As someone who's played fighting games for more than a decade, and who's entry into fighting games was Street Fighter IV, it should come to no surprise that out of all the games Street Fighter has had (barring the original Street Fighter 1), the "Street Fighter" sub-series I have had the least amount of experience in were the Street Fighter EX games. It's not hard to see why: the Street Fighter EX games were the least accessible Street Fighter games out there for me back when my laptop would catch fire if it played a PCSX2 game for more than 5 minutes and I hated running something like epsxe on there. (even today the EX games are the hardest to get into, though more for legality reasons than anything). I still saw some EX gameplay, and did eventually mess around with the games, but I didn't really get into it that much.
For the last couple of months, for whatever reason, I've played Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha: doing most the trials and beating the game with all the characters, and as it turns out I enjoyed the game. (go figure, someone who enjoys Street Fighter in general enjoys Street Fighter EX).
*(for the purposes of this review, I'll be using the Western names. Therefore, Gouki will be called Akuma, the Boxer will be called Balrog, the Claw-wielder will be called Vega, and the Dictator will be called M. Bison)*
Street Fighter EX began as an arcade-exclusive fighting game that released in late 1996, developed mostly by Arika instead of Capcom as most people would expect.. A few months later in 1997, an upgraded version with more characters was released, titled Street Fighter EX+. Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha was the next and final revision of Street Fighter EX: coming exclusively to the PS1 in mid/late 1997, this is the version most fans will likely remember. Street Fighter EX is known today as the first 3D Street Fighter game - though in reality it felt more like Tekken 1 and 2: the game was still played on a 2D plane (similar to many modern "2.5D" fighters), with only a handful of moves (many of them being teleports) truly utilizing the 3D plane. Like in old Tekken games as well, every stage is infinite in size, however, Street Fighter EX still maintains the aspect of cornering your opponents with temporary invisible walls that your character can tumble through when they get hit by a big enough attack (though unlike Guilty Gear Strive, no extra damage is dealt in this situation). Street Fighter EX models look perfectly fine - they're not spectacular or anything, but they're not awful, and the backgrounds are alright, though not as spectacular as Tekken's backgrounds.
Gameplay in Street Fighter EX functions sort of similarly to Street Fighter Alpha 1. Movement in this game is very limited: there are no dashes, runs, superjumps or anything of that sort (except for Skullomania, who has both a run and a backflip, and Pullum, who has a double jump). As mentioned before, despite the 3D plane, this is still a 2D fighter - there are no sidesteps or anything of the sort as you might expect from other 3D fighters like Tekken, Virtua Fighter or the 3D-era Mortal Kombat, so you still have to jump and block your way through fireball spammers like you would in SF2 (and unlike the Alpha series, there is no airblocking in this game).
Despite the fact that there's no chain combos, Street Fighter EX is a relatively combo-heavy game - with extra emphasis on linking out of moves and cancelling into super moves. Linking out of moves feels much more deliberate in Street Fighter EX, with some special/super moves (such as most Shoto characters' reworked Tatsumakis/Hurricane Kicks, Chun-Li's Hienshu and Zangief's new Stomping super move) being designed specifically to let you link out of them. In a way, this makes the gameplay and structure of combos different from the other Street Fighter arcade games on the market at the time, which helps Street Fighter EX out in obtaining an identity beyond "Street Fighter but in 3D".
The other big feature as mentioned above is what the game is most memorable for: cancelling into super moves. Whilst cancelling normals into supers was nothing new, Street Fighter EX would be the first Street Fighter game to allow players to cancel special moves into super moves, a feature that would make its 2D SF debut a year later with the release of Street Fighter III (and then into modern SF games, with SF4, SF5 and now SF6 all featuring super-cancelling). However, what makes Street Fighter EX unique in this regard is that Street Fighter EX lets you cancel one super move into another separate super move, allowing players to perform super moves up to three times back to back. In a nice touch, the light that flashes when performing a super move changes color when cancelled into: from blue, to yellow, to red - with a special KO background for each super-cancel level (going from one meteor shooting down for a Level 1 Super KO, to multiple meteors shooting down for a Level 2 Super KO, to all the meteors striking Earth for a Level 3 Super KO). Having said all that though, some of the super cancels themselves felt awkward to try to land, which typically wouldn't be an issue except for one issue I'll mention later. This would be fine if this was the first game they did with super cancels, but SFEX Plus Alpha was the third version of Street Fighter EX, so I'm less forgiving on this issue. Still, super-to-super cancels are arguably the thing most unique to Street Fighter EX, and, outside of the inferior PS1 ports of the Marvel vs Capcom game series, would never be seen in another Street Fighter series again.
