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Street Fighter 6 had a herculean task ahead of its release- as one of the most prestigious names in the genre, the game had to launch in such a way that it would not only be good, it needed to also completely evaporate all memory of the less-than-stellar launch of Street Fighter V before it.
After a week of playing the game, it’s been pretty much a classic example of Capcom firing on all cylinders. The game shoots for the moon, and hits it with such great force it somehow manages to clip Mars in the process.
How does Street Fighter 6 manage being one of the biggest triumps of the FGC? Read on and find out.
All Hail The Drive System
As someone whose soul is doomed to eternally climb ranked modes, I think the most fun of Street Fighter 6 is in the combat itself. The game’s Drive System marks the continued trend of fighting games towards more aggressive playstyles, but not so much in such a way that it stops feeling like Street Fighter. Unlike most games that require you to generate meter before you can use it, Street Fighter 6 approaches this problem by giving you a full Drive Gauge to start the round- turning it into the kind of coked-up gamble only a true casino vagrant could appreciate.
It helps that the amount of options to spend your Drive on are so varied- you have Drive Reversals and parries for opponents who are a little too persistent in their offense, Drive Rushes for cautious players looking to capitalize on stray hits, as well as Overdrives and Drive Impacts as offensive for really committing to your own offense.
Like any gamble, there’s the possibility of going bust- you see that in the game’s burnout mechanic, where your character grays out and now becomes more vulnerable to being punished. It’s not necessarily a game over for being in burnout- but the climb back to victory will be all the harder with it. hanging over you.
Overall, I’m really impressed with how well the Drive System enhances the average Street Fighter experience. Street Fighter is a very fundamentals-driven game, but that doesn’t mean it has to be overly defensive. While Street Fighter V was criticized for leading a generation of more defense-heavy entries, 6 is presented in such a way that defense is as strong as it was before, but you have so many more tools to get in.
I’m especially impressed with how well the tools of the Drive System balance each other out- Drive Impact is regularly whined about for being too strong, letting you absorb hits while dishing out your own big, crumpling attack. But it’s that exact strength that balances it out- if you’re observant enough to know when best to Drive Impact, you’ll be able to predict your opponent’s own Impacts and punish them with grabs or jump-ins.
Similarly, the Drive Rush is a hilariously bold mechanic- it’s easily one of the priciest and most execution heavy tools, cancelling your normals on hit into a forward dash and extending your combos. A few hours of matches you’ll easily be able to gauge players skill levels by how they use Drive Rush- from total abstainers to people who clearly spent all their time learning it but not working on fundamentals to the well-rounded optimized Drive Rush user.
All this especially gets enhanced with the game’s Modern Controls. While controversially viewed as an “easy mode”, Modern is anything but. It lowers the execution barrier, yes, but just like Granblue Fantasy Versus’ one-button specials ended up being used by pro players who needed a faster way to get their reversals out, Modern Controls can be incredibly powerful in the hands of players who know what they’re doing.
Instead they remind me of A-isms from Street Figher Alpha 3- it’s a different ruleset to play your character with, and different players mileage will vary depending on their playstyle. Having felt the fear of Modern Zangief having a one-button SPD, it’s interesting to see how threatening a player with less options is when their judgement is just so much better than yours.
The New, New Challengers
Considering these are all just universal mechanics, there’s a lot to be praise to be had for the characters themselves. Street Fighter 6’s roster is absolutely full of personality, reworking classic characters like Ryu and Dhalsim in ways that feel familiar and fresh at the same time.
It’s one of those things I really hope to see game design students researching in future because no character is transformed too much- Ryu is still a Shoto, meaning he’s still throwing out Hadoukens and Tatsus in neutral and Shoryus on wakeup. But new moves like a charged state as well as how he interacts with the Drive System allows him to be played in new ways, and even the most steadfast Ryu mains are sure to have some fun working out his new toys.
I think the most fun is with the new characters, however, who are made bespoke for the terrors of the Drive System. Marisa, the game’s big-body brawler has free tools for punishing people for Drive Impact, as well as her own counter stance making you rethink just how aggressive you really want to be.
Manon is the game’s second grappler, who puts the fear of god into you by doing more damage every time she lands a grab, meaning you need to be wary of any window she might have to get in (Of which she has many). JP is by and large the most terrifying of the new roster, with a zoning kit that feels more at home at Arc System Works than a Street Fighter title.
