Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition - Menat's Story
1Walk like an Egyptian Waifu...
Hailing from Egypt, a first for Street Fighter, we have Menat! As we can see, she’s a traveling fortune teller with impressive powers, and it would seem she’s an apprentice to Street Fighter alumni Rose. Rose incidentally was one huge homage to Lisa-Lisa, from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. A good counterpart to Bison, Rose wields Soul Power, which acts opposite to Psycho Power…and now she has an apprentice! Too bad Menat seems kinda forgetful though.
Menat first appears to Ed in a strange vision/battle inside the mind. We’ll see this from Ed’s perspective soon. She travels the rest of the world looking to warn others of a great calamity but…it’s all very vague and no one really listens to her. What makes Menat’s story kind of interesting is that she fights off some NPCs that usually only appear in the cinematic story mode such as one of Bison’s many Dolls. I mean…if you have the assets lying around, might as well use them! Menat feels like a weird addition from a story standpoint, but maybe they feel that Rose is getting too old for this? We’ll have to wait and see!
Menat, like her master, uses Soul Power and channels it through an object, in this case her crystal ball. Many might find her similar to Viola from Soul Calibur V, who also wielded a crystal ball. Much of Menat’s playstyle involves sending the crystal ball out, recalling it and occasionally exploding it, giving her pretty good space control. Her attack range is dramatically improved with the crystal ball, rivaling Dhalsim with range, and good players will have to memorize her attack ranges with and without the ball in hand. Then there’s her V-Triggers and V-Skill to consider.
Her V-Skill is Soul Reflect. If she has her crystal ball in hand, she’ll reflect projectiles back at her opponent, but if it’s deployed she instead absorbs the attack and converts it to V-Gauge energy. The move works as a normal attack too and can launch foes up in the air if you do the crouching version. Her V-Trigger I is super tricky. Wisdom of Thoth has her generate six orbs which will be launched at the foe if she hits one of her normal attacks, though the exact workings behind just when they are deployed are hard to figure out. Some come out when you tap the buttons, some on release, and some when used in a combo, it seems…so if you can figure it out, good for you! V-Trigger II is a bit more accessible. Prophecy of Thoth has her generate six orbs again, but this time depending on the buttons you hit, she’ll launch them in a given spread. Straight ahead, as an anti-air, or have them rain down after being launched up. Overall, many consider Menat to be one of the more demanding characters in the game, but she can be pretty rewarding if you put in the work. I…could definitely use more practice with her.
So we had beauty and the beast with Menat and Abigail today and tomorrow will, sadly, end my coverage of SFV’s character stories for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned!~
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