Review: Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. is Solid But Needs Something More

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. is a welcome release for those who have been wishing Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown had Rollback Netcode and 4K visuals. Being able to play online with speed and accuracy makes this a worthwhile purchase no matter what, although it is a bit of a disappointment that more stuff didn’t come with this new release. Just the same, if you’re interested in some good online play with a fighting system that seems at first (but hides monstrous depth), this is a solid and affordable purchase.

With Rollback Netcode being a core part of why this game exists, I dove into online play for a while to see how things were holding up. Across several nights of matches, I rarely had any problems with stuttering matches or janky play. Even when I did, it usually had something to do with the other player’s connection when I was running off of a wired connection. To further test things out, I played the game on Steam Deck with a wireless connection, and even then, things stayed fairly solid and steady unless the other player’s connection was extremely bad.

You can set what sort of connections you allow to go through in the Matchmaking options, as well as what Disconnect Rate you’re willing to deal with from your opponent as well. It gives you a lot of room to dictate how patient you want to be with bad connections. Even set to regular standards, I only ran into a bad connection or two every night. Those connection rates seemed pretty solid to me as I was playing against other low-level players like myself. I am far from skilled at Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., so the players I was facing were the types of folks to be running on all manner of connections. Still, things seemed pretty good when I played.

My performance was another story. I mentioned in previous coverage of Ultimate Showdown that the game’s three-button combat style was beginner friendly. That’s true to the extent that you have punch, kick, block, and the ability to press some directions or multiple buttons to get varied strikes. You can mash a decent amount in this game and still have some fun and pull some light combos (nothing like Special Style from Tekken 8, though). You can goof off here if you like, and thankfully there are ranked players at my level doing the same, but you will need to commit to this game and learning it to get anywhere. And, like I said in that other review, besides Arcade Mode and local matches, there’s not much to do here besides compete online. If you don’t want to improve, there isn’t much here for you.

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. does offer a tutorial to get you going. This is vital, as I felt that I had an idea of how movement, blocking, and striking worked, but I did need some guidance on how to make use of the moves and take note of how they interacted in a match. Moving around the ring and evading felt fairly intuitive and were a big focus on how a match played out, and I needed a lot of practice to get that drilled into my head since I largely play 2D fighters. The game offers some brief explanations of how your movements work in the basic tutorial so that you know why you’re sidestepping, but I still found I needed the lessons beaten into me before they started to click. Not that it’s the fault of the game. I just learn better when practically applying something over reading it.

The thing that tripped me up the most as I learned movement was the dedicated block button. Having to push a button to block (and use it to jump) took some time to nail down. This is a necessity due to the game’s focus on freedom of movement, which was nice as it made the game feel very different even from Tekken 8. Not that Tekken 8 doesn’t also emphasize movement and positioning, but it felt like I had so much freedom to step around the opponent and move back and forth in this game than I did in Tekken 8. It’s just much easier to take a little step around your foe with this control scheme, although my blocking suffered a great deal in the trade-off. It does add a little something unique to this title, but you may find the trade-off in blocking and jumping to be more irritating than it’s worth. Just prepare yourself to spend some time on movement to get used to it.

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. has a solid roster of fun characters to mess around with. El Blaze gave me some high-flying grapples (a decent complement to my beloved King from Tekken 8). Shun might remind you a bit of Jamie from Street Fighter 6 with his need to down drinks to give himself different moves and strikes. Akira just does a solid job at stomping the competition with damage output. They’re all fun and felt unique. That said, and this may be unfair to say given the source game’s age, but I just felt like the character designs didn’t grab me. They all feel a bit plain (maybe grounded in reality is more accurate to say), so I didn’t feel an immediate visual draw to anyone. It made it harder to really lock into a main and also left me feeling less interested in playing long-term. I just don’t find the designs here to be all that compelling when compared to other fighters over the years, and when I need to make a huge commitment to learn the moves of a character, I need to feel some visual pull keeping me locked into my character. Especially when movement and blocking feels weird.

There are some customization options to make your character feel more like your own, but they’re fairly bare-bones. I tinkered a bit with various pairs of pants and colored outfits, but there just weren’t that many options for the characters. You can tweak some colors, but that’s about it. This meant I could make some really gaudy characters, sure, but I was hoping for a bit more freedom or creativity in the base creation system. As is, you can make some small changes if you like, but I didn’t see anything that really made me want to keep coming back and making new outfits.

I came into Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. knowing that it wasn’t offering anything new besides Rollback Netcode and 4K visuals, but I still felt that I wanted more the longer I played with it. I am still puzzled that the single player Quest Mode was not put back in as it might have helped justify purchasing a game I felt I already bought years ago with Ultimate Showdown. Many other games have added Rollback Netcode in an update of some sort, so having to buy a game I already own again to get it felt a bit silly without some other features to get me interested. The 4K visuals do look nice, but I just personally felt like these features weren’t enough to ask me to pick up the game again. Yes, Ultimate Showdown is only on PlayStation and this version is only on Steam, but it still feels like a little something more would have made this an easier purchase to make.

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. is worth picking up if you just want to play as Akira and smash some folks with more accurate online play thanks to the game’s Rollback Netcode. The game is solid online and features a large roster of fun, unique characters (even if I find them visually dull) to keep you busy for years as you learn the nuances of how they fight. All the same, a few more extras or modes from past games might have made this purchase a bit more palatable. Even so, there’s a lot of fun and challenging fights to be had here.

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. is available on PC.