SFV has been pretty hit and miss at that
Some were good concepts that has been fucked up by crap execution like Ken, Alex (still SF3 better concept)
Some has been a step down even as concept, problem being they gave priority to design reflect time jump/story over pure SF design
Some has been and upgrade
I say around 50% positive, 50% a step down
Yes, let’s remove the only bit of originality he had and make him as caricatural as possible.
A hoodie makes so much sense in a fight 
Done, now will you let go of your irrational hate for a costume that both makes sense in the context of a fight and is a node to the most ancient fight tradition, which goes perfectly with what the character represents?
I have no idea how I haven’t found this before, even tho I’ve looked for it, but damn
How is this still not in the game in any official way?
As far as SFV designs go, my opinion is as follows
Here’s something I strongly dislike about Akuma’s redesign.
For one, I wouldn’t say it’s awful, but we all know we’re playing that nostalgia costume. Like it ain’t terrible, but his original design is so much better.
What I don’t get, is that SFV takes place chronologically before 3, you mean to tell me this man Akuma gave enough of a shit to cut his beard and the most of his hair?
But do you prefer the censored or uncensored version? You either get her wearing a skintight purple suit with weird cutouts, or you get her wearing a skintight purple suit with weird cutouts over a fullbody skintight black suit. Either way, the bodysuit isn’t that great. Story suit is more practical, but ends up looking too generic. At least her casual wear Battle Outfit is good, the only thing that competes with her Nostalgia costume.
As for the boob job, I’ve mentioned it before but that was the fault of SSF4, not SFV. Her SFV model is loyal to her inflated SSF4 stats.
Cody’s SFV outfit is a vast improvement, but nearly anything would be a vast improvement over the terrible prison stripes outfit.
Blanka should have had Blanka-chan as his default, but his default fine. Capcom seems to have trouble designing outfits for a character that only wears shorts, so they just gave his orange hair more volume? His Battle Outfit is a trainwreck, though.
I’ve no real issue with SFV Seth, though she could have been taller. SF4 Seth was one of Capcom’s worst designs; the SFV redesign brings a bit more interest visually as well as to Seth as a character. The rejected concepts for SFV Seth were pretty awful too, worse than SF4 Seth.
Something about SFV Ibuki just looks like bad lazy design. Kind of like Ken’s face, but for the whole model.
I don’t like the Birdie redesign, but it was probably his fate after his Alpha redesign turned Birdie into a joke character that undergoes massive body changes.
I don’t really care either way, but to be frank if I had - and I agree with you here - her premium costume should’ve been her default. It looks fantastic, hair down Juri doubles her hotness, and I love the pink highlights on the bangs
Really? Maybe it’s just because of how she’s modeled in V, but I’ve always been under an impression that she was rather modest in the chest area in her SFIV iteration, and as if she grew like 4 sizes in V
Lol Blanka would’ve been tournament banned if blanka-chan was his default
I agree with most of your review with SFV’s designs. Hope you don’t mind that I copy your work but change it up a bit so it doesn’t look obvious?
Ryu - I honestly wouldn’t mind if Hot Ryu was the new default. But he’s been the same for many years. It’s classic, and it’s “poster boy” recognizable. But I would like some subtle changes sometime soon. (6/10)
Chun-Li - I feel this is the best looking Chun-Li of any SF iteration ever, both in terms of look and movement. She retains the same look as always, but it’s so iconic and so different, that I feel that it was best to keep her as is. (DigiValentine explains in his video perfectly if you get a chance to watch). And a good follow up vid as well) Y’all know by now my Chun-Li bias, but I feel she’s of the best looking SFV characters in the whole game. (10/10)
Nash - I’m glad he’s back. I do enjoy the concept of him coming back from the grave, but the Frankenstein Monster feel a little too silly. (Though some could argue it fits SF’s aesthetic) (5/10)
