I’ve been playing Tekken 7 for a few months now, and while I have an idea of what it’s the main goal to win there, I’m utterly clueless as to how do I manage to get victories consistently at SFV. I’ve seen several tutorial videos and I’ve noticed that the “punish combos” bit of them is fairly short, compared to Tekken where punishing is a big part of the game (among other things).
It’s becoming pretty clear that the objective here in SFV is quite different from Tekken, but what is it if punishment isn’t the most crucial way to earn a victory?
Punishing is still a huge part of sfv, but tekken 7 takes maybe 2-3 good reads to end a round.
Street fighter 5 has a lot more room for looking at what just happened and adapting to it. Its a shame because this balance of punishing conditioning and adapting Is great… but feels shallow in sf5 because moves lack creative freedom often.
Basically to consistently win… Not only do you have to get good punishes you have to be ready for any changes that might happen.
Which… honestly tekken 7 has that also, at higher levels of play, but lower to mid levels people are getting hit by moves that can lead to combos or grabs taking 2/3rds of their health.
Sf5 is very forgiving overall which means you have to put a bit more work into clean wins even with a decent skill difference.
I see, yet there are a ton of blockstrings and pokes that are safe on block and some even push back a little, and afterwards I have no idea what to do next (I main Cammy). I see very few instances where I can actually punish something (such as Laura’s mp I think? or a Shoryuken or a sweep). Other than that I’m just expecting to eat a CC if I so much press jab.
Street fighter is a poke oriented game. combos don’t matter as much, and are not even practical outside of usf4 so do not bother with those unless you grind the game alot.
SFV for the most part focuses more on frame traps and looking for ways to set up counter-hits/crush counter. Whenever you press something, it’s usually because it’s to catch your opponent pressing something else.
It’s the same game of conditioning, reading and spacing your opponent out in order to land hits and deplete his life bar or have more life when the timer runs out.
In that regard all fighting games are the same.
Tekken has more opportunities to steal turns and escape a pressure situation by using its cancelable seamless movement and sidestepping as well as the crush system, while SF has more ways of controlling space with either long limbs or fireballs and creating up close pressure with less risk involved due to the speed and in general safer nature of its normal moves.
Frame trapping, whiff punishing, poking and mindgames to make those tools more efficient:
It’s all the fucking same these, tools just weigh differently across games.
Thank you all! I was completely disoriented as to how the game is supposed to be played. Still, I do know combos and punishes are important, but CC combos seem to be the ones who actually turn the tide of the battle.
I know this might be an overtly-repeated question but, are there any tutorials that teach these how these concepts apply to SFV? There’s a ton of info on USF4 and previous games but most of what I’ve found online related to V are either character tutorials or ones for beginners.
The characters playstyles have been altered to fit the control scheme of alpha and sf3 and not sf2.
Sf2 characters do not play like their former selves, anymore.
Sf3 chars stayed mostly the same.
Alpha chars also retained a good bit of their previous playstyles.
I won’t go into detail for what he means but I can see why he would say that.
As far as how sf5 plays it’s basically a combo of these things, some matter more than others for different characters but most characters have some form of this going on:
Offense:
Get close, mixup between frame traps, staggers, throws and shimmys. If you have v trigger use a low poke or something along those lines and cancel it with your v pop. If the move hit use the v trigger freeze window to hitconfirm into a combo. This is the games easiest hitconfirm but it usually only comes up once or twice a round.
Offense getting in:
Use a meter gap closer or jump or dash. Walking in can be done but usually isn’t unlike oldschool streetfighter.
Offense after the hit:
Do bla bla bla dash into perfect meaty/throw mixup. This is confused and muddied by knockdowns having two different timings that you have to be able to react to, or simply guess right. If you guess you only have a 25% chance of actually doing damage because you have to guess which wakeup your opponent will do and then you have to guess which type of attack he will be open to, so only a 25% chance on average unless your opponent is very predictable about his wakeup options.
Defense up close:
Use your metered reversal or throw tech or jab or block.
Defense from far:
Use pre emptive jabs or mediums to hit dashes, you can do this on reaction if you guess and read your opponents movement. Also need to AA the opponent but the game is fast and suffers from laggy inputs and slow anti airs so AAing well isn’t easy.
Rinse and repeat with basically every character while adding in pokes here and there and command grabs here and there if you have them, plus whatever antifireball move you have to get around projectiles.