Street Fighter V: 10 Reasons It's A Huge Disappointment

9. Losing Online Character Select Is Just... Weird

If you've been playing Street Fighter for any length of time, chances are you'll already identify yourself in fan circles by the character you play. You're either 'a Ryu or Ken guy', a 'Dhalsim guy' or even an 'Akuma guy' if you're feeling fancy. To that end, SF V's online mode attempts to expedite getting in and out of matches by losing character selection before every fight, instead seeing you choose a preferred fighter as part of your profile and having them appear by default as you boot into a match. Such a thing was always going to be a divisive idea - so why not have it be an option to toggle on and off? The very nature of changing decades-worth of how we play could be a step in the right direction, but you can't force everybody down the same path right away, if ever. Plus, nobody other than seasoned SF-veterans are even going to approach the game with a specific character in mind anyway, so to put it on the shoulders of those who have no idea what the differences between characters are just feels off-putting.