One other mechanic introduced in this game is the ability for all characters to do unblockable attacks. At the cost of one stock of super gauge that you built up, you could press a punch and kick button of the same strength to perform a "Guard Break", an attack that could not be blocked. When hitting an opponent on the ground, this left the opponent up for any attack the player wanted to do for about 5 seconds - when hitting an airborne opponent, the opponent would spent a considerable amount of time in the air. A lot of attacks from older Street Fighter games (such as Chun-Li's Seiei Enbu and Sakura's..."overhead attack") got converted into Guard Breaks. I never personally used it much outside of Expert Mode combos, but the Guard Break attacks tend to animate very well.
Another huge part of Street Fighter EX's identity are its cast of characters, notable largely for the fact that the characters introduced in Street Fighter EX do not show up in other Street Fighter games due to the fact that the EX original characters (and the game itself) was made and owned by Arika, with Arika getting permission from Capcom to add all the Street Fighter characters and use the Street Fighter name. This is also why Arika's latest fighting game: Fighting EX Layer, only contains the EX-introduced characters, and none of the Street Fighter characters like Ryu or Chun-Li.
Most of the original Street Fighter cast makes the transition relatively well, with many of the cast using a combination of unique moves designed specifically for the game (such as Ryu, Ken, Evil Ryu and Akuma's new Tatsumakis, going from a simple spinning kick to a series of hopping kicks that you have to input separately like Iori's rekkas from KOF), and their Street Fighter Alpha 2 moveset. Arguably the only two characters who I don't think made a particularly good transition were Zangief and Evil Ryu - Zangief because with the existance of new grappler character Darun, I felt he was a bit too simple of a character (not helped is the fact that he is one of the very few characters in the game with a Level 3 super move because he doesn't have any super to super to super moves and looping his new Stomping super isn't as fun as repeatedly juggling Darun's INDRA BRIDGE), and Evil Ryu because he was still Ryu with a couple of Akuma's moves (which...basically was Evil Ryu until Street Fighter IV came around and gave him his new Stomp special).
On the other hand, the two characters whose transitions I enjoyed the most from 2D to 3D were Akuma and Dhalsim. Akuma's biggest addition in Street Fighter EX is his ability to perform his divekick whilst either in the middle of his Tatsumaki, or after throwing an air fireball, allowing him a lot of manueverability that no other Akuma has ever had, and a very cool way to pick up combos after an air fireball. He also, humorously enough, gets an infinite off of looping Tatsumakis into his divekick over and over again. The only negative of him is that his Shun Goku Satsu/Raging Demon feels sort of weak, though that's because this game also has two other characters with Raging Demons that show them physically punching through their opponent. Dhalsim's new changes include getting two new supers: Yoga Legend, an autocombo move where Dhalsim teleports to you to kick some ass twice, and Yoga Drill, a super powered version of his regular drill normal that can be steered to comical proportions - the best part of both moves is being able to supercancel Yoga Legend into Yoga Drill. Plus, he gets an extremely funny Guard Break, as his hand grows extremely large to smack his opponent with.
Honorable mentions include Sakura getting a 1-bar Raging Demon (yes, really) and for being the only character to have the classic Tatsumaki, Guile for his Guard Break move being a WWE-style Elbow Drop for some reason and Chun Li for a new divekick move that the AI loves to spam a lot for some reason.
Onto the new characters - the ones I'll spend the most time talking about. First off is Kairi, the guy made to be the main character before the Street Fighter deal happened. Kairi in this game plays pretty much like any old shoto-character, having a fireball, shoryuken and the multi-input tatsumaki. Where his main differences are are in his supers: while he has Akuma's air fireball super, he also gets a double-uppercut super that finishes off with a series of mid-air punches, and a divekick super that is followed on by a rising knee - all of which...mostly blend together? His rising knee kinda feels weaksauce, especially landing it on a grounded opponent where it won't knock down the opponent. Also in his arsenal is a Level 1 Raging Demon move that shows him physically punching his opponent through their stomach, which is one of the coolest and most brutal-looking supers in the game.
