After playing this game intensively for a while I've changed my mind.
SFV is a better game than SF4. The mechanics are a bit more accessible, I like the idea of v-skills and v-triggers as it gives each character individuality. More importantly, the eb and flow of offense and defense in general feels more natural and fluid. Yes, the gameplay is still skewed towards offense but if you have a good read on your opponent punishing on whiff is still possible and often necessarry in deciding a match.

There are still criticisms to the game. While every character is viable as a main the strongest characters are usually the ones with the best pokes and the best/most offensive options. All characters have a walk in or jump in attack. It's characters who have additional ways of 'getting in' offensively who often feel overpowered. Characters like Karen, Gouki, Cammy, Dhalsim and G as they don't tend to depend on the standard walk up/ jump in strategies for attack. Theoretically, their mix-ups are far more deadly than say Ryu who only has access to the standard walk up/jump in strategy for his vortex. On the other hand, Ryu does have a defensive parry which is much more of a gamble to pull off. The big catch is it's only effective if you know all the characters in the game and their offensive rhythm. That's a steep learning curve to overcome if you want to main Ryu on a competitive level.

Other criticisms involve the netcode and online play. To play the game online with minimal lag you need a decent isp with perfect network conditions. My isp delivers decent speeds but more often than not network conditions are suboptimal resulting in lag and skipping frames. Half of the times I log in the game's a lag infested slideshow where I fight network conditions as much as I'm fighting my opponent. At other times the game plays fine without dropping a frame. The gameplay experience usually depends on what network conditions downdetector reports for my isp.

The final criticism revolves around cheating. I've noticed that the higher one rises in the ranks the more often people tend to 'cheat' using turbo autofire. Online, it's possible to break blocked strings in the game with a turbo autofire low attack when normally it should register as a blocked combo. The higher the latency in game the higher the probability it will register as a counter. It can be very annoying to see a normally unblockable link combo consistently being countered by 'turbo autofire'.

But other than the above, it's a decent game and a decent streetfighter. It's come a long way from initial release and the fundamental gameplay blocks are sound. If only the online code was free from latency and lag.

Watching Capcom Cup, despite me not feeling SFV much this has been tremendous so far.

I think Luffy v Fudo was probably my fave.

You know with a few nerfs to Karin, Rashid and Ibuki they might actually have a well balanced game on there hands here.

Not by the character choices though, dammit.

Who are the commentators? One of them sounds a bit like Eazy-E!

Fucking hell. I’m off to bed after that nail-biter.

Yes. I’m too tired otherwise I’d carry on.

The poison was good to watch

Rashid is terrible to watch

Punk vs Idom it is.

Shame Phenom lost, fight was good.

Punk is the spit of Don King

I'm so curious about that monitor. It looks so Orange.

Is the colour balance fucked or is it just the angle.

The first wouldn't surprise me

Omg Idom.