 4, the imputs to activate all these character-specific V-Moves are identical and simple to execute. Capcom has gone on record as saying that this is an attempt to make the game more accessable, eschewing complicated execution of moves that can turn off less dextrous players in favor of more advanced stratagy and character depth.
As someone who enjoys fighting games but has a hard time “mastering” them, I can definitely appreciate a more accessable approach to controls. Even just seeing this small sample of gameplay with a limited roster has me excited to get my hands on SF5 next spring.
