Quarterly Reviews - Street Fighter 6: Old Franchise, New Tricks
In Street Fighter 6, Anyone Can Cook
Here’s the second edition of my Quarterly Reviews newsletter! Typically I think of a couple different categories to place games in, like Most Played and Favorite New Game, just to have some variety in topics, since I’m not playing new games very often. This is not one of those times.
A quick note: This is a pretty in-depth review of a fighting game, and therefore I’ll link to the excellent Fighting Game Glossary every time a new piece of jargon is used. Back to it.
My Favorite and Most Played New Game: Knuckle Sandwiches for the Whole Class
Street Fighter 6 took over my brain even before its June 2nd release. It’s the first of the next generation of fighting games, and it sets the bar really high with a cornucopia of useful features. One of the focuses of production was clearly making sure the game was as appealing to newcomers as possible, and they succeeded, probably more than ever before.
Tutorials were frequently too long and failed to teach you the actual skills and concepts required to win against other people in fighting games. SF6 has thankfully broken the mold here, in tons of ways. Robust tutorials teach you not only how to play the game, but how to improve at it too. Training mode comes with preset settings for practicing common skills and scenarios, like anti-airs and delay teching.
Each of the 18 characters has specific guides for all of their special moves, supers, and general game-plans, all written in each character’s voice. The guides let you practice the moves on display, and the character will praise you when you input a move successfully. The single player World Tour mode spreads out special moves and fighting game concepts so players can learn in a more controlled environment. The big one, however, is a brand new Modern control scheme that removes the need for motion inputs or charge moves entirely, even though most are still available if you want them.
Modern controls are actually not that dissimilar to the Classic control scheme. By default, both have macro buttons set in order to pull off two new universal mechanics, Drive Impact and Drive Parry. Modern has a throw macro on the left trigger that’s good for new players unused to simultaneous inputs, and an all inclusive Special Move button allows players to instantly perform whichever special they want, and get super moves more easily. Rather than having separate buttons for punches and kicks, the Modern control scheme flattens them into 3 generic buttons for each strength of attack; light, medium, and heavy.
Most importantly, holding the right trigger allows Modern players to execute an auto combo: a set of different moves performed automatically by repeatedly pressing the same button. This allows anyone to pick up the controller and play a brand new character without having to learn or read any movelists. Modern isn’t just for new or casual players though. Modern is available in every mode of the game, including online, and in the official two million dollar tournament circuit Capcom Cup. Many players have deployed it to great success in ranked already.
There are downsides to the Modern system though. Special moves and supers get a flat damage reduction when performed without the motion inputs. Most buttons (save for some auto combos) only perform the specific move assigned by the developers, so Modern players get less fine control of their characters. Though many characters retain most versions of their special moves through motion inputs, that means you’re still not given full control of the game until you learn them, even if they’re optional.
Overall, Modern can completely remove the difficult barrier of entry into the fighting game world. In combination with the immaculate battle mechanics surrounding the brand new Drive Gauge, the Modern control scheme gets you from wrestling with your own character, to combating your opponent’s character, to outmaneuvering your opponent faster than ever. Capcom is more than happy to have players using Modern controls for their entire Street Fighter 6 careers, without ever “graduating” to the old Classic controls.
This is the most I've ever played a fighting game myself, in no small part to this approach. Fighting games were always a genre I was only vaguely interested in, with my older brother always taking a larger shine to them. With Street Fighter 6, everything changed almost overnight.
I’ve logged over 128 hours on Steam since the game released under 2 months ago, which doesn’t include the time I put into the betas and the demo. I’ve used more involved, more exciting, and crazier combos in this game than I ever could before. I’ve hit new highs in the ranked ladder, and kept up with my friends that had more experience than me in the genre. There is just so much juice in this game, from its visual to gameplay design that I can’t stop thinking about it.
Don't Be Afraid of Fighting Games
Street Fighter 6 is here, and there has never been a better time to get into fighting games than when you're excited about them. If fighting games look cool, but never have been "for you," then this article has some tips for being getting started as a small fish in a big pond.
The new Drive system in SF6 is a really big deal. Every character has a green gauge made of 6 green blocks under their health. With it, everyone can perform 5 universal moves that replace the old stun meter and other mechanics in previous entries in the franchise. Each Drive move requires an amount of Drive gauge to activate, and running out of Drive causes a Burnout state, which can lead to chip damage from special and super moves. Just like that, the gauge drives every moment of play in Street Fighter 6, and it makes it fun.