If you have a Ryu, you'll also need a Ken, and that's where Allen Snider comes in. Allen Snider to me seems to be heavily inspired by Paul Phoenix from the Tekken series - whilst he has the fireball and shoryuken, instead of a tatsu, he gets Paul Phoenix's Death Fist (or as Allen calls it, Justice Fist), a charging punch that does huge damage, but also has huge recovery. He can use it to blow through fireballs but he still has the huge ass recovery even then which makes that property pretty much useless in actual combat. Allen Snider is home to one of Street Fighter EX's most well known combo - a Justice Fist that gets supercancelled into his launcher super, Triple Break (a series of three bicycle kicks, like Kyo's from KOF), that can get looped up to three times. It's iconic for a reason in that it is an easy loop to execute, and very fun to perform.
Hokuto seems to be designed as the technical character - having Iori's sideswap command grab, a counter move, a rekka type move that starts with an elbow strike and ends with a palm strike to the chest, and a backsway with a followup sweep that can duck under projectiles. She's no Kasumi Todoh but her Aikido style works just as well in 3D. The highlight of her, however, I think, is her fireball super, which has her aim at her opponent like it's a bow and arrow before firing it.
Much more interesting however is the "Evil" version of her, Bloody Hokuto - she loses her counter, and another backsway move, but she can do the final hit of her rekka by itself, from the old elbow strike, or from her backsway rekka. In addition to the two existing supers she has, she gets two from Kairi - one where she performs his Raging Demon (including the punch through stomach part), and another where she performs the first two uppercuts of his double-uppercut super.
Blair Dame, out of all the girls, is designed as the most "attractive" I feel. She seems to be a cross between Cammy White from Street Fighter and Nina Williams from Tekken - nowhere is this highlighted more than in her sliding move - it works similar to Cammy's sliding arrow, but if it hits a standing opponent then Blair will twist her body to knock her opponent over. She has a series of submission-style moves mixed with very good fluidity in her animations I think. The one annoying part about her move though is her aforementioned sliding move - if it hits a crouching opponent, then Blair is left wide open for some unnecessary reason.
Pullum Puruna I felt was one of the more unremarkable characters out of the roster - having said that, she still has plenty of good qualities about her. She's the only character to double jump, she has a cute leapfrog move, she can drill similar to Dhalsim, her supers look relatively good. She kinda needed one or two more things I think to make her feel more complete (probably a few more aerial stuff? I'd like another aerial move at least). She's good and looks cute but is relatively barebones I felt.
Pullum's bodyguard, Darum Mister, is the resident grappler and he felt a lot more fun to play than Zangief did - having a wider array of moves than his Street Fighter counterpart. Alongside like five different grappling moves, he also has a bunch of other moves he can combo into. Special shoutout go to his INDRA BRIDGE super, a super where he launches his opponent extremely high with his mighty stomach. It's baffling how they gave him all of that but gave basically nothing to Zangief.
Skullomania is probably the most popular character to come out of the game and...I just don't get it yet, at least for EX1. To me, probably the least favourite of the new characters, though the super he has when he repeatedly attacks your nuts a bunch of times is pretty funny. Really, there's not much I can say about him, he felt kinda forgettable to me.
Who wasn't forgettable however was Doctrine Dark - arguably the edgiest character to come out of any Street Fighter game (especially if you pick the color palette that makes it look like he was a Nazi officer). Heavily connected to Guile (because you need at least one person in the roster connected to Guile for every Street Fighter game), D.Dark utilizes mines, daggers and a tripwire that functions like Scorpion's spear from Mortal Kombat. Out of all the characters, D.Dark was probably the most unique of the cast just for his sheer amount of weapons he had, and I found him to be one of my favourite new characters based off of his unique gameplay.
Cracker Jack is pretty much a Balrog clone - having Balrog's Dash Straight, Dash Upper, TAP, and Crazy Buffalo super. Instead of more dash punch variants, however, C.Jack brings to the table a baseball bat that he can hit projectiles with, a command grab super and, like Dhalsim, the ability to make his hands comedically large. If he had more original stuff I'd like him more, but he's still pretty cool regardless.
Garuda was designed as the final boss initially, and it shows as he is arguably the most threatening of the characters, with spikes protruding from him for many of his attacks. Many of his attacks involve either his spikes, or spinning while he has spikes (with one unfortunately posed move in particular looking like a swastika if you pause at the right frame). In-game, he is a hidden boss (arguably the most difficult of the three bosses), and encountering him gives him a new ability where he can teleport out of your combo and divebomb you, similar to what Galford and Hanzo could do in the Samurai Shodown games.
