How to Play Street Fighter 5 – The Basics

Street Fighter 5 is now upon us. It released on the PlayStation 4 and PC this week as arguably the most highly anticipated fighting game since Street Fighter 4. If you’re reading this article it probably means that you just picked up Street Fighter 5 and you want to get better at the game. This article is here to teach you how to get better at Street Fighter 5 and hopefully score some wins against your friends and strangers online. You won’t become a master from this article, but hopefully you’ll stop using a few of the more popular novice techniques that don’t work all that well against better players.

Don’t Jump

The biggest mistake that new players make is jumping far too often. Don’t get us wrong, there are certainly instances in which jumping is the best option. If Ryu throws a fireball at you from across the screen, it’s okay to neutral jump over it. However, if Ryu is fairly close to you, he may want you to jump over his fireball so that he can knock you out of the air with a Dragon Punch. Don’t fall for his bait and just block the fireball (or evade it if you have attacks that can go through or ignore projectiles).

Remember that you cannot block while you’re in the air. By jumping you are leaving yourself wide open to an attack. Likewise, know your anti-air attacks. For some characters it’s a special move like Ryu’s Dragon Punch (Shoryuken), but for other characters like F.A.N.G it may be a crouching Heavy Punch or some other normal attack. Many characters have multiple anti-air attacks, so head into training mode and go through all of your character’s attacks to see what works best to knock an opponent out of the air.

Take the Throw

Defense is a very important aspect of Street Fighter 5. If you’re not blocking, chances are you’re going to take damage. Think of fighting games as a lesson in taking turns. When it’s the opponent’s turn to attack, that means you must defend. Once the opponent’s attack comes to an end, it’s your turn to attack. There’s frame data that gives you more details on when to attack and when to defend, but we’ll get to that in a more advanced article. For now, just block when your opponent is attacking and wait for their barrage of attacks to end.

Against some opponents, they will try to throw you as soon as they see you’re blocking. Most throws in Street Fighter 5 have a very short range. While there are some exceptions, if an opponent is trying to throw you while you’re blocking their attacks, they have to move forward a bit first. This is your indication to jump or break the throw (press Light Punch and Light Kick at the same time just as you’re about to be thrown).

Throws generally do far less damage than combos. While you don’t want to take throw after throw, it’s better than taking combo after combo. It’s all about knowing when your opponent is not at advantage so that you can start your turn and force the opponent to defend. Most characters have at least a three or four hit combo they do while you’re blocking before you can attack. If you keep getting hit, save your replay and go back to watch when you got hit so you can recreate the situation and figure out when you could have attacked. If the opponent jumped or tried to throw, it usually means you could have attacked at that point.

Normal Attacks Work

In Street Fighter it seems as though every new player just wants to throw out fireballs and Dragon Punches with little regard to their normal attacks. These normal attacks (Light Punch, Medium Kick, etc.) are what lead to your special moves in many cases. Some are better than others, but every character has a few normal attacks that you should be using more than anything else in their arsenal. For Karin this would be standing or crouching Medium Kick, for Ryu it would be standing Light Kick or Medium Kick.

Every character has a unique set of normal moves that work well for keeping an opponent out, knocking an opponent out of the air as an anti-air attack, or keeping you at advantage so you can continue your offense. There are also bad normal attacks that can be punished by an opponent. Most crouching Heavy Kicks fall into this category and should not be your go-to attack under most circumstances. Testing out your normal attacks to see which ones work and can be chained or linked into other normal attacks, and which ones you should avoid, is key to winning in Street Fighter 5.

We’ll be covering Street Fighter 5 all month, so be sure to head back to Prima Games to get answers to all of your burning questions. For now, check out our glossary of terms so you know what everyone is talking about, or check out our article on which character you should play first.