The gauge acts as a sort of inertial driver of the fight. Blocking attacks causes Drive chip, or the draining your Drive gauge when defending. This means that turtling has inherent risk: block constant attacks for too long and you limit your future options or maybe even become Burnt Out, which disables the powerful Drive moves, and could lead to being stunned and suffering a huge combo. Besides spending your own gauge in order to pull off Drive moves, the only other way to lose it is when you are punish countered: if you ever leave an opening your opponent takes advantage of, you lose a quick chunk of gauge to reward their quick thinking.
Thankfully — save for a small delay whenever it’s spent or drained — the Drive gauge is constantly refilling, even when you’re putting the hurt on your opponent. The rhythm of combat is determined by the tug of war of both Drive gauges, and managing yours so that you aren’t on the back foot is the core of the game.
Now for the exciting stuff.
Both characters start every round with a full drive gauge, meaning you have access to your most powerful moves at the very first frame of each fight. In order to show off the depth of the new systems of the game, we’ll explore Drive Impact, a powerful new move available to the whole cast. For only one block of the Drive gauge, Drive Impact is one of the flashiest and most important moves in the game. Graffiti tags swirl around your character as they step forward and throw out a big attack, and if both players throw out Drive Impacts at the same time, time will slow down as the camera swoops in for an exciting heart-stopping moment as both characters are locked into action.
On its own though, Drive Impact doesn’t do a lot of damage. Instead, its strength lies in its other properties, namely in its two hits of armor. That means that it takes three quick attacks during the startup of Drive Impact in order to break that armor, and to put your opponent into hit stun, taking back “your turn.” This gives the Drive Impact the benefit of “beating” otherwise strong pokes in neutral, and even most projectiles.
That being said, Drive Impact gives you the most benefit when it hits an enemy that is doing something: Drive Impact only creates an opening for a big combo if an opponent is throwing out attacks. That means that there are limited options you have when your opponent Drive Impacts towards you:
Using Raw Drive Impact against an opponent’s Drive Impact is often the best response, and can lead to a huge punish counter combo, as long as you can react to the paint flash that signals the move fast enough.
Jumping can avoid Drive Impact attacks altogether, and well timed jumping attacks can lead to big damage, as long as the jumping attack lands after the Drive Impact’s armor state ends.
Three attacks fast enough will break through the armor, like three quick jabs, which usually, optimally, can lead to a knockdown. The window for these attacks is tight, though, and if done too late, frequently causes you to be counter hit, which is the worst outcome.
Because of the properties of armor in SF6, someone who throws out Drive Impact at low health runs the risk of taking enough damage before that armor breaks, and getting knocked out before the attack comes out.
More often, a special cancellable normal will let you — if you react very quickly or are already ready to throw it out — cancel into a multi-hitting move or your own Drive Impact, letting you cover more of your bases in neutral when you’re caught off guard.
Every Super in the game has the armor break property, if you can get it out fast enough. Thankfully, Modern controls let you use super with a directional input and two buttons at the same time, making it easier for them to react this way.
Just getting hit raw by Drive Impact, as long as you’re midscreen, is mostly okay. Yes, you’ll lose one whole section of your Drive gauge for eating it, and tons of space will be given up as your character is launched backwards, but you frequently won’t suffer the magnitude of damage that a full punish would mean otherwise.
Drive Parry is a powerful enhanced blocking state that drains meter while it’s active, but will recoup Drive gauge when it blocks attacks. It’s a solid option that prevents the dangerous knockback effect when being hit by Drive Impact.
Regular blocking Drive Impact will lead to only losing half a bar of Drive gauge, but it comes with some serious risks if done in the corner.
Because Drive Impact causes knockback, even on block, you’ll be wall splat against the edge of the screen, making it functionally unblockable in the corner. Finally, Drive Impact will stun an opponent that is knocked back into the wall when they have no Drive gauge, and are therefore Burnt Out. This is true even if the Drive Impact is the attack that drains the last of your Drive gauge. When your Drive is low, not only are the actions you can take limited, but you also become more vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks.
That's how much nuance and detail even one move introduced with the Drive system adds. Crucially, every single character has the option to use Drive Impact at the touch of a single button, meaning that it’s an option available at the earliest levels of play. As it turns out, Drive Impact still remains powerful even at the top level of play, meaning the gap between what high and low level play feels like is narrower than ever.