M. Bison - @Daemos might send his disciples after me. But I LOVE Bison’s new look. I feel the white hair brings out the ghostly sinister side without making him look old AF. And I like how Bison trenchcoat makes him look a little different while still honoring his original design. (10/10)
Cammy - Classic design, but with an “addition by subtraction”. I feel the removal of the leg paint and replacement with the harness and holster just feels more right. (8/10)
Birdie - This is my first disagreement with you @PVL_93_RU. I really like Birdie’s fat look. It shows how much he’s fallen from a badass on the streets, to released Shadaloo grunt. I guess when you aren’t employed and stress, you do weird things to your body, even stress eating. And I feel that it could only work with Birdie. With other fighters looking bigger than him, I feel the added fat makes him a little more different from the other hulking characters. (7/10)
Ken - I love this design better. He looks much more loose and free than Ryu. He just looks and feels like a different Ryu, with much more spice (9/10)
Necalli - Putting story feelings aside, Necalli had an interesting concept. his personality and animations do more to bring out his feral side than his design. Super Saiyan Necalli looks better. (7/10)
Vega - This design brings out more matador than Ninja. It’s a subtile change, but it makes Vega feel different. But his animations and poses (especially his neutral pose) end up making up more points. It feels like a better fighting pose and style than what he had. (8/10)
R. Mika - It does look the same. But the heart shape on her chest obviously screams for fanservice. (6/10)
Rashid - I feel his personality makes him more of a memorable character than his actual design. I love how chill he is, and he’s one of the more endearing new characters. His design is passable for the most part. (7/10)
Karin - This is how you redesign a character! I’m glad Capcom matured her into a young professional classy woman, from her earlier school girl days. She’s fabulous, she’s confident, she’s matured. Another home run by capcom. (10/10)
Zangief - While it is the same, I can’t fault it. He’s all about Muscle Power, and his design does the job. (6/10)
Laura - Her design screams “flashy and fun”. While her design may score high marks, her fun but dumb personality feels a bit of a turnoff. (7/10)
Dhalsim - Another instance where Capcom makes a subtle change (giving him a white beard) and it makes a world of difference. He does feel like a yoga master. (8/10)
F.A.N.G. - He’s awesome! Both design and personality. (9/10)
Alex - I never was blown away by his original design, and this one doesn’t do anything to make me feel any better or worse. Not to mention his personality feels boring (then again, this isn’t his game). (5/10)
Guile - This right here is a perfect example of “If it aint broken, don’t fix it”. WTF was Capcom thinking? I know his arms are the visual cues for his signature Sonic Boom, but don’t give him a promotion and then make him look stupid. (3/10)
Ibuki - They tried to blend her school uniform with her ninja gi. I feel it clashes too much for it to be good. But I think DigiValentine explains it best in his video. (3/10)
Balrog - I LOVE his new hood. I don’t have much to say other than that. (7/10)
Juri - Her new default isn’t bad, but her original one is just better. (6/10)
Urien - While I do find his loincloth look more memorable, he looks really good in a suit. And it just works, especially with someone in a position of power he’s in.
Akuma - Read @PVL_93_RU review. It’s perfectly summarized. (1/10)
Kolin - I really like it. Cold and manipulating, yet upon first meeting her in ASF, it took me a while to realize that she was the same character from SFIII. I like her color scheme. (7/10)
Ed - I feel this guy is at a crossroads. He feels like untapped potential, but it feels he grew up too fast (literally and figuratively). I’m not a fan of his default, it screams more Shadaloo Lieutenant than Neo Shadaloo main leader. I feel that this wasn’t the game to introduce him, but Capcom scraped and blended as many balrog/Bison ideas they could to make him. It doesn’t work that well. (Still has an S-Tier theme song) (3/10)
Abigail - How to put it? I think Abigail’s visual design looks alright, his personality is stupid, and his animations cross between hulking powerhouse and a child. I’m meh on it, but I feel he’s a better “Goliath” character than Hugo. (4/10)
Menat - Best new character of the game. Sugarpunch’s vid praises her better than I could ever do.
