Street Fighter: Duel, needless to say, is a divisive product, to say the least. It usually happens when we talk about mobile games, even more so when we try to somehow reduce famous and consolidated experiences to the simplified form of an arcade title for iOS and Android, although in this case Capcom went further by choosing a "clicker" approach.
No, we're not talking about the disturbing creatures that inhabit the post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us, but about "games" (it's appropriate to define them that way, this time) that involve minimal interaction, which translates into a few screen touches or even activating an automatic mode that performs the progression for us.
These are strange deviations for a market made up mostly of occasional users, who vaguely know the medium of video games and are looking for a hobby that can entertain them in an improvised way, while they are on the bus or in line at the post office. .
Well, does the spin-off developed by A Plus and produced by Crunchyroll meet these criteria? the answer in Street Fighter: Duel Review.
Gameplay: Don't call it a fighting game
That Street Fighter: Duel is not a fight games Like the numerous episodes of the series on which it is based, it becomes clear right away. Although, in reality, all the conditions were in place to create a solid and competent "gestural" beat'em-up, as there are many in the App Store and Google Play (see, for example, the review of Shadow Fight Arena), in In this case the idea was mainly to exploit the characters and universe of the Capcom series to create something simpler.
The various Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, and the troupe of singers engage in spectacular on-screen team fights, sure, but their actions are almost completely automated. The only thing that is granted to us at the front game is to activate its special moves as soon as the corresponding bar is charged and possibly chain them using the classic "elemental" system that creates synergies and produces more or less relevant effects depending on the opponents we face.
In this sense there is another strategic mechanic, if we want to define it that way, which consists of organizing the positions that our team will assume once on the field, as well as support characters that will multiply the statistics of individual warriors, increasing the effectiveness of their blows and their resistance to obey a very banal concept: except in rare cases, the strongest in the paper wins.
The cancellation of the human factor inevitably weighs on Street Fighter: Duel's ability to escape the inevitable logic of a modelo free-to-play which consists of growing characters, increasing their level, equipping them with the best items, possibly "merging" them if you have several duplicates, and continuing this discussion endlessly to obtain the degree of competitiveness necessary to progress between campaigns and missions. .
Structure: no numbers missing
In terms of content, clearly, Street Fighter: Duel loses nothing and, in fact, advances level after level, taking advantage of a very big list, under long campaign single player to keep us as busy as possible and make us hit a paywall after a few hours. It was inevitable, after all the F2P model works like that, but fortunately there is a whole series of "side" challenges that can be carried out for progression purposes to overcome these obstacles.
From this point of view, it would be unfair to accuse the Crunchyroll product of being ruthless: no ticket system or consumables have been introduced to recharge energy and therefore you can play as long as you want, opting for other paths where the campaign has become too difficult at that time. Of course, as soon as you unlock asynchronous multiplayer (which is fully automated, leaving nothing to chance) the orientation towards monetization becomes clear. Optional but obvious.
Technical realization: damn, it's a gem.
When someone pulls a clicker out of a historical fighting game, they're obviously not a naïve fool but someone who has done the math very well in their pocket, and despite criticism about the actual quality of this type of experience, you can't tell really that the guys from A Plus have done a bad job on a technical and artistic level, by the way Visually Street Fighter: Duel is a gem.
Yes, you have to digest the almost chibi connotation of the characters, but between the special moves, animations, stages and linked artwork there is really a lot of substance capable of exciting historical fans of the Capcom series. And if we add to this pleasant system the remastered original song, the result is a truly remarkable spectacle, which alone is worth the price of the download. Which is equal to zero, of course: so to speak.
Conclusions
Tested version iPhone digital delivery app store, Google Play Price Free Holygamerz.com 6.5 Readers (4) 4.7 your voteStreet Fighter: Duel as a game is not worth much, we are talking about a clicker with vaguely strategic RPG characteristics in which you interact very little and only pursue progression, using the resources that you obtain from time to time to grow your characters, unlock new ones and advance through the different modes available, which are different and allow you to overcome the inevitable paywalls without having to put up with tickets, waits and consumables. At the same time, it is a concentration of fanservice, a very pleasant spectacle for the eyes and ears that will hardly leave fans of the Capcom series indifferent. Who knows, maybe every once in a while a game will escape even fighting game purists.
PRO
- Really nice to see and hear.
- A huge amount of content
- Free-to-play model evident but not limiting
AGAINST
- It's a simple clicker.
- Very repetitive after a while.
- Paywalls, although they can be avoided, appear quite quickly
