With Street Fighter 6, Capcom took to heart the criticisms levelled at Street Fighter 5’s less-than-stellar launch. This time, Street Fighter 6 comes pounding out of the gate with the most comprehensive and fully featured fighter that I’ve seen in some time. Whether you’re a novice to fighting games or a master grappler, Street Fighter 6 goes out of its way to offer something for everyone at launch, with a package full to the brim with content sure to keep you busy for months. But most of all, it’s ridiculously fun and the best that Street Fighter has been in years.
Street Fighter 6 brings some big changes to the franchise, with the biggest being its desire to be more accessible to gamers of all speeds and skill levels. To do this Capcom have provided a variety of difficulty levels, along with multiple ways to learn how the game plays and three controller settings that span the gamut from beginner to novice to master. It really has never been easier to get into the mechanics of the game.
Street Fighter 6 is broken down into three modes and where you start is up to you. There’s World Tour, Battle Hub and Fighting Ground.
World Tour is a meaty bit of Street Fighter action RPG in which you get to create your own avatar and take it onto the mean streets of Capcom’s conjoined Street Fighter and Final Fight world. Your job is to get stronger and you do that by fighting everyone you can in Metro City. Fighting here is a way of life. From the gangs looking to make you eat concrete sandwiches, to your everyday citizens who are always pumped to throw down.
World Tour will take you across the world, completing the main and side missions, visiting iconic and exotic Street Fighter locales and, most important of all, meeting up with the game’s main cast. World Tour is but one of the first steps towards learning how to play Street Fighter 6 as many of the game’s missions are designed around learning the game mechanics.
Better yet, it lets you learn how to play as the main cast by letting your avatar become their disciple and battle across Metro City with their fighting style. It’s a great way to get you into the swing of specials, cancels, combo attacks and specific timing.
While World Tour is very much a Yakuza-lite experience, battles take place on a 2D plane, as you would fight in any of the other play modes, but untraditionally throws multiple opponents and items into the mix.
Your avatar can be customised with various stat-altering gear and, once you’ve accepted tutelage under one of the game’s main cast, their specials are as well. From there you can take your avatar over into. . .
. . . Battle Hub, which plays out like a large, virtual arcade space populated by shop booths, other players’ avatars and a whole bunch of arcade cabinets for you to get your fight on. And just like a good old-fashioned arcade, you can stand around cabinets waiting for a match, throw out a challenge or spectate fights in progress.
From here you can access all of the game’s online multiplayer options, including casual matches, ranked matches and tournaments. It’s a nicely recreated piece of digital nostalgia for those of us that bemoan the loss of arcades. However, if this isn’t your cup of tea, you can still access all these modes and more from. . .
. . . Fighting Ground, which is essentially your traditional fighting game menu. While its primary design is centred around playing against a friend on the couch next to you or the game’s A.I., you can still access all of the online features here, just in a more traditional manner. Here you’ll find the games Arcade Story mode, versus battles, extreme battles and team battles.
And if you weren’t sold on World Tour modes teaching practices or came to Fighting Ground first, there are more tutorial and training modes here to get you up to speed. You can learn the basics or jump into character-focused tutorials while also taking part in combo trials which teach you how to use specific combos, their timing and the situations in which to pull them out.
Finally, there are cutscenes, music and artwork to unlock along with a virtual arcade to play classic Capcom games in.
New to Street Fighter is the Drive Gauge system which breaks down into more special moves powered by the Drive Gauge. Unlike regular Supers, you start off with a full Drive Gauge each round and every time you use a Drive move, it knocks some bars off the gauge. You’ll have access to Drive Parry’s and Drive Rushes, amongst others, that can drastically change the tempo of a fight. Best of all, it does so without feeling like an overpowered device sure to guarantee you a win.
The Drive system will let you dash across the stage quickly, parry other Drive attacks and use a super fancy, stylishly animated attack which can lead into combos you have no access to otherwise.
Combat depth and changes to the core systems and core characters are also introduced. Some are more noticeable than others for specific characters but these new balancing tweaks feel for the best. Super Arts return with three levels and a different Super per level. Like the Drive system though, they’re great ways to turn about a fight but also never feel overpowered.
As with the extra, in-depth tutorials, Capcom has introduced two new control schemes to the mix. You now have access to Classic controls, Modern and Dynamic.
Classic speaks for itself and is the traditional way of playing Street Fighter, with a six-button input system and all the rotations in the world you can handle! It’s also the most in-depth of the control methods giving you full access to a fighter’s repertoire and timing.
Modern is the best scheme for new users to grab onto. It breaks the inputs down into four main buttons for the most part. A heavy attack, light attack, medium attack and special attack. Drive skills are mapped to the shoulders while one trigger uses the new auto combo system. This method removes much of the complication from pulling off combos or special moves while giving you a fairly versatile fighting scheme. However, it doesn’t give full access to all of a fighter’s move set.
What it does do is bring the control method more in-line with other modern fighters making it easy to pick up and play rather than having to worry about which button was your light punch versus your heavy kick first.
Dynamic is the easiest control scheme to use as it’s essentially a one-button setup where the game’s system decides which attack to pull out depending on the situation. This is great for younger players and maybe those who really like to button mash, but I can’t see much use for it if you’re serious about getting to grips with the game.
To me, Street Fighters’ very specific timing seems to have received the biggest change-up. The timing now feels faster, smoother and far more fluid for performing combos. Like the control scheme, it feels like Capcom have fully embraced what it means to be in 3D now versus the timing that they used for 2D animations which could be very hard to get down. I struggled a lot less with Street Fighter 6 in when to pull off attacks and when to throw out more moves to continue a combo chain than I have in previous games in the series.
Don’t for a second think that this means any of the game’s tactical depth has disappeared. It’s all still here, just easier to parse though just as difficult to master. If you’re looking to count animation frames and all of those other pro-fighter tips and tricks, Street Fighter 6 has plenty of depth for you to spelunk in.
Street Fighter 6 updates Capcom’s fighting series for the modern age while striving to make the game more accessible for players of all skill levels. And it does so wonderfully. The visuals are great, the animation is fluid and fantastic and there’s enough depth here to take you ages to sort through. But most of all, it’s just an incredible amount of silly, addictive fun that fighting games haven’t been for me for ages.
Street Fighter 6 Trailer
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