Customer Reviews

Street Fighter Player's Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the Streetfighter role playing game, characters choose one of several different martial arts styles that will determine which powers and abilities they will be able to select, both in character generation and in the future. The core rulebook did a good job of making sure that the styles were more of less equal, so that making a character was more a matter of tastes than of maximizing benefits. That quality is tossed right out the window with the Player's Guide.

The guide introduces two new martial arts styles, one that is rather lame and the other which is grossly over-powered. The weak one, Savate, tries to compensate by saying its practitioners get to inflict extra damage because of the special shoes they wear, a poor excuse, and one that begs the question why other fighting styles don't incorporate such badass footwear. The other, Ninjitsu, features numerous super-manuevers which are only rarely available to other martial artists, including the cheapest ability ever attached to the product line.

The book goes on to outline rules for creating cyborgs, animal-hydrids, and elementals, rules which allow the player to make their starting characters far tougher than their mundane counterparts with hardly any drawbacks at all. If these three traits are combined, you've just made one ridiculous combat machine.

The next few chapters are better. Advice for playing background characters like team managers, senseis, and ring doctors are fair, though these are not really in keeping with this being a Player's Guide. The sample characters are mostly solid and in keeping with the tone of the genre.

The book ends with more special manuevers, but these are either too weak or too powerful compared to those in the core rulebook. Only a few are worth keeping, and the game plays very well indeed without them.

All in all, the new rules this book provides need a lot of rehabilitation to be of much use. The Player's Guide is for completists only.

I have to agree that there is a lot in this book that breaks the SFRPG. However, it is essential. In addition to savante and ninjitsu, you also have access to make your characters into animal hybrids, cyborgs, and elementals, adding to the munchkinism. But it is easy to look on the 'net and find out how to fix the problems in the book. It also adds more roleplaying in a system (WoD) that is used to more roleplaying than you find in Street Fighter.

Highly recommended.

In all respects, this is an interesting book. I remember wanting to buy it and then my friend (who i play Vampire with) bought before i could. n e way. It is interesting because it defines how to make specific characters from a myriad of fighting styles, adding powers and stuff... blah blah blah. the reasons is gsave it 3 stars is because if you step back from trying to descern why White-wolf published it, it really is quite funny. i have read through it and I think it deserves a go before you knock it.

This book is so bad, especially after waiting for a long time to get it. It is poorly designed, poorly written, and has some of the worst artwork that I have ever seen. And the parts for cybernetics, elementals and animal hybrids should be burned. This is a game about the martial arts, not superheros or ninja turtles. The discount point costs and the arena advantages are all that this book is good for.