The final two characters are composite characters - Cycloid Beta and Cycloid Gamma, with both characters taking moves from all the other characters in the game. Cycloid Beta, a blue 3D-model, utilizes quarter circle motions for his inputs, whilst Cycloid Gamma, a green wireframe model, utilizes charge inputs. Even back then, I would imagine that they were mostly seen as novelty fighters, though they do end up having a few twists of their own (like how Cycloid Beta's Tatsumaki automatically does the follow-ups, or how Cycloid Gamma's head stomp move from M. Bison doesn't have him bounce off his opponent). I'm surprised that they weren't in FEXL already to be honest, and while I wouldn't necessarily need them in a future game, I did enjoy my time with them.
One other new innovation that Street Fighter EX implemented was a Trials mode (or "Expert Mode" as the game calls it). In Expert Mode, each character has 16 trials that they have to perform. Initially, these teach you how to perform special moves and super moves - before working your way up to requiring you to do very difficult combos. These combos can range from easy to frustrating, and some trials I still have not been able to complete. Thankfully, you don't need to perform the trials in order, so if a trial is too hard (for example, if you're struggling to do a certain combo), you can always skip it and come back to it later. These trials are how you unlock up to seven different characters: 4 unlockable characters (Evil Ryu, Bloody Hokuto and the two Cycloids) and improved versions of each of the three boss characters; M. Bison (whose Scissors Kick recovers fast enough that he can combo out of it, leading to an infinite into itself), Akuma (whose Shoryuken has instant recovery when it touches the ground) and Garuda (who gains the aforementioned 'fuck-your-combo' teleport). Doing all the trials will unlock the barrel minigame replicated from Street Fighter 2, though, thankfully, doing most of the trials will give you a cheat code that lets you unlock the barrel minigame, which is good because some of these trials can be hair-pullingly difficult. In fact, to unlock the four unlockable characters, all you need to do is to do all of the easy trials in the game (the ones where you just perform special moves and super moves), and maybe a couple of very easy combos. Whilst most of the trials were simply telling you how to do a combo, some combos in the games required you to perform a specific action (for example, one of Cracker Jack's trials required you to deflect 10 projectiles in a row with his bat), which provided variety in a way that a lot of modern trials simply do not have.
Arcade Mode is the game's main content, as you go through 9 different fighters before facing off against M. Bison. The AI will ramp up in difficulty progressively the further you go - some characters in particular like Chun-Li and Cracker Jack will have nasty AI and will use sneaky tricks on you (like for example, one playthrough saw a Cracker Jack AI supercancel a blocked Crazy Buffalo super into his command grab super to successfully try to sneak a command grab on me). As for the bosses themselves, M. Bison is generally the final boss you face off against, to me, it was basically a crapshoot on whether or not I'd beat him on my first try or on my 10th. If you succeed hidden conditions, you'll also have the opportunity to face Akuma (who replaces M. Bison as the final boss), who was an extremely tough fighter to fight against for me, and Garuda (who you encounter partway through if you do well enough). One of the conditions for facing Garuda is having one level 3 Super Combo finish (where you either do a Level 3 super that kills the opponent, or three Level 1 supers back-to-back in a combo that kills the opponent), and for some characters, that will be the hardest part to perform, as landing three Level 1 supers in the same combo is either extremely difficult, not worth it damage wise, or both. After defeating Bison (or Akuma), you'll be treated to an FMV ending which...well...let's just say they probably shouldn't be making FMVs any time soon. They're basically like a prototype of a Tekken 1 ending and we all know how well Tekken 1's endings looked like.
Other modes aside the aforementioned one include a Time Attack mode where you get to speedrun several different "courses" of pre-set opponents (with it also allowing you to face off in one-round matches against the boss versions of Bison, Akuma, Gaurda, and a separate course that has you face off against each of the four unlockable characters - nice as I've generally never enountered them in arcade mode before), and a survival mode that plays like any old survival mode.
Is the game good? I think it's certainly good. Most importantly, is it worth playing when Street Fighter EX2+ and EX3 exists? Street Fighter EX2+ has a more in-depth fight system, more moves and more characters, but many characters are also removed in the transition between EX1 and EX2. Sakura, Akuma, Allen, Blair, the Cycloids and the Evil/Bloody versions of Ryu and Hokuto respectively are all gone from EX1 to EX2. Sakura, Evil Ryu and Bloody Hokuto do make a reappearance in EX3 though, whilst Allen and Blair both appear in Fighting Layer and Fighting EX Layer (though FEXL I think is a much different game to the Street Fighter EX games, even ignoring the whole "no Street Fighter characters" deal). Akuma and the Cycloids do not make a reappearance at all. I'd probably recommend going with EX2 or EX3 over EX1, but if you enjoyed playing EX2 or EX3, I'd think its worth it to at least check out the missing characters in EX1.