Zeku - His old color scheme feels off, but I love the Strider references and style. He feels like a refreshing take on the “Old Character” trope for fighting games. (8/10)
Sakura - Again, I’ll give props to Capcom for properly aging and maturing this character. Her design and personality (as well as story) do everything to sell her on a young woman finding her way into adulthood. And as much as i loved Sakura’s school girl uniform, this one is just… better. (10/10)
Blanka - He looks less stupid in this iteration than he did in SFIV. And Blanka-Chan is S-Tier. I’ve always been Meh on his character, but this one is a tad improvement. (6/10)
Falke - Falke is a copy of Ed’s design, but it’s just better looking. Personality is still boring AF though. A definition of “average” (5/10)
Cody - While I do believe granting him mayoral power is a bit much after his days of being a convict, I do admit that it writes another chapter into Cody’s story. His design and personality matches with his story and it has to. And I think that’s why I like it so much. Possibly better than the prison outfit. (8/10)
G - Not sold on him being the “final boss” of the game just yet (unless a 2nd story mode proves me otherwise). He’s easily the goofiest and most outrageous design, but he’s got plenty of charisma to spare. Most of my crits I have with G are minor, but everything from his design, to his showmanship, to his animations are excellent. Even his presidential speeches are enough to win the popularity vote. (9/10)
Sagat - . I do like the “hermit” look as well, but I can’t explain why I still feel “meh” on his costume. I think maybe I wanted Sagat to put on some more muscle, or something. But I don’t really know. (7/10)
Kage - Akuma’s was bad. But let’s be real, Kage is the worst. (0/10)
E. Honda - His traditional mawashi is much more eye-catching than his original. That’s the one improvement I like about him. Other than that, there wasn’t that much improvement on his design or personality, was there? (6/10)
Lucia - I’m glad with this new look on her. I like it better than her original Final Fight look. She looks more like a cop than even Chun-Li’s default outfit. I actually like her voice and accent too. (7/10)
Poison - I like her whip better than her riding crop. I like her more with short hair than longer. And though her SFIV may be better for fan service, I think SFV did a good job of refreshing her, even a little. (7/10)
Gill - Agreed with you on that, but I feel if they gave Gill the Urien treatment and gave him a suit or something, it wouldn’t work. He screams Divinity, so he needs to have the air of a God. And I think that’s why this design feels off. I feel he needs a glow surounding him or something. (5/10)
Seth - I like the new look, I hate the new personality (5/10)
Dunno what to tell you, man. That’s real boxer attire.
No, because he’s a pankration user. And pankration users don’t fucking dress like that anymore, so “ancient fight tradition” gets absolutely zero points from me. It’s the equivalent of putting Guile in a civil war uniform.
I’ll take “Doesn’t make sense+looks badass” over “doesn’t make sense+looks fucking stupid” any day.
Pretty much nailed it. Even the reasons are correct.
Considering her previous design was a heart on each tit, her new design is less fanservicey than the old one.
Her SF4 model is modest in the chest area; the model was never changed. Capcom had character profiles posted online before Super Street Fighter IV’s release, which included character measurements. Juri’s original stats were relatively modest, fitting her 3D model. Capcom then changed Juri’s profile, adding 8cm to her bust and removing “big breasts” from her “Likes”, the latter showing that it indeed wasn’t just a numeric typo but an intentional profile change.
SFV character models appear to be fairly loyal to the official SSF4 stats, and so we now have boob job Juri.
Hasn’t Blanka-chan been tournament legal up until he was included in the recent announcement of a number of costume and color bans? For most of SFV’s life, Capcom didn’t really seem to care about costume “fairness”; they only seemed concerned about female costumes that drew complaints.
Which makes sense because it keep them warm before the fight. But I don’t think any boxer is stupid enough to keep it in the ring when actually fighting.
If Balrog was doing the sensible thing and removing it before the fight, it would be a good outfit, as it is it’s just stupid.
I don’t think it refers only to pankration, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadaka_Matsuri) but yes it certainly refers to that, except not the modern version because he’s part of a secret society that maintains traditions born centuries ago. The fact that he wears an outdated outfit is part of the design, it makes more sense than him wearing anything modern because it goes with who he is.
In this case it is “makes total sense+looks maybe stupid”.
Officially per CPT rules yes, but generally it’s one of the prohibited costumes since it completely screws up character proportions and makes harder to tell where Blanka’s hitboxes and hurtboxes are
He doesn’t fight in the ring. At all. During the entirely of SF5…
Every fight in SF5, he’s just hanging out, wearing his warm-up attire, and then suddenly he’s in a fight.
Not everybody throws off half their outfit like Bison and Gill every time a fight breaks out.
A society which Urien in no way respects the traditions of because those traditions are what’s keeping him beneath his brother.
The only reason he EVER wore that outfit because he was Gill’s headswap. And now that he’s not, there’s no reason he’d dress like the person he hates.
“Tradition? HAH! An outdated notion clung to by pathetic fools!” - Urien, probably
I think as general thing most people lack the design notions to fairly judge a new chara design beyond the “i like it, it’s cool” as base
First step should ideally be if that SF design is a good SF design, and then with secondary importance, if we like it
Assuming you care about SF art style my take is that one should be more concerned about changes in coherence/stylization
This does’nt mean no changes (will be hypocrite from somebody that possibly influenced new SFV Ken), but that changes should keep alive (and help going forward) the identity of SF art style continuing the path
Some alts people dislike are still in line with SF design, some others people finds cool go out of the line
“Cool” or “suck” rarely fit with the quality of a SF design, mostly because some essential factors gone completely ignored by most while “judging” it, giving priority to personal taste regardless if it’s in line with SF stylization or not
To be fair on people, must be said capcom is letting so many different hands touch SF that i doubt even them have a clear idea of what SF stylization is anymore, wich can explain even elements inside the game not having coherence with each other
I wouldn’t want to even begin opening the can of worms that is alt costumes designs in SFV, half of that shit was made for nothing but fetish purposes so people can play dress up with their waifus. Capcom clearly following DOA’s example with how many cosmetics there are in this game, could probably buy like 10 brand new 60$ games with the money it’d take pre-Champion Edition
Yes, but what is “good SF design” at this point?
