Street Fighter IV still stands as not only my favourite fighting game of all-time, but favourite game across any genre. As we transitioned into Street Fighter V, I had high hopes that the game would match or exceed the heights of its predecessor. It did not.

A disastrous launch botched basically every aspect of the game, from no single-player content, to awful online, excessive button input delay, to fundamentally-flawed combat design. My fandom for the franchise still carried me quite far. I reached a pretty high ranking in online play and even won an IRL tournament before finishing 17th in the Cineplex WorldGaming Street Fighter V National Championships.

Not long after my most successful tournament run ever, I left the game behind. I found myself being overly-frustrated with the game’s faults, as well as my personal struggle to continually improve as a player. Though I’ve dabbled in other fighting games here-and-there, I never found a new game to call home.

Almost on a whim, I picked up Street Fighter V: Champion Edition on PC as a potential first step towards moving all of my future fighting game playing on the platform. Most of my time thus far has been reacquainting myself with the fighting game I left behind long ago. How are things nowadays?

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When I left Street Fighter V behind, I was an Ultra Platinum ranked player. While not the highest possible rank one can attain, it’s one of the higher ranks in the game. Based on the distribution of players as of last year, that would have put me within the top 2.5% of all players. Not too shabby!

After taking a multi-year hiatus, I’m kind of back. Been putting in some time with the PC version and really enjoying what the game has finally grown into. However, one particular aspect of the experience is driving me nuts: my struggle to regain my old ranking.

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Years after leaving Street Fighter V behind, I recently began my journey anew. This time, with a clear mind, no pressure to perform, and with a new account on PC with zero ranking points.

Though I still have a lot of rust to shake off, I didn’t exactly return to the scene as a white-belt warrior. In about a day’s worth of work, I jumped from 0 BP to about 4,500; good enough to get me into Gold rank. Based on the way that players are distributed across the rankings, I leapfrogged roughly 88% of the player base.

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