It brought some nice changes to the SF series and is a fun fighting game but has a small roster of characters.
SF Alpha is an enjoyable SF game.It's story is set in between the events of the original SF game and SFII.
The game plays similar to the SFII series and places importance on delicate timing and strategy for victory.SF Alpha feels a bit different to the SFII games because the CPU opponents are not as punishing(they don't constantly counter aerial attacks and don't constantly win air battles like in SFII)so it allows you to experiment more with how you attack a CPU opponent(you might try to do an aerial attack and follow it up with a combo).Unlike the SFII games,SF Alpha discourages people from being defensive because the defensive moves in SF Alpha are not as effective or overpowered as they are in the SFII games.
SF Alpha allows characters to block in the air,so opponents can't die you down with projectiles and anti air moves as much.
Ryu,Ken,Chun Li and Sagat are the only playable SFII characters in this game.Characters from the original SF make an appearance such as Birdie,Gen,Adon and they have add more variety to the fighting styles.Adon was the 2nd last boss on the original Street Fighter and he uses Muay Thai style.Birdie is a huge street punk who is slow and cumbersome but will try to pound you with his sheer strength.Guy and Sodom from Final Fight make an appearance.Rose is a new female character who is a fortune teller and has powers that allow her to shoot her own type of projectiles and set opponents on flames and hit her opponents multiple times with images of herself.Charlie is a new character and it's the same Charlie who Guile was avenging for in SFII.Dan is a new character and his father was killed by Sagat.The character roster is not very big.
The game does have character balance problems.Ryu and Ken's hadoken and shoryuken do a lot of damageand they have big technical advantages over the other characters.In fact,if I use Ken or Ryu,it's quite easy to beat all the other characters.The super combos are available in SF alpha and they can turn the tide of a battle.
The graphics are more colorful and better animated than in any of the SF Alpha games.I think SF Alpha's artstyle looks better and it looks more comical and the characters don't look as angry or intense as they did in the SFII games,but it's a nice change.
The announcer sounds happy unlike the announcer in SFII games and it adds a nice atmosphere.The blows from each attack sound more louder and harder than in the SFII games.
It's a fun SF game,but it felt redundant quickly because SF Alpha 2 was released not long after this game.