The overall art direction in SF has really gone down since SFIV.

SFIV's main visual theme was based on calligraphy (the ink swirls). It's based on a concept called "Suibokuga". SSFIV extended this idea by introducing a "Pencil" filter. Here you can see both effects on Adon.

For some reason they thought it would be cool to copy this idea SFxT to SFxT, but the execution was horrible. Everything has watersplashes instead of ink, which I suppose is supposed to represent "Watercolour". Here you can see it on Steve Fox. The problem is, it doesn't look good in the engine at all. It looks like they started out with an idea for Watercolour, but ended up with Oil. Outlines are too thick and dark, and everything looks like it's been drenched in oil. Here's an example. Ken just looks horrible there.

Now with SFV, it seems like they want to incorporate all these things + elemental effects instead of just going with a brand new idea. And to top it off, it seems like they just threw in the towel halfway. Ryu started out with electricity + ink. Throughout development the ink effects were toned down. I'm not even sure they exist any more. Just shows a lack of direction. The elemental effects were interesting. Ryu has electricity, Ken has fire. Chun Li has water. Beyond that? They just seemed to slap on a rainbow trail (you can see it in the CG trailer when Mika is introduced). What's the purpose of this? What element does it represent? Why would they include this when it looks horrible when applied to EX Moves? (See Karin EX DP - looks like someone vomited a combination of buttered popcorn and M&M's all over the screen).

Furthermore, the game just doesn't look that great compared to SFIV when you consider that it's an 8 year difference plus a step up in hardware. And why does everyone have hair made of plasticine? Ken looks especially bad. They can't even get him to look good in a CG trailer. What's with all the clipping on the character select screen? Why are the colours so washed out on some of the stages? Why do the background characters look like they were copied straight out of SFIV? It's easier to see they were trying to do the same thing thing that was used in 3rd Strike and SFIV, where each stage has a dominant color, but is that really a good idea? Why not try something new? Making a stage a dull brown color just because you want it to fit in with this idea is dumb.

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with how SFV turned out aesthetically. Hopefully the gameplay will make up for it.