Street Fighter 5 Akira Review

After a full year of excited anticipation from fans, Akira has finally made her way into Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition. As a guest from another fighting game, (Rival Schools) she already has a bit of a unique style that has been made to incorporate nicely into Street Fighter 5's general flow, but there's plenty more to be said of her.

What will the Akira experience will be like? What's her plan of attack? What are her weaknesses? How effective will she be overall? Read on through our review to see if Akira is the character for you.

General Battle Plan

First and foremost, Akira is most definitely a footsie-based, whiff punish/confirm style character. If you're starting to ponder comparisons to Karin Kanzuki in your head right now, you've got the right idea.

She's a very nimble fighter who essentially wants to goad you into opening yourself up to be hit by one of her nasty low forwards (crouching medium kick) from which she can confirm into decent damage. While she is clearly on the stubbier side when it comes to most normals, her brisk walk speed does a lot to offset this shortcoming.

Perhaps just as importantly as having fleet feet, the special attacks that Akira cancels into tend to have enough reach so that she can take advantage from confirms from most ranges. Perhaps in the case of the tip of a poke hitting the tip of another poke, a special confirm will fail to combo, but this doesn't look like it will be a real issue for her.

While her bread and butter footsie button has to be low forward, this isn't the only tool she has. Her heavy buttons have a decent bit more range and can be used effectively to inspire your opponents to freeze up long enough to allow you to walk into the ranges where low forward is most threatening.

She can also use her Urarimon, a quick and forward-moving elbow attack, to surprise opponents in neutral. This is somewhat gimmicky as it's -4 on block, but peppering it in at certain ranges is a decent way of keeping opponents on their toes.

Her up close pressure isn't all that unique, but it's certainly effective. Her medium punch buttons leave her at good advantage for throw/strike traps, and she's perhaps at her most comfortable when she's up in your face.

A basic game plan we've been using with a decent bit of success has been to try to score low forward confirms into EX Senshubu (spinning kicks) which launches the opposition and allows you to either go for more damage via a heavy kick Hotenshu (uppercut) or go for wake up pressure with a light Urarimon follow up.

Akira does have a natural problem dealing with projectiles as she doesn't have many ways to pass through them. Her Kiko Kai technique can negate them, but this doesn't afford her much. Her heavy Hotenshu can be used from surprisingly far (from about sweep range) to hit the startup of and pass through projectiles, but she's usually going to have to try to jump over them.

V-System

Her V-Skill 1 is something of an answer here, as it enhances her Kiko Kai and gives her a bit of a wonky air situation that can catch foes by surprise. Once she's stored up a VS1 charge, she can perform an air Kiko Kai that sees her suddenly fall straight down while putting a hit box out in front of her. This might cause some anti-airs to whiff, and if it hits opponents Akira can usually combo into a standing light kick and then a special.

Her VS1 enhancement also buffs her combos that include the grounded version of Kiko Kai for additional damage. You can also simply use it in (virtually) safe block strings to build your V-Trigger up, the first of which already shows a ton of potential.

Akira's VT1 sees her call her brother Daigo in for a two-part assist. He first comes crashing down from above wherever the opponent is at, and will crumple them if they do not block or evade. He then takes a good few seconds before bursting an energy aura round him that can very easily catch foes if they try to attack Akira here.

The Daigo assist does a lot of the work for you, but we can already begin to envision some crazy set up situations more creative community members will surely come up with. On top of all this, Akira players can also use Daigo as a distraction that makes getting up close a lot easier.

Her V-Skill 2 is a launching attack that allows Akira to go into her trademark air combo juggles. This V-Skill has 16 frames of start up, and almost always has to be used in combos where Akira is already hitting her foe. After launching, Akira can follow with a leap and perform a handful of additional hits in midair.

This seems to be mostly about scoring additional damage for your hits as opposed to giving you more versatility in neutral, but if you're confident in you ability to make contact, this might be the way to go to make your hits hurt more.

Her V-Trigger 2 (Haten no Kamae) feels like it functions in a similar manner as it also gives her combo extension potential. Akira goes into a special stance from which she can perform three different follow up strings. She can use stance cancels to cancel moves and keep combos going, and then tack on one of the VT2 strings to the end of said combos.

In a nutshell, her VS1 and VT1 seem to aid her in opening up opponents while her VS2 and VT2 seem to give her more damage if she's able to get the hits with her basic tools. Daigo is probably going to be her most obviously effective Trigger, but neither appear to be as overly powerful as some of the problematic Triggers SF5 has seen over the years. Both are just two bars, which kind of gives you an idea of how strong developers feel they are.

Conclusions

Ultimately Akira feels like a character made more for intermediate players and above. She's not the most technical character in the game, but you'll need to have fast reactions to make the most of her most powerful tools. Users will need to have sharp hit confirms as well as identify (in some situations) whether or not their opponent is standing or crouching when they're hit as she has various routes depending on their position.

She'll be fun for those who enjoy going for the jugular and being rewarded for skillful manipulation and confirms. The big question right now, when it comes to how effective she'll be overall, is whether or not the combination of her fast walk speed and few fireball workarounds will be enough against characters with projectiles.

Something that's been looming in the back of our minds since we started in with Akira has been the phrase, "Why not just play Karin or Cammy?"

Karin functions in a very similar way, but has a more obvious answer to fireballs with her projectile-invincible command dash and seems to generally dish out more damage and corner carry after landing hits. Cammy also has the ability to play a comparable neutral game, but has many ways through projectiles, can go to the air for approach shenanigans, and is one of the easiest characters to use in general.

Akira's V-Trigger and V-Skill abilities might be an answer here, at least in terms of style that varies from similar fighters, but we'll have to see just how useful they are in competitive play once we've all had more than a few days to explore them.

The Rival Schools guest has already proven to be a lot of fun in these first chapters of exploration, and we'll be eagerly watching to see what the community comes up with in terms of her more unique V-System abilities to see if she garners enough of her own competitive identity to stand as a worthwhile tournament pick.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out our reviews for Akira's fellow Season 5 characters: Dan and Rose.

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