Indeed, across all skill levels of the game, some core truths emerge about how Street Fighter 6 needs to be played. Because there are so many options available for so much of the time you’ll be playing, one of the hardest parts of the game is keeping them all in mind as part of your mental stack, because an option is only a good one if you remembered it in time. As such, the game has a lot of avenues for players to get better at, and lots of them are easy to notice and can be quickly improved on, which is secretly where the real fun is in a fighting game.
Overall, Street Fighter 6 is a majestic game, with innumerable mountains for players to climb on their journey for mastery. But if you aren’t a competitive player (yet!) there’s still plenty for you to enjoy. The usual arcade mode is here, with bonus stages, voice acted story comics, and lots of bonuses for completion, like concept arts and old renders. Importantly though, an entire open world RPG — one that is often accurately compared to the Yakuza and Like a Dragon franchise — is here.
World Tour puts your custom character into Metro City, one of the main locales of Street Fighter and Streets of Rage, which share a universe and some design history. There you’re able to fight about half of the NPCs that wander the world, and engage in typical RPG quests collecting items and setting up fast travel points around the city. Through various points in the story, you meet the main cast of 18 characters and can learn under them as masters who impart their fighting styles to you.
It continued to be funny to walk up to someone on the street and hit them with Edmund Honda’s flying headbutt for the dozens of hours that it took for me to complete the frankly mediocre main quest line. World Tour’s story takes you to Nayshall (pronounced Nigh-shawl) where the game gestures towards themes of imperialism and the effects of global capitalism on the infant country. Nayshall feels like set dressing that isn’t very thoughtfully deployed, but not necessarily offensively portrayed. Mostly the story falls away, and I enjoyed exploring the large maps and collecting as many outfit pieces as possible for my avatar, playing mini games, and interacting with the main cast.
Over time, you build up relationships with your masters by fighting with their styles, giving them gifts, and picking the right option in dialogues. Dating sim mechanics transposed into a fighting game works so well that it feels painfully obvious in hindsight. Not only do you get cool art and cutscenes of your master, but they also sends texts to your phone in some of the funniest dialogue in the whole game. Ryu’s text messages stand out, as his are the shortest individual messages and they take a long time to show up, showing off his inexperience with technology and the modern world. Capcom has expertly used every part of their new systems of interaction to convey character and comedy, and it’s gold.
Putting it bluntly, I think you should play Street Fighter 6, whether you’re like me and you’ve flirted with the genre for a while, or have never thought to play a fighting game before. If any part of the game looks interesting, I would recommend it. There’s depth in every single system, making nearly every second you spend playing SF6 feel worthwhile and rewarding, and that depth isn’t locked away behind hours of grinding out combos or motion inputs. Unfortunately, I do have some issues with the game, but they are reduced to the level of nitpicks once you take the whole package into consideration.
The main cast’s alternate costume is locked behind the relationship level of the World Tour mode (or a microtransaction.) This would be fine for regular players, but in combination with locking the alternate colors for the default costume behind an annoying grind for a currency called Drive Tickets (or yet another microtransaction) you don’t see a lot of character costume variety online. Doubly so in local tournaments. It feels like a low blow to lock that stuff away. For most players, unlocking those cosmetics “for free” isn’t too difficult, though it’s worth noting I don’t have even close to everything after all my time so far. Skipping the grind and paying for everything up front would be outlandishly expensive; over $120 dollars after paying $60 for the base game. It’s a decision that stands out in an otherwise good value product with a lot of great content, especially compared to previous entries like Street Fighter V.
Some closing thoughts:
It’s weird how many of the masters hate the gifts that give them the most relationship points. Honestly, it would be shorter to list the characters that actually respond well to their best gift options. It feels misguided, and off-putting.
The two Battle Passes so far have been really underwhelming. In order to entice and reward returning players, Capcom is prepared to offer you… three old songs that are awkward to listen to, and a swimsuit for your avatar. No drive tickets to speed up unlocking the good cosmetics yet.
It is very cool that players on last generation consoles still get to play. PS4 owners still get to play at 60fps, albeit with reduced visual fidelity. It would be better if everyone just had the better hardware, but it’s unequivocally good that the option is still available to those who need it. Tournaments can’t be expected to get dozens of PS5s yet anyway.
Thank you for reading Parry Timing! If you’ve made it to the end of this monster review of a game I love, you’ve already done way more to support me than I ever expected! I’m very lucky that I get to have time to spend on this project, and that anyone has read it at all means very much to me.
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