Gaming
We chat to Street Fighter pro Masato ‘Bonchan’ Takahashi and get some top tips for SFV newbies.
Are you looking for a bit of expert help getting started with Street Fighter V? Look no further. We’re on hand with Red Bull’s very own Masato ‘Bonchan’ Takahashi – Evo 2014 runner-up, and one of the world’s very best Street Fighter players – to bring your game up to scratch and help you take on the legions of hungry online warriors out there.
Bonchan has been hard at work preparing for Evo 2016, which has already broken all previous registration records. In just four days, more people signed up to compete in this year’s Street Fighter V tournament than ever signed up for any Street Fighter IV tournament. Bonchan is just one of those entrants, and he has been honing his game against some of the world’s top pros. “Infiltration has been exceptionally strong since the beta version,” he tells us, “so I think he’ll be a real threat at Evo this year.”
Bonchan took a break from his training to give us some professional advice on Street Fighter V, complete with some insight on where the meta game stands at this early point.
It’s a brand new game, not a sequel... “Street Fighter V is a completely different game,” says Bonchan. “I think there’s a lot of potential for players who weren’t very good at SFIV to be really good at this game.” This is undoubtedly the best way to approach the game, especially for those who started their world warrior journey with Street Fighter IV. The two games may look similar, but there’s a Bison Flying Fortress-worth of changes underneath.
Street Fighter IV’s Revenge Gauge, Focus Attacks and execution-heavy combo system have all been scrapped, and Street Fighter V’s V-Gauge system and sub-mechanics make this game a totally different challenge. Any spacing and footsies skills you’ve built-up from fighting games will still come in very handy, but if you spent hours mastering skills like plinking, focus attack dash cancelling and crouch-teching, we’ve got bad news: none of that exists in Street Fighter V. Instead, the game focuses on making good reads on your opponents moves, and converting those predictions into big damage through easier combos and powerful supers, now called ‘Critical Arts’.
Street Fighter V is about offence… In a similar vein, if SFIV favoured defensive play in many situations, SFV has certainly swung over in the other direction, and is very much geared towards offence, says Bonchan.
“I think Street Fighter V forces you to be more offensive, because defensive strategy is not as effective,” he explains. “You can still try and play a safer game, but SFV’s mechanics don’t support that the way that SFIV’s did.”
Throws are a great example of this change. In Street Fighter IV, you could perform a ‘crouch tech’ to safely escape throw situations. By holding down-back (the block input) and pressing light kick and light punch buttons together (the throw input), the game let you cover multiple eventualities: if your opponent hit you, you would block; If your opponent tried to throw you, you would tech the throw; and if your opponent did nothing, you would attack them with your own crouching light kick, putting you quite literally on the front foot. Clever players could find ways to exploit crouch techs, but for the most part, it was a safe way to escape all those possibilities.
Crouch techs are now gone, so when you find yourself in a similar situation in SFV, you’re going to have to make a decision based on what you think your opponent wants to do, and if you guess wrong, you’re going to take some damage. And that decision is based on a huge range of factors. Are you close to stun? Does your opponent have full V-Gauge? Are you near the corner? There’s a lot more to think about in Street Fighter V.
The best way to train… In keeping with the changed mechanics, Bonchan has changed the emphasis of his training. “I used to train my playstyle to be efficient and very defensively stable,” he explains, “but now it’s very different – I train far more offensively than I use to. But you still have to train hard to be consistent.”
Particularly in its later years, execution became the main separating factor between good and great Street Fighter IV players. If you wanted to access your character’s highest damage combos, you were likely going to have to nail a few one-frame (one sixtieth of a second) links along the way, and that meant hours spent grinding away on combos in training mode – a task that only the elite players really had the heart for.
Street Fighter V’s combo system is vastly different, and focuses more on opening up the opportunities with smart spacing, rather than the high-level execution of completing the combo itself. High damage combos in SFV won’t have links any smaller than three-frames, and if three sixtieths of a second still sounds difficult, trust us: it’s really not that bad once you get used to the rhythm of the game.
As usual though, practicing across training mode and online matches is the best way to improve at the game, and it’ll give you less to think about in the long run. “I think the new stun bar is actually too small, I can’t really see it to be honest!” laughs Bonchan, “but once you’ve hit a certain level of training, you learn how much stun certain moves and combos do, so you know how close your opponent is to being stunned.”
Picking the right main “I think Street Fighter V’s character set is very varied, with a lot of different styles,” explains Bonchan, “so there should be a character that suits everyone.” SFV has really turned Street Fighter on it’s head, with even legacy characters like Ken, Vega and Dhalsim receiving heavily renovated move sets. In fact, Street Fighter V is probably the most diverse game ever in the series in terms of styles, introducing specials like arcing fireballs, damage-over-time fire and poison attacks, and completely unique V-Skills for every character.
“I think Nash, Chun Li, Ryu and Vega are all pretty strong at the moment,” says Bonchan. “I’m not sure anyone is really weak, apparently Zangief is but I’m not sure. It’s too early to say on that front.”
But as usual, picking Ryu is a solid way to kick off a new Street Fighter game. After all, the entire franchise has been built around his age-old combination of fireball, dragon punch and hurricane kick specials, and although SFV introduces a few new elements, it still obeys the eternal laws of Street Fighter.
“I am thinking I’ll main Ryu,” admits Bonchan, “at least until Sagat arrives in the game, hopefully! It’ll take a while to get up to my usual level, but I think it’s more fun when it’s challenging.”
Learn every character So, you should just focus all your energy into learning one character, and get really good, right? Wrong! You’re much better off trying out all of the cast, not just to see who you like and who you don’t, but also to get an idea of their moves and capabilities.
“It’s really important to learn every character,” says Bonchan. “You can’t fight effectively against another character without knowing what they can do. I study every character, regardless of who my main is.” Use your V-Gauge effectively Managing your V-Gauge is going to be a huge part of this game, and knowing when to use your V-Skill, V-Trigger and V-Reversal will often make the difference between a win and a loss. “I think V-Trigger is particularly powerful,” says Bonchan. “V-Trigger generally either makes you more powerful, or helps you save health, so it gives you lots of comeback potential.”
Using your V-Trigger requires two or three bars of your V-Gauge (which has a max of three bars) depending on your character, so you might have to make a decision at some points on whether you want to save bar for V-Trigger, or spend it on a V-Reversal (a counter-attack during block that gets your opponent off you). And that depends on your character as well as your situation.
“You can’t really decide on your strategy without knowing your character’s potential,” explains Bonchan. “V-Trigger is far more important for some characters than others.” Necalli is a great example of this, as his move set changes drastically when he activates his V-Trigger, giving him new combos and letting him absorb one hit on his ‘Disc’s Guidance’ special.
Meanwhile, you can use V-Skills to build your V-Gauge, as well as giving you extra options in the fight. “V-Skills differ greatly depending on the character,” says Bonchan, “so like before, you really have to understand how your character works.” These V-Skills vary from extra movement such as Ken’s ‘Quick Step’ and Chun Li’s ‘Rankyaku’ to attacks like Karin’s ‘Meioken’ and even damage avoidance like Ryu’s parry (called ‘Mind’s Eye’) and Vega’s ‘Matador Turn’.
I don’t find Ryu’s V-Skill to be useful very often,” Bonchan admits, “but some characters have exceptionally strong V-Skills. Necalli’s V-Skill is very important, and Dhalsim and R. Mika’s are very good too.”
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