Street Fighter V March update adds Alex, a challenge mode and more

Look, Street Fighter V is a great game. A really, really damn good game that also happens to be a bit on the lean side when it comes to extra content. It’s like winning the sports car of your dream, and discovering that while it has an engine with many horses under the hood, it doesn’t have any seats inside of it or even a cup-holder.

That’s all going to change in the next couple of months however, as Street Fighter V with the first of what will most likely be many, many patches that tweak the balance and content of the game. The March update will add a Challenge mode, in-game shop and salty rematch options. The patch adds a new fighter in Street Fighter III’s Alex – the first of many monthly characters coming to flesh out the roster. But there’s more to it than that.

Here’s the full patch list, of punches and kicks to come according to Capcom Uuuuuuuniiiiiity. Prepare for psycho patch power:

Challenge Mode

• Demonstrations: Learn the ins and outs of Street Fighter V through helpful demonstration and tutorial content. Contains content for each of the 16 characters, as well as advice geared towards players of all skill levels:
• Beginner Tutorials: 12 lessons covering, movement, normal attacks, special attacks, V-System, throws, counter hits, chip/recoverable damage, etc.
• Intermediate Tutorials: 11 lessons covering projectiles, invincibility frames, armor and armor break, recovery, cross-up attacks, anti-air options, etc.
• Advanced Tutorials: 4 lessons covering back dashing, frame advantage/disadvantage, combo potential, button priority, etc.
• Character Tutorials: 16 lessons covering each individual character.
• Trials: Put your skills to the ultimate test with combo trials for all 16 characters, ranging from basic to pro combos. Completing Trials will also earn you some extra Fight Money.

In-Game Shop

• Fight Money Expenditure: Spend your hard earned Fight Money to purchase extra game content, such as DLC characters and the Story Mode Costumes.

Online Rematch Option

• Salty from a close loss online? Want revenge? Players can now play a 2/3 set in Ranked Match, provided both players accept the rematch.

Battle Lounge Improvements

• Enjoy up to 8 person lobbies, complete with match spectating.

Bug Fixes

• Bug: Sometimes you don’t get EXP from casual matches
• Bug: On a rare occurrence, if you restart the game after you unlock colors, the colors you unlocked will disappear

Character Balance Tweaks

Vega

• If you hit V-Trigger Bloody Kiss (anti-air) in certain situations, Vega will no longer continue to rise off the top of the screen.

M. Bison

• If M. Bison is interrupted by an opponent’s V-Trigger or Critical Art during his invisible frames of Double Knee Press in V-Trigger mode, M. Bison will no longer remain invisible until his next move.

Rashid

• Rashid will no longer float in the air for a moment if you perform his V-Trigger after he touches the ground upon a missed Eagle Spike.

Chun-Li

• During V-Trigger activation, the hit stop and block stop has been made the same for multi-hitting moves (medium or heavy attacks for both normal and special moves).
• She was previously able to perform option selects involving standing HP into Houyokusen, so this has been removed.

Vertical and Back Jump Frames

• All characters except Birdie and Zangief: Vertical jump and back jump frames have changed from 3f->4f.
• Birdie: Vertical jump and back jump frames have changed from 4f->5f.
• Zangief: No changes to jump frames.
• These changes reduce the effectiveness of throw tech option selects involving jumping (also known as “jump grab”). Changing forward jump frames would affect the game balance too much so those remain unchanged.

Throw Escape Change

• If you push buttons during the normal throw delayed tech window you are unable to escape throws for 2 frames.
• Prevents using light attacks to option select with throw escapes.
• If you execute specific special moves during the normal throw delayed tech window you are unable to immediately escape throws. Each characters V-skills, V-triggers, V-reversals, critical arts, and moves have been set individually.
• Prevents throw escape option selects involving specific moves such as Shoryuken, etc.

It’ll still be a few months before Capcom adds an actual story to Street Fighter V, which is scheduled to be in the loving embrace of the Pax Bisonica sometime in June. For now, you’ll have to still make up your own narrative when you crush man’s head like sparrow’s egg between mighty thighs.

Last Updated: March 11, 2016