Capcom has been all over the map with its character design. SF1 was moderately realistic martial arts movie fare. SF2 added more fantasy with limb-stretching Dhalsim and monster-boy Blanka. Alpha went anime, with its art style, with its character designs, and with its overall insanely over the top stories. SF3 kind of tried to reinvent SF2, but with a dash more of unrealistic exaggerated “cartoon”, not so much SFA’s “anime”. At the same time, SF3 pinned its story on an utter embarrassment of a 3-year-old’s idea of a boss design with sports superfan Gill. SF4 tried to both return and the main series move to 3D, and brought more bad designs into the roster, including an attempt to create a worse boss design than Gill. SF5 was outsourced 3D rushed to market.
Rolento has no business being in martial arts tournament focused Street Fighter. At best he’s a cartoon-ified Mortal Kombat character. He uses hand grenades in multiple moves. He has henchmen hanging from the ceiling, ready to interfere. He hops around on a stick like Capcom’s version of Scrooge McDuck. People accept Rolento as “Street Fighter” because he was a Final Fight character, and accept his out-of-place design because it was introduced in the increasingly goofy “anything goes” Alpha series.
Dan is considered “Street Fighter”, but he’s also a character that could only have come out of the goofy “anything goes” Alpha. Once he was created in Alpha, he became accepted as “Street Fighter” and could be put in any other game. But he could only be created and developed as Dan within the Alpha series, as a brand new character Dan would not have fit into any other Street Fighter series. In SF2, the joke would have been different. In SF3 and SF5 we actually did get new characters (Sean, Kage) that implemented some ideas of Dan, and they were very much not Dan.
People say that Abigail doesn’t fit “Street Fighter” due to his exaggerated build while simultaneously accepting Hugo. However, Abigail’s exaggerated upper body follows the exaggerated build of the Alpha series; it is Hugo’s exaggerated head that didn’t fit “Street Fighter”.
Some argue that G doesn’t fit Street Fighter. Indeed, he’d have been ridiculed if he’d been introduced in SF4, perhaps setting a new low below terrible/misguided designs like El Fuerte and Rufus. G wouldn’t really fit into Alpha either; it might have been an “anything goes” festival, but a fighting not-Lincoln is a bit too American for Alpha’s anime sensibilities. On the other hand, G isn’t that far removed from the weirdness of SF3. He’s no less fitting than Necro. The similarities alone would have him working beside Q in the roster. And honestly Gill didn’t just lower the bar for “acceptable design”; Gill buried that bar underground. G’s presidential styling would also arguably fit well enough into the stereotyped world of Street Fighter 2, at the very least as a new challenger in Super if not the base roster.
The acceptance of the game itself is also a factor in what designs are accepted. When Street Fighter 3 was disliked, people disliked the SF3 character designs. When opinions changed on SF3, it was also more accepted to like SF3 characters. By the time SF3 was held as a holy grail, all SF3 characters had been graced as “Street Fighter”. (Well, maybe not Remy, but mostly because everyone simply forgets about Remy.) Alpha’s character designs can be a mess, but Alpha as a series is beloved and that seems to bring acceptance for everything that is Alpha.
Man, forget SF6. Just make Alpha 4, with dem sweet ArcSys graphics!
Real talk though, I still think Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom is one of the best that the SF characters has ever looked.
Why can’t SF6 just have said look? I want the numbering system to actually go forward and make sense after SF5. We’re like so close to the series not having another prequel. Besides, I’m itching for a new art style.
Agreed, look at Alex, that was a great transition to 3d.
Capcom will never spent a sum of money big enough on a fighting game to create GGXrd-ish visuals.
xTekken reused assets from IV and most of the development went into adapting Tekken characters
Ultra literally just ported a few characters and stages from xTekken, alongside balance changes
V was outsourced to people from seemingly every corner of the world
Infinite was an all around disaster that looked like a PS3-era AA project
Even though I want to move on to 6 already, I would lie if I said I’m not dreading what Capcom would do with the series
