Street Fighter V patch brings challenge mode

Street Fighter V's big March update has been advertised for a few weeks now, and after what seems like an eternity March 28th has finally rolled over, and so should the first portion of the update as well.

Today's patch is bringing with it the Challenge Mode, online rematch, Battle Lounge improvements and numerous balance changes. The second phase of this update will come on March 30th and will contain Alex and his character story content, two free skins, and an in-game shop where you can spend your hard earned fight money. Here are the patch notes for March 28th:

Challenge Mode:

Demonstrations: Learn the ins and outs of Street Fighter V through helpful demonstration and tutorial content. Contains content for each of the 16 characters, as well as advice geared towards players of all skill levels:

Beginner Tutorials: 12 lessons covering, movement, normal attacks, special attacks, V-System, throws, counter hits, chip/recoverable damage, etc.

Intermediate Tutorials: 11 lessons covering projectiles, invincibility frames, armor and armor break, recovery, cross-up attacks, anti-air options, etc.

Advanced Tutorials: 4 lessons covering back dashing, frame advantage/disadvantage, combo potential, button priority, etc.

Character Tutorials: 16 lessons covering each individual character.

Trials: Put your skills to the ultimate test with combo trials for all 16 characters, ranging from basic to pro combos.  Completing Trials will also earn you some extra Fight Money. 

Online Rematch Option:

Salty from a close loss online? Want revenge?  Players can now play a 2/3 set in Ranked Match and Casual Matches, provided both players accept the rematch.

Battle Lounge Improvements:

Enjoy up to 8 person lobbies, complete with match spectating.

Bug Fixes:

Bug: Sometimes you don’t get EXP from casual matches

Bug: On a rare occurrence, if you restart the game after you unlock colors, the colors you unlocked will disappear

Balance Changes:

Vega:

- If you hit V-Trigger Bloody Kiss (anti-air) in certain situations, Vega will no longer continue to rise off the top of the screen.

M. Bison:

- If M. Bison is interrupted by an opponent’s V-Trigger or Critical Art during his invisible frames of Double Knee Press in V-Trigger mode, M. Bison will no longer remain invisible until his next move.

Rashid:

- Rashid will no longer float in the air for a moment if you perform his V-Trigger after he touches the ground upon a missed Eagle Spike.

Chun-Li:

- During V-Trigger activation, the hit stop and block stop has been made the same for multi-hitting moves (medium or heavy attacks for both normal and special moves).

- She was previously able to perform option selects involving standing HP into Houyokusen, so this has been removed.

Vertical and Back Jump Frames:

- All characters except Birdie and Zangief: Vertical jump and back jump frames have changed from 3f->4f.

Birdie: Vertical jump and back jump frames have changed from 4f->5f.

Zangief: No changes to jump frames.

- These changes reduce the effectiveness of throw tech option selects involving jumping (also known as “jump grab”). Changing forward jump frames would affect the game balance too much so those remain unchanged.

Throw Escape Change:

- If you push buttons during the normal throw delayed tech window you are unable to escape throws for 2 frames.

- Prevents using light attacks to option select with throw escapes.

- If you execute specific special moves during the normal throw delayed tech window you are unable to immediately escape throws. Each characters V-skills, V-triggers, V-reversals, critical arts, and moves have been set individually.

- Prevents throw escape option selects involving specific moves such as Shoryuken, etc.

The exact release date for this patch wasn't given, but by all accounts it should be arriving today, so keep your eyes peeled on Steam's download tab.

Chun-Li's story costume

One of the two upcoming free costumes