For the last couple of months, for whatever reason, I've played Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha: doing most the trials and beating the game with all the characters, and as it turns out I enjoyed the game. (go figure, someone who enjoys Street Fighter in general enjoys Street Fighter EX).
*(for the purposes of this review, I'll be using the Western names. Therefore, Gouki will be called Akuma, the Boxer will be called Balrog, the Claw-wielder will be called Vega, and the Dictator will be called M. Bison)*
Street Fighter EX began as an arcade-exclusive fighting game that released in late 1996, developed mostly by Arika instead of Capcom as most people would expect.. A few months later in 1997, an upgraded version with more characters was released, titled Street Fighter EX+. Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha was the next and final revision of Street Fighter EX: coming exclusively to the PS1 in mid/late 1997, this is the version most fans will likely remember. Street Fighter EX is known today as the first 3D Street Fighter game - though in reality it felt more like Tekken 1 and 2: the game was still played on a 2D plane (similar to many modern "2.5D" fighters), with only a handful of moves (many of them being teleports) truly utilizing the 3D plane. Like in old Tekken games as well, every stage is infinite in size, however, Street Fighter EX still maintains the aspect of cornering your opponents with temporary invisible walls that your character can tumble through when they get hit by a big enough attack (though unlike Guilty Gear Strive, no extra damage is dealt in this situation). Street Fighter EX models look perfectly fine - they're not spectacular or anything, but they're not awful, and the backgrounds are alright, though not as spectacular as Tekken's backgrounds.
Gameplay in Street Fighter EX functions sort of similarly to Street Fighter Alpha 1. Movement in this game is very limited: there are no dashes, runs, superjumps or anything of that sort (except for Skullomania, who has both a run and a backflip, and Pullum, who has a double jump). As mentioned before, despite the 3D plane, this is still a 2D fighter - there are no sidesteps or anything of the sort as you might expect from other 3D fighters like Tekken, Virtua Fighter or the 3D-era Mortal Kombat, so you still have to jump and block your way through fireball spammers like you would in SF2 (and unlike the Alpha series, there is no airblocking in this game).
Despite the fact that there's no chain combos, Street Fighter EX is a relatively combo-heavy game - with extra emphasis on linking out of moves and cancelling into super moves. Linking out of moves feels much more deliberate in Street Fighter EX, with some special/super moves (such as most Shoto characters' reworked Tatsumakis/Hurricane Kicks, Chun-Li's Hienshu and Zangief's new Stomping super move) being designed specifically to let you link out of them. In a way, this makes the gameplay and structure of combos different from the other Street Fighter arcade games on the market at the time, which helps Street Fighter EX out in obtaining an identity beyond "Street Fighter but in 3D".
The other big feature as mentioned above is what the game is most memorable for: cancelling into super moves. Whilst cancelling normals into supers was nothing new, Street Fighter EX would be the first Street Fighter game to allow players to cancel special moves into super moves, a feature that would make its 2D SF debut a year later with the release of Street Fighter III (and then into modern SF games, with SF4, SF5 and now SF6 all featuring super-cancelling). However, what makes Street Fighter EX unique in this regard is that Street Fighter EX lets you cancel one super move into another separate super move, allowing players to perform super moves up to three times back to back. In a nice touch, the light that flashes when performing a super move changes color when cancelled into: from blue, to yellow, to red - with a special KO background for each super-cancel level (going from one meteor shooting down for a Level 1 Super KO, to multiple meteors shooting down for a Level 2 Super KO, to all the meteors striking Earth for a Level 3 Super KO). Having said all that though, some of the super cancels themselves felt awkward to try to land, which typically wouldn't be an issue except for one issue I'll mention later. This would be fine if this was the first game they did with super cancels, but SFEX Plus Alpha was the third version of Street Fighter EX, so I'm less forgiving on this issue. Still, super-to-super cancels are arguably the thing most unique to Street Fighter EX, and, outside of the inferior PS1 ports of the Marvel vs Capcom game series, would never be seen in another Street Fighter series again.
