I'm the resident Street Fighter V defender, I genuinely think the game is very good nowadays and while flawed, often gets overly shit on in ways I do not think it deserves at all. I think it has rock-solid gameplay, some interesting character designs, a great OST, and a cool watercolor aesthetic that while it doesn't always work pops off when it does. It's bizarre to me that people will yell to the rooftops about how Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky, games with similarly disastrous launches, are "actually really good now!" but people still pretend that SFV is the same broken mess that was released in 2016.

I cannot defend A Shadow Falls. It is such an unbelievable waste of Capcom's own time, money, and resources in an era where SFV desperately needed fixing and decidedly not a half-baked narrative campaign. The writing is genuinely atrocious; the plot is hard to get invested in because of the number of characters they try to involve in an overarching global conspiracy to the point where I can't connect not only to the characters but to the scenario at large. It feels like it's biting off way more than it can properly chew and as a result, it feels like a rare steak that's still screaming. A lot of the dialog feels like it was written by people who haven't touched a script before and it's often wince-inducing without any sort of ironic enjoyment. It's also not a very attractive DLC either. I'm a defender of SFV's art direction and think a lot of it looks rather good, but with A Shadow Falls, a lot of the game's visual weaknesses are highlighted. SFV's biggest visual strength is its exceptional animation work, and while that still applies to the fight choreography here, it certainly doesn't apply to the facial animation which looks stilted at the best of times and downright rudimentary at worst. It's evident that SFV's character models and textures, while perfectly serviceable at a normal fighting game distance, were clearly not made to be put to closer scrutiny in cinematics, and the poor texture quality and strange modeling choices (the hair can often be ugly) that are otherwise difficult to notice are now flat in your face and ever so evident. The cutscene cinematography can actually be rather impressively framed and blocked, so credit where it's due, I certainly appreciated that. I also found that the narrative flow didn't exactly work with the game's gameplay either. Part of what appeals to me about SFV is its pick-up and play charm and I always know I can just log in after a long day and play match after match after match, but that isn't the case with this DLC. You get maybe two rounds per character before you're shuffled off to another location with another character, and therefore an entirely different moveset and fighting style to sample. It feels terribly disjointed and if this was your introduction to the game, you'd learn absolutely nothing about how the characters play. It just doesn't work with how SFV is best enjoyed and the gameplay - the core appeal of a fighting game - often felt secondary in A Shadow Falls which I consider to be its biggest weakness among other things.

Ultimately, A Shadow Falls is an awful DLC released when SFV was perhaps in its worst state. It was not only a waste of time for Capcom, during a period when they should have been doing anything else, but a total waste of time for players by neither addressing the criticisms of a lack of a substantial arcade mode nor providing a unique or even fun experience in its own right. It struggles with awful, cringeworthy writing, a disjointed pace that doesn't work with SFV's gameplay loop, and visuals that aren't conscious of the game's visual strengths exposing its visual weaknesses in the process. Even nowadays, when SFV is a rock-solid fighter with a ton to offer, A Shadow Falls feels like a vestigial remnant of the worst of SFV and a waste of time for everyone involved.

Hello everyone my name is Mr. Cinemasins and this is EVERYTHING WRONG WITH SF5 STORY MODE:

- Necalli is presented as an 'unstopable life form' but loses every single fight in the story.
- Kolin is shown to have healing powers instead of ice.
- Rashid wins against Chun-Li.
- Urien isn't bothered at all that Kolin betrayed his trust bringing Nash in.
- Chun-Li knows who's Sean before Third Strike.
- Laura's portuguese accent is not from Rio de Janeiro.
- Laura wins against Ken.
- Ed uses telekinesis via pyscho powers (not even Bison is capable of this).
- Alex wins against Dhalsim.
- Nash, whom Guilte admired so much as to copying his entire fighting style, only exchange one 'hello' after he's ressurected.
- Both Ibuki and R. Mika win against Balrog and Ed together at different points, while Zangief loses.
- One of the dolls is racist against Birdie while speaking french.
- Seth's entire existence as a returning dlc character contradicts this story's ending.

And my personal favorite:

- Juri goes from Rio de Janeiro to London via motorcycle, while also carrying Cammy and Decapre, in less than a day.