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?