One other mechanic introduced in this game is the ability for all characters to do unblockable attacks. At the cost of one stock of super gauge that you built up, you could press a punch and kick button of the same strength to perform a "Guard Break", an attack that could not be blocked. When hitting an opponent on the ground, this left the opponent up for any attack the player wanted to do for about 5 seconds - when hitting an airborne opponent, the opponent would spent a considerable amount of time in the air. A lot of attacks from older Street Fighter games (such as Chun-Li's Seiei Enbu and Sakura's..."overhead attack") got converted into Guard Breaks. I never personally used it much outside of Expert Mode combos, but the Guard Break attacks tend to animate very well.
Another huge part of Street Fighter EX's identity are its cast of characters, notable largely for the fact that the characters introduced in Street Fighter EX do not show up in other Street Fighter games due to the fact that the EX original characters (and the game itself) was made and owned by Arika, with Arika getting permission from Capcom to add all the Street Fighter characters and use the Street Fighter name. This is also why Arika's latest fighting game: Fighting EX Layer, only contains the EX-introduced characters, and none of the Street Fighter characters like Ryu or Chun-Li.
Most of the original Street Fighter cast makes the transition relatively well, with many of the cast using a combination of unique moves designed specifically for the game (such as Ryu, Ken, Evil Ryu and Akuma's new Tatsumakis, going from a simple spinning kick to a series of hopping kicks that you have to input separately like Iori's rekkas from KOF), and their Street Fighter Alpha 2 moveset. Arguably the only two characters who I don't think made a particularly good transition were Zangief and Evil Ryu - Zangief because with the existance of new grappler character Darun, I felt he was a bit too simple of a character (not helped is the fact that he is one of the very few characters in the game with a Level 3 super move because he doesn't have any super to super to super moves and looping his new Stomping super isn't as fun as repeatedly juggling Darun's INDRA BRIDGE), and Evil Ryu because he was still Ryu with a couple of Akuma's moves (which...basically was Evil Ryu until Street Fighter IV came around and gave him his new Stomp special).
On the other hand, the two characters whose transitions I enjoyed the most from 2D to 3D were Akuma and Dhalsim. Akuma's biggest addition in Street Fighter EX is his ability to perform his divekick whilst either in the middle of his Tatsumaki, or after throwing an air fireball, allowing him a lot of manueverability that no other Akuma has ever had, and a very cool way to pick up combos after an air fireball. He also, humorously enough, gets an infinite off of looping Tatsumakis into his divekick over and over again. The only negative of him is that his Shun Goku Satsu/Raging Demon feels sort of weak, though that's because this game also has two other characters with Raging Demons that show them physically punching through their opponent. Dhalsim's new changes include getting two new supers: Yoga Legend, an autocombo move where Dhalsim teleports to you to kick some ass twice, and Yoga Drill, a super powered version of his regular drill normal that can be steered to comical proportions - the best part of both moves is being able to supercancel Yoga Legend into Yoga Drill. Plus, he gets an extremely funny Guard Break, as his hand grows extremely large to smack his opponent with.
Honorable mentions include Sakura getting a 1-bar Raging Demon (yes, really) and for being the only character to have the classic Tatsumaki, Guile for his Guard Break move being a WWE-style Elbow Drop for some reason and Chun Li for a new divekick move that the AI loves to spam a lot for some reason.
Onto the new characters - the ones I'll spend the most time talking about. First off is Kairi, the guy made to be the main character before the Street Fighter deal happened. Kairi in this game plays pretty much like any old shoto-character, having a fireball, shoryuken and the multi-input tatsumaki. Where his main differences are are in his supers: while he has Akuma's air fireball super, he also gets a double-uppercut super that finishes off with a series of mid-air punches, and a divekick super that is followed on by a rising knee - all of which...mostly blend together? His rising knee kinda feels weaksauce, especially landing it on a grounded opponent where it won't knock down the opponent. Also in his arsenal is a Level 1 Raging Demon move that shows him physically punching his opponent through their stomach, which is one of the coolest and most brutal-looking supers in the game.
If you have a Ryu, you'll also need a Ken, and that's where Allen Snider comes in. Allen Snider to me seems to be heavily inspired by Paul Phoenix from the Tekken series - whilst he has the fireball and shoryuken, instead of a tatsu, he gets Paul Phoenix's Death Fist (or as Allen calls it, Justice Fist), a charging punch that does huge damage, but also has huge recovery. He can use it to blow through fireballs but he still has the huge ass recovery even then which makes that property pretty much useless in actual combat. Allen Snider is home to one of Street Fighter EX's most well known combo - a Justice Fist that gets supercancelled into his launcher super, Triple Break (a series of three bicycle kicks, like Kyo's from KOF), that can get looped up to three times. It's iconic for a reason in that it is an easy loop to execute, and very fun to perform.
