The microtransactions in this game are priced like it's a F2P. Capcom claims the characters and costumes and stages are earnable through gameplay. However, that is not realistic as it would take an unreasonable amount of time. Over 70+ hours to unlock one character — assuming you complete every weekly mission, win every extra battle(a gambling mode where you play the CPU), and win every online match.



Even the costume colors are ridiculous to earn. Each character gets two default colors for every costume with the rest being rewarded for beating the multiple difficulties of Survival mode. Easy has 10 fights and rewards Color3, Normal has 30 and rewards Colors4-6, Hard has 50 and rewards Colors7-10. Going through Easy takes about 3min, Normal takes about 10min, and Hard takes about 35min. If you lose you have to start over from the beginning, no consolation at all. If you want colors you have to do this for each and every character's costume, e.g, must beat all difficulties for Ryu's default costume's colors and then must beat them again for his alternate costume's colors. In Hard Survival, the CPU is favorably reacting to every button you press so if you do lose you feel cheated and angry. I suppose you don't have to play Survival and you can just buy the color packs, which was Capcom's plan from the beginning.



People gave Capcom flak for their previous model of releasing new editions for fighting games so this is their response. Pay for each piece of content that you want or try to "earn" them. As a competitive player it's necessary to have all the characters in the game. For Street Fighter 4 base game plus all editions, that costed me $130 throughout its 7 year lifespan. For Street Fighter 5 base game plus all season passes (at the time of this review there have been three), that has costed me $120 in year 2. I was able to earn a season pass set of characters but will most likely have to buy the rest from here on out. A dollar does not go very far in Street Fighter 5.



As a fan of Street Fighter and other fighting games, I am very disappointed with this game.