An amazing concept backed up by excellent gameplay........But where's the rest of the game!?
So I pop the disc in, and jump right into tutorial, has some cool new moves like cross attacks which are special moves that both you and your partner perform, maybe a little too powerful but it does use up all 3 boxes of the gauge so no issue there with me. You also have gems now which trigger after performing certain actions which boost certain stats on your character for a limited time, another great welcome.
So now I'm in arcade mode, the roster is pretty big and a nice variety of characters from both worlds. I was pretty disappointed to not see Blanka or Christine here, but eh no big deal here. Seeing all the Tekken characters with the Street Fighter art style is pretty cool. I started off as Law and Paul (two of my top picks from Tekken), and it turns out all teammates (who are right next to each other on the character select screen) have their own storylines, dialog together, before and after the match, and ending which is great.
Playing as Tekken characters with this gameplay is actually really good. Sure they don't shoot fireballs and such like the SF characters do, but their combos and hand to hand combat are fluid and very welcome in the SF world. Their super arts moves are usually combos that are actually really nice to watch. Obviously the SF fighters play a lot like they did before so it's fun seeing the two sides battle. So gameplay wise, this game is pretty top notch, a lot of combos to learn and characters to master, which is always a plus in my book.
For modes you have your typical arcade mode, vs, and then you have mission mode which is just defeating opponents under certain conditions, a trial mode where the game teaches you combos that increase in difficulty the farther you get, and then a tutorial mode which, obviously, teaches you how to play and all the mechanics of the game. Then you have online as well obviously.
Now here's where my issues come in, and surprise surprise, it has a lot to do with Capcom's marketing techniques. I'm going to say it right off the bat, that this game feels incomplete. As I said before, some mains like Blanka, Christine, Bryan Fury, Dudley are all missing and are going to be DLC. Mind you these characters are finished, on the disc and ready to go (I mean you can even customize Cole's costume right now, his model is there and ready to go, but he's locked in the character select screen when trying to play as him), but we can't play as them until the fall, and we have to pay for them. Now to me, DLC is for content made after the games release to be there as extra for people who want it, but won't take away from the full experience if you don't have it. But that's not the case here, they left out some pretty big names here purposely. There are no in-game unlockable alt costumes, everyone has ONE costume with 2 different colors, now I was surprised to see this considering Tekken characters usually have about 3 or 4 if not 5 alts per person in the game right away. Now you have 3 custom slots to change the colors of a costume, and here's where things get a bit ridiculous with DLC. You can pick between the 2 colors that each character has on their costume by default, or black and white...Now this is pretty limited, not only do we only have one costume per character, but only 2 colors outside of their defaults that we can pick from? Now I'm sure this is going to happen, but I feel we are going to get charged for use of other colors, you read that correctly, DLC colors........ Really now Capcom? I mean at this point even DLC costumes are understandable, but colors? I have never played a game that has customization, allows you to color items, but only to black and white and have you pay to use the rest of the colors.
I've heard some people saying the on disc DLC is good so that way we don't have to deal with the compatibility issues when DLC comes out like we did in MK. I have two responses to that. 1: The people on-disc shouldn't be DLC in the first place because they're ON DISK! Plus what makes you think Capcom won't release anymore DLC outside of the on-disc stuff? This is Capcom after all. 2: At least MK felt like a finished product. Every character had at least 1 alt, none of the DLC were big names that you couldn't live without, had loads of modes, etc.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that this game feels unfinished. The core game itself is beyond fun, but the meat of the game isn't there. Characters left out, no alts, only black and white to choose from to color costumes with unless you pay for other colors in the future (again I'm assuming that color DLC will be made), modes aren't all that unless you're ok with online and arcade only, which I know some people are so that's not really that big of an issue. It's going to take a lot of extra payment on top of the $60 price tag to make this feel like a complete game. Everywhere you turn, you will feel like something is missing, like you are playing an unfinished game. Now I usually feel this way when playing a free to play game, where in order to get a better and fuller experience, you have to spend money. But I'm in complete favor of it in that case since you payed nothing to play it, so to support the devs, you pay for it by making microtransactions. But here you're dishing out $60 for what seems like a little more then half a game, and will be dishing out even more to make it a more complete experience.
Now if you could care less about costumes, modes, or certain characters that didn't make it and are only interested in the gameplay and fighting friends off or online, then by all means, go out and buy this game right now, you will not be disappointed. What they have done here is excellent, a blast to play and really nice to watch and experience. But if you're someone who does like having alt costumes, being able to color them to a full extent, wants a main story mode outside of arcade, or have a favorite character who is on-disc but unplayable until later on and for a price, you will be very disappointed. The game isn't bad by any means, it's actually quite amazing, it just lacks a lot of content. It's very barebones for a $60 retail game.
At the moment I have it as a rental, I will probably buy the game used in the future when it's much cheaper and then buy the DLC, that way I'd actually be getting more of a complete game for $50-$60....Either that or just wait for the likely super/ultimate arcade edition to come along.
Had this game had at least 1 alt for each character, full color palettes for coloring costumes, no big name characters locked as on-disc DLC, and at least some kind of story mode outside of arcade. This game would have my full support, I would have purchased it myself by now, and I would highly recommend people to get it. But as I said, if you could care less about content and just want to fight, get it. If you play single player a lot and like a lot of content, stay away at the moment, as it does feel very limited and bare bones for a full retail game.