Hokuto seems to be designed as the technical character - having Iori's sideswap command grab, a counter move, a rekka type move that starts with an elbow strike and ends with a palm strike to the chest, and a backsway with a followup sweep that can duck under projectiles. She's no Kasumi Todoh but her Aikido style works just as well in 3D. The highlight of her, however, I think, is her fireball super, which has her aim at her opponent like it's a bow and arrow before firing it.
Much more interesting however is the "Evil" version of her, Bloody Hokuto - she loses her counter, and another backsway move, but she can do the final hit of her rekka by itself, from the old elbow strike, or from her backsway rekka. In addition to the two existing supers she has, she gets two from Kairi - one where she performs his Raging Demon (including the punch through stomach part), and another where she performs the first two uppercuts of his double-uppercut super.
Blair Dame, out of all the girls, is designed as the most "attractive" I feel. She seems to be a cross between Cammy White from Street Fighter and Nina Williams from Tekken - nowhere is this highlighted more than in her sliding move - it works similar to Cammy's sliding arrow, but if it hits a standing opponent then Blair will twist her body to knock her opponent over. She has a series of submission-style moves mixed with very good fluidity in her animations I think. The one annoying part about her move though is her aforementioned sliding move - if it hits a crouching opponent, then Blair is left wide open for some unnecessary reason.
Pullum Puruna I felt was one of the more unremarkable characters out of the roster - having said that, she still has plenty of good qualities about her. She's the only character to double jump, she has a cute leapfrog move, she can drill similar to Dhalsim, her supers look relatively good. She kinda needed one or two more things I think to make her feel more complete (probably a few more aerial stuff? I'd like another aerial move at least). She's good and looks cute but is relatively barebones I felt.
Pullum's bodyguard, Darum Mister, is the resident grappler and he felt a lot more fun to play than Zangief did - having a wider array of moves than his Street Fighter counterpart. Alongside like five different grappling moves, he also has a bunch of other moves he can combo into. Special shoutout go to his INDRA BRIDGE super, a super where he launches his opponent extremely high with his mighty stomach. It's baffling how they gave him all of that but gave basically nothing to Zangief.
Skullomania is probably the most popular character to come out of the game and...I just don't get it yet, at least for EX1. To me, probably the least favourite of the new characters, though the super he has when he repeatedly attacks your nuts a bunch of times is pretty funny. Really, there's not much I can say about him, he felt kinda forgettable to me.
Who wasn't forgettable however was Doctrine Dark - arguably the edgiest character to come out of any Street Fighter game (especially if you pick the color palette that makes it look like he was a Nazi officer). Heavily connected to Guile (because you need at least one person in the roster connected to Guile for every Street Fighter game), D.Dark utilizes mines, daggers and a tripwire that functions like Scorpion's spear from Mortal Kombat. Out of all the characters, D.Dark was probably the most unique of the cast just for his sheer amount of weapons he had, and I found him to be one of my favourite new characters based off of his unique gameplay.
Cracker Jack is pretty much a Balrog clone - having Balrog's Dash Straight, Dash Upper, TAP, and Crazy Buffalo super. Instead of more dash punch variants, however, C.Jack brings to the table a baseball bat that he can hit projectiles with, a command grab super and, like Dhalsim, the ability to make his hands comedically large. If he had more original stuff I'd like him more, but he's still pretty cool regardless.
Garuda was designed as the final boss initially, and it shows as he is arguably the most threatening of the characters, with spikes protruding from him for many of his attacks. Many of his attacks involve either his spikes, or spinning while he has spikes (with one unfortunately posed move in particular looking like a swastika if you pause at the right frame). In-game, he is a hidden boss (arguably the most difficult of the three bosses), and encountering him gives him a new ability where he can teleport out of your combo and divebomb you, similar to what Galford and Hanzo could do in the Samurai Shodown games.
The final two characters are composite characters - Cycloid Beta and Cycloid Gamma, with both characters taking moves from all the other characters in the game. Cycloid Beta, a blue 3D-model, utilizes quarter circle motions for his inputs, whilst Cycloid Gamma, a green wireframe model, utilizes charge inputs. Even back then, I would imagine that they were mostly seen as novelty fighters, though they do end up having a few twists of their own (like how Cycloid Beta's Tatsumaki automatically does the follow-ups, or how Cycloid Gamma's head stomp move from M. Bison doesn't have him bounce off his opponent). I'm surprised that they weren't in FEXL already to be honest, and while I wouldn't necessarily need them in a future game, I did enjoy my time with them.
