Street Fighter 6 Review

Before we get stuck into this, want to give you a briefer on my history with Street Fighter. I first got into Street Fighter when I played Alpha 3 Max on my PSP. While it wasn’t the most ideal way to play it, mainly because the PSP’s D-Pad was horrendous, I still greatly enjoyed my time with it.

After that I went back and played a lot of the older Street Fighter titles. I played a lot of Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting on the Wii Virtual Console, I played through Alpha Anthology on PS2, and even dabbled in a little Street Fighter EX.

And then Street Fighter 4 happened. Now, this game was a huge deal at the time. It was the first new game in the series in over a decade after the commercial failure of Street Fighter 3. Not only did it bring Street Fighter back to the public eye, it also helped usher in a new era of fighting games.

And I loved it. It was a throwback in a lot of way, going back to Street Fighter 2’s style of gameplay while also evolving the formula with new ideas of its own. It wasn’t perfect. Having to unlock most of the roster was a pain and the newcomers weren’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea. But overall, it was a solid fighting game that had a lot to offer.

My hype for the game continued into its first update, Super Street Fighter 4 which added a bunch of new characters and gameplay tweaks. I loved that too, but after that was when my interest in the series started to wane.

The other updates weren’t nearly as exciting, and a lot of decisions Capcom was making with their other fighting games weren’t sitting well with me. Like releasing Marvel vs Capcom 3 then releasing the Ultimate edition a few months later at full price, or whatever the hell Street Fighter X Tekken was.

It wasn’t just Capcom and Street Fighter though. My interest in fighting games was starting to wane in general due to a lot of series I was following making very dumb decisions, but that’s a story for another day.

I still liked fighting games, I just needed something to pull me back in. Then, Street Fighter 5 was announced. This was it I thought, this was what was going to reignite the flame and make fighting games great again.

Yeah, that didn’t end up happening. Street Fighter 5 was a complete disaster at launch. Barely any content, the online didn’t work properly, the roster was weak and visually it was a mess. If my fighting game interest was hurting, Street Fighter 5 fucking killed it.

The game did get better overtime. Added a bunch new characters and modes and changed up the gameplay in fun ways, but all of that took a long time to come out and didn’t erase the pain of that initial launch to me.

There are a bunch of reasons why the game ended up the way it did, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I did not like Street Fighter 5. I still don’t, even with all the updates I still don’t think it’s a very fun game to play.

But that was then. Now we have a brand-new Street Fighter with Street Fighter 6. A new game, on new hardware, with a new team behind it. This is Capcom’s chance to redeem the mistakes of the past.

It has a lot of work in that regard. Street Fighter 5 burned a lot of people, me included. A lot of gamers are done with Street Fighter because of all the shit Capcom has done over the years. If they want to win us back Street Fighter 6 doesn’t just have to be good, it needs to be good.

And it’s my happy duty to report, that it absolutely is. Street Fighter 6 does everything in its power to improve on where Street Fighter 5 went wrong. Most evident of which is in the single player content. Rather than the small smattering of modes that was offered in its predecessor, Street Fighter 6 instead offers a massive new single player campaign that may be the best any fighting game has to offer.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Street Fighter 6 has a lot of things to go over, from gameplay to presentation to the huge amount of modes it has to offer. So let’s start small and talk about the presentation.

Street Fighter 6 is the first game in the series to run on the RE Engine. The in house engine developed by Capcom that’s used for their Resident Evil titles, hence the name. And my god does it ever show. The most recent Resident Evil games all look stunning. They’re some of the most detailed games on the market right now, and Street Fighter 6 uses the engine behind them to fantastic effect.

The backgrounds are gorgeous. There’s so much more detail and life in them compared to how stagnant a lot of 5’s stages were.

Some of the stages are throwbacks to classic stages of Street Fighters past, but unlike the last game which just took those old stages and made them 3D, 6 takes the basic idea and tweaks it to feel new. Guile’s stage still takes place in front of a plane, but now its set on an aircraft carrier rather than a runway as just one example.

It makes the stages feel simultaneously