The fact the roster is so fleshed out means there’s definitely a character for everyone, even within certain archetypes. Like grapplers? Choose between the mixup heavy Manon and the big-body Zangief. Zoners? Dhalsim and JP have different ways to smite you from across the screen. Considering how often I’ll like a playstyle but not necessarily a character, there’s just so much fun to be had experimenting with the broad canvas of Street Fighter 6.
Content Rich
Of course, the biggest triumph of Street Fighter 6 comes in the form of just how much content there is. World Tour is an amazing single player mode that lets you sucker punch old Kenpo dudes to steal their money so you can ask Manon out on a date. From making your own character to training with the game’s cast, World Tour is honestly feature-rich on its own to be a Street Fighter spinoff title rather than a mode in a much larger game.
As someone whose main concern is grinding rank, it’s kind of scary how big World Tour is- it’s got chapters full of quests and the like, from fighting the Mad Gear gang to hanging out with your favorite Street Fighter characters. Despite definitely feeling like a big RPG it’s important to also have your expectations in check though- you’re more likely to enjoy World Tour if you’re just looking to learn random weird facts about characters like Juri than search for any kind of epic NetherRealm-esque story.
That’s far from the only thing you’re doing in Street Fighter 6, though. It legitimately feels like as long as you’re sure you want to interact with the Street Fighter brand, you’ll find a way here. Extreme Mode replaces pure fighting games with fun minigames, giving you a way to de-escalate tension after you’ve lost your 50th game in a row. There’s also an arcade complete with old classic Capcom games, so you can pay premium triple-A game prices just to run an emulated version of Super Turbo.
If you just want versus content, there’s plenty for that, too. Aside from your standard arcade mode Street Fighter 6 boasts an insanely robust training mode, letting you do everything from checking frame data to even slowing down gameplay if you wanna practice your inputs. It’s even got my favorite type of tutorial- the mini essays explaining you how to play your characters.
It’s a very pleasant kind of pushiness- Street Fighter 6 wants you to play it, and it does so by making sure getting into it is as painless as possible. If you just want to beat up on CPU opponents, World Tour has enough to keep you interested. If you’re new but wanna learn, the training tools are more than enough to help. If you’re a boomer, Super Turbo is right there.
Drive Services
This does bring us to my singular problem with the game. Street Fighter 6 is very clearly engineered to be a Live Service, with an as-of-this-writing empty battlepass as well as premium currency to buy costumes for your characters.
I’m not entirely opposed to this model. But as it stands we don’t entirely know how the relationship between the free currency, Drive Tickets, and the premium Fighter Coins works. Online matches are incredibly unrewarding, only providing Kudos- yet another currency that unlocks character specific titles.
With this, my only thought is “well it’s a good thing I don’t need live service hooks to play fighting games”. The idea that I can spend three hours grinding away in matches and not earn any kind of progress towards buying a three-piece suit for my avatar is disheartening. I could just play World Tour and unlock it by sucker punching every hipster on the street, sure. But at the end of the day I’m the type of player who came here to put the fear of command grabs into people, and that means until I learn to take some time off I’ll be wearing the tank top of shame.
Closing Thoughts
It’s very, very hard to think of Street Fighter 6 as anything less than excellent. It builds off of everything that people love about Street Fighter, boasting one of the strongest visual identities since Third Strike. Matches feel good and fun to play, and the road to being decent doesn’t feel nearly as steep as a lot of older fighting games.
Even my only gripe, the live service side, is done in such a way that it’s perfectly missable. I could totally forget about any kind of battle pass they have because that’s clearly not the hook of the game- it’s the fun of the actual gameplay, something I wish a lot more titles would try to do.
Fighting games have come a long way from the pressure-sensitive button mashing of Street Fighter 1, and they’re at their best in Street Fighter 6. If you’re looking to get into fighting games, this is probably your best first stop.
Game reviewed on PC. Review code provided by Capcom.
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PROS
- One of the most feature-rich fighting games you'll ever play
- Cross-play, rollback and accessibility options means the matches keep coming
- One of the most visually striking Street Fighter titles since Third Strike
CONS
- Kudos should only be reserved for Ao3, Not A Fighting Game