One other new innovation that Street Fighter EX implemented was a Trials mode (or "Expert Mode" as the game calls it). In Expert Mode, each character has 16 trials that they have to perform. Initially, these teach you how to perform special moves and super moves - before working your way up to requiring you to do very difficult combos. These combos can range from easy to frustrating, and some trials I still have not been able to complete. Thankfully, you don't need to perform the trials in order, so if a trial is too hard (for example, if you're struggling to do a certain combo), you can always skip it and come back to it later. These trials are how you unlock up to seven different characters: 4 unlockable characters (Evil Ryu, Bloody Hokuto and the two Cycloids) and improved versions of each of the three boss characters; M. Bison (whose Scissors Kick recovers fast enough that he can combo out of it, leading to an infinite into itself), Akuma (whose Shoryuken has instant recovery when it touches the ground) and Garuda (who gains the aforementioned 'fuck-your-combo' teleport). Doing all the trials will unlock the barrel minigame replicated from Street Fighter 2, though, thankfully, doing most of the trials will give you a cheat code that lets you unlock the barrel minigame, which is good because some of these trials can be hair-pullingly difficult. In fact, to unlock the four unlockable characters, all you need to do is to do all of the easy trials in the game (the ones where you just perform special moves and super moves), and maybe a couple of very easy combos. Whilst most of the trials were simply telling you how to do a combo, some combos in the games required you to perform a specific action (for example, one of Cracker Jack's trials required you to deflect 10 projectiles in a row with his bat), which provided variety in a way that a lot of modern trials simply do not have.
Arcade Mode is the game's main content, as you go through 9 different fighters before facing off against M. Bison. The AI will ramp up in difficulty progressively the further you go - some characters in particular like Chun-Li and Cracker Jack will have nasty AI and will use sneaky tricks on you (like for example, one playthrough saw a Cracker Jack AI supercancel a blocked Crazy Buffalo super into his command grab super to successfully try to sneak a command grab on me). As for the bosses themselves, M. Bison is generally the final boss you face off against, to me, it was basically a crapshoot on whether or not I'd beat him on my first try or on my 10th. If you succeed hidden conditions, you'll also have the opportunity to face Akuma (who replaces M. Bison as the final boss), who was an extremely tough fighter to fight against for me, and Garuda (who you encounter partway through if you do well enough). One of the conditions for facing Garuda is having one level 3 Super Combo finish (where you either do a Level 3 super that kills the opponent, or three Level 1 supers back-to-back in a combo that kills the opponent), and for some characters, that will be the hardest part to perform, as landing three Level 1 supers in the same combo is either extremely difficult, not worth it damage wise, or both. After defeating Bison (or Akuma), you'll be treated to an FMV ending which...well...let's just say they probably shouldn't be making FMVs any time soon. They're basically like a prototype of a Tekken 1 ending and we all know how well Tekken 1's endings looked like.
Other modes aside the aforementioned one include a Time Attack mode where you get to speedrun several different "courses" of pre-set opponents (with it also allowing you to face off in one-round matches against the boss versions of Bison, Akuma, Gaurda, and a separate course that has you face off against each of the four unlockable characters - nice as I've generally never enountered them in arcade mode before), and a survival mode that plays like any old survival mode.
Is the game good? I think it's certainly good. Most importantly, is it worth playing when Street Fighter EX2+ and EX3 exists? Street Fighter EX2+ has a more in-depth fight system, more moves and more characters, but many characters are also removed in the transition between EX1 and EX2. Sakura, Akuma, Allen, Blair, the Cycloids and the Evil/Bloody versions of Ryu and Hokuto respectively are all gone from EX1 to EX2. Sakura, Evil Ryu and Bloody Hokuto do make a reappearance in EX3 though, whilst Allen and Blair both appear in Fighting Layer and Fighting EX Layer (though FEXL I think is a much different game to the Street Fighter EX games, even ignoring the whole "no Street Fighter characters" deal). Akuma and the Cycloids do not make a reappearance at all. I'd probably recommend going with EX2 or EX3 over EX1, but if you enjoyed playing EX2 or EX3, I'd think its worth it to at least check out the missing characters in EX1.
Ryogus
1 year ago