I’ll never forget my first few hours at Toryuken, Toronto’s most recent major fighting game tournament. Scrambling for someone to partner with me for Street Fighter X Tekken, I was repeatedly rejected by dozens of players, all of whom claimed to not play the game. Inside the main room, not a single station was running the game. As the tournament was nearing its start time, one of the tournament organizers got on the mic and asked the community if it was alright if they set up a Street Fighter X Tekken station, and the crowd roared with boos. Though I’d seen a number of negative comments about the game by players in blogs, and message boards, seeing the hate manifest in that way made the sentiment really hit home for me.
Players have had no shortage of reasons to dislike this game, from its on-disc DLC, to the inclusion of the controversial gem system, to its garbled mess of gameplay systems, one game-breaking glitch, and then some. Starting now, however, Capcom is hoping to take steps to reinvigorate this under-performing title.
Though the original plan was to make the 12 planned DLC characters available in the fall, Capcom has decided to try and build some good will with the community by releasing these characters months in advance. While they will still run you $20, waiting to release these characters until the fall would be way too late at this point. Though I’m not extremely excited about any particular character, I am looking forward to adding them to the existing roster.
The bigger deal in all though, is the first major balance patch, which aims to address a number of character and gem issues. I ultimately stopped playing the game due to horribly overpowered auto block and auto tech gems, but they’ve supposedly been toned down dramatically with this patch. I would have preferred if they patched them out completely, but if they’re rendered useless at a competitive level, then maybe I’ll settle. Also, nerfing Hugo would be nice.
This is likely not Capcom’s last stab at saving this game, as this patch doesn’t address most of the system-level issues, such as the underpowered Pandora mode, and how too many matches end in time overs. Still, here’s to hoping that this is a step in the right direction. Even though things look bleak now, with the right fixes, and marketing in place, Street Fighter X Tekken could be saved. If Capcom could turn Street Fighter III around with Third Strike, then it’s presumably not too late for this title, either.
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In Third Person 
Ha, good point about SFIII. That is actually one of my favorite games, fighter or otherwise.
Anyway, I was happy with SFxT, but it didn’t wow me. Unfortunately I’m not as competitive as I was (and even then I sucked), but hearing how this game has fallen out of favor from fighting game fans is just sad, and Capcom needs to rectify this. And that’s saying the game ever WAS in favor with the fans.
Early builds of the game got the seal of approval from the competitive community. However, Capcom then squandered it by putting in way too many system mechanics after that, and did a poor job of implementing them. Picked up the new characters, and balance patch today, and I think there’s definitely more work to be done on a system level to make it a contender.
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