Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.

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Time flies, doesn’t it? As SEGA’s acclaimed Virtua Fighter series celebrates its 30th anniversary, it’s almost hard to believe that nearly 2/3 of that time has been tied to the fifth iteration back when it originally hit the arcades in 2006. At that time, Virtua Fighter 5 was lauded as a next-gen marvel and served as a glimpse of what gaming hardware and the fighting game genre could be, if technical quality alone could carry a title.

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Sega has staunchly stood by this mantra as VF5 soldiers on its 19th year to endearing effect, even going as far as giving the seasoned entry a fresh coat of graphical paint along with some added refinement in the form of Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown (VF5 eSports). Yet another update that piqued interests in the hopes of there finally being a sixth entry somewhere on the horizon. Before all that, however, we’ve got Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., which takes the action another step forward on PC.

I’ll try to keep my spiel brief. VF5 R.E.V.O. is, for the most part, a straight PC port of Ultimate Showdown which debuted in arcades and (primarily) on PlayStation 4 four back in 2021. Now handled by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, it was meant to renew interest and to help SEGA gauge whether another mainline entry would be viable in the future. Despite the positive reception for Ultimate Showdown, there were still issues, particularly with online latency and its archaic delay-based netcoding that already felt outdated against contemporaries who adopted rollback technology for their games.

I’ll discuss the rollback online action soon enough, but for anyone curious this is basically Ultimate Showdown on PC/Steam. Almost everything from the menu, gameplay, main visuals, presentation, and general content is the exact same. There are enhancements but it’s mostly superficial and hardware-dependent, specifically native 4K (3840x2160p) resolution along with the ability to toggle between upscaled supersampling, with NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR (versions 1 and 3.1.2), and Intel XeSS all included, low latency mode through NVIDIA Reflex boost, and anti-aliasing quality presets from native, quality, and performance.

Considering R.E.V.O. is essentially a direct port of an older title, it’s no surprise it plays well with a variety of GPUs and settings.I initially played with a GeForce RTX 4070 at default settings and the experience looked and felt flawless at a steady 60fps at 4K, excluding any secondary enhancements. I suspect any current-generation or previous mainstream graphics card will be able to achieve similar results as long as it’s a RTX 3070, AMD Radeon RX 6700, or Intel Arc A770 equivalent. Of course, these settings may affect online performance but it’s nothing that a few reduced graphic settings or enabling DLSS/FSR/XeSS can’t immediately fix.

For older or budget-oriented systems, I took an RTX 2070 and got good results as long as I kept the action at 1440p with DLSS enabled. R.E.V.O. still played smoothly and looked just as good to the eyes compared to my current RTX 4070, which was impressive. While I can’t say for certain, the optimization is so competent I’m pretty sure the game should run fine on cards that aren’t ridiculously old.

The core gameplay and its prowess will be instantly familiar or frustratingly technical depending on your proficiency with competitive fighting games. It’s refined despite the three-button layout (P+K+G) but stern in how VF insists you learn the flow of matches, versus the aimless button mashing you can probably get away in Tekken. It’s essentially a game of rock-paper-scissors with multiple approaches to read or guess your opponent’s next move and react accordingly, with failure to execute noticeably less forgiving, especially against higher level players. The formula isn’t over-the-top, but the punishment/reward ratio is consistent and feels earned rather than telegraphed.

Online functionality is intended to be the biggest draw for VF5 R.E.V.O. and this is where it smashes previous versions of Ultimate Showdown on PS4, which fumbled due to lack of rollback netcoding. Sega listened and I can say this is easily the best experience I’ve ever had playing VF online as the improved netcode really does elevate the performance as lag is practically nonexistent for the majority of the matches I played.

Moreover, this version finally brings the series to same competitive level of Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 both at home and abroad. My overseas matchups were surprisingly fluid and nothing felt delayed or choppy, with every victory earned, and conversely, every loss solemnly deserved.

Everything else from the PS4 version carries over, such as ranked matches, lobby room structure where you can have 16 players duke it out without affecting your win/loss record, and spectacle mode and replays via VF.TV. Don’t hold your breath for any chance of cross-platform play with console versions, sadly, though I suspect that dedicated brawlers will quickly migrate to R.E.V.O. anyway.

As we eagerly await the upcoming (and long overdue) Virtua Fighter 6, it’s probably a good time to freshen things up a bit with Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., easily the definitive version of Sega’s nearly 20 year-old title, and a fantastic demonstration of how fine-tuning can keep a classic relevant in the face of competitors desperately trying to appeal to wider audiences. If you appreciate an arcade fighter that stands the test of time without compromising technical fundamentals then R.E.V.O. deserves your attention – and plenty of effort, too.