Street Fighter 5 – How to Beat Survival Mode

To unlock all of the color variations for each character, you have to spend a lot of time grinding through Survival Mode. Even for high-level players, this has proven to be a daunting task that can be extremely frustrating, especially if the color you desire requires you to complete Survival Mode on Hard difficulty. If you’re unaware of which difficulties unlock specific colors, be sure to check out our unlocking guide so you don’t waste any time completing difficulties you don’t need to do.

Battle Supplements

Between matches you can select from a variety of battle supplements that can replenish your health, increase your defense of damage output and more. There are a quite a few choices you can make, and a lot of players make bad decisions here, which lead to early losses. Let’s cover some of the more important battle supplements and when you should be picking them up.

Health Recovery – If your health is low then it’s important to pick up the Health Recovery supplement. Sometimes you will only get a Low Health Recovery even when you need as much health as you can get. If you’re truly unlucky you may even get the Low variant several matches in a row. Because Health Recovery costs quite a lot, if you have over 70 or 80 percent health, try to opt for a defensive supplement and save your points for when you really need it.

Attack Power Up – Increasing your attack power also increases the amount of stun your attacks inflict. With these supplements you should blow through your matches much faster. When you hit level 11 and up, you should switch between Attack Power Up and Defense Up depending on your health and how well you’re performing against the computer. If you don’t have damaging combos, Attack Power Up should be your priority.

Defense Up – In most cases this is the battle supplement you should be going for. Increasing your defense can be more helpful than increasing your attack, especially if you already have damaging combos. In addition, if the only Health Recovery options is Low, you’ll get better results out of Defense Up 2 or 3.

Double Down – This battle supplement drains a bit of your health, while increasing your attack power and providing a score bonus. During the first 10 rounds or so, this is what you should be going with. You can blow through these early opponents while giving yourself a score bonus to help you stock up for hen you really need the points later on.

Battle Strategies

For the first 10 matches it’s important to stock up on your points. Other than going with the Double Down Battle Supplement, you shouldn’t be spending points on anything else. For the most part, the first 10 opponents won’t put up much of a fight.

Meaty pressure works well against the computer. You don’t necessarily need to use frame traps as the CPU will fall for the same safe attack over and over even if it’s not a frame trap. Just make sure you stay on top of the opponent for as long as possible so that the computer can’t get its offense going.

After landing a knockdown, go for a meaty jump-in cross-up. The computer rarely blocks cross-up attacks, and your success rate will be even higher if your attack is meaty. Make sure when you land the cross-up that you have a solid combo to follow it up with.

If you get knocked to the ground, watch how the computer reacts. If the opponent continually walks toward you, wake up with a reversal uppercut or whatever the equivalent is for your character. More often than not you will land the attack and you can go back to your offensive pressure.

The computer opponents don’t punish well, so you can use Dragon Punch after Dragon Punch (especially if it has invincibility frames) and the computer will either block or get hit, but rarely will they punish you. Overhead attacks also work well as the computer rarely blocks them, but don’t end rounds with them unless you absolutely have to because you want the score bonus from ending a round with a Critical Art or EX special move.

Maximizing Your Score

• End every round as quickly as possible and with as much health as possible.
• Finish off an opponent with a Critical Art or EX special move.
• Always land the First Attack.
• Go for Perfects as often as possible.

Be sure to check out our tips on earning Fight Money so you can unlock the DLC characters, as well as our guide on how to play F.A.N.G.