SF6 showed that people were too harsh on this one

Not only is this the Street Fighter between 4 and 6, it also has each character play like a Street Fighter 4 character until you use V trigger and turn into a Street Fighter 6 character for a limited amount of time. Obviously not the case for all characters, but that's realistically my only gripe with the game as someone who enjoys both 4 and 6.

5 is somewhat of the awkward child in the current age of Street Fighter, released early because Capcom would've went bankrupt if they didn't sell SF copies to stay afloat, then Monster Hunter World saved the entire company. Unironic true story.

The beginning of the game's lifespan was tough, but with the new leadership under Takayuki Nakayama and Shuhei Matsumoto towards the later part of the game's active live service period the game had characters that made for great content; but after playing 6, it's very clear that is the game they actually wanted to make, picking up the scraps which was SF5 before they got involved was likely a test from higher ups to even trust them to make 6.

My true feelings towards this game is that it's SF6 if SF6 didn't have like 4 neutral skips with more characters and also you aren't actually playing SF6 until you use your V trigger, which also may or may not actually give you an install to turn you into an SF6 character unless you're actually playing a character who's V trigger turns you into an SF6 character, otherwise you're still playing SF5 while your opponent probably isn't, are you following? Great!

Going to be fully honest, my only interest in playing 5 is for the characters that only exist in this game. G, a motion input version of Q, Birdie, a character I entirely wrote off thinking he was lame as hell; turns out he's actually insanely sick and works as almost an anti-shoto with his anti fireball chain to punish projectiles and dash grapples that feel super satisfying to land, and Kage, the combination of Oni and Evil Ryu from SF4 that I desperately want to learn to get good at, with the only thing stopping me is me hoping I can just wait until he comes out in SF6 to not end up dumping hours on a game I play once every 3 months.

Honestly you can skip this one, I would definitely without skipping a breath recommedn 4, and I think 6 is also worth getting into, but 5 isn't for me. Or at least, I haven't really cracked it yet. I'd only really recommend getting into it if you're interested in playing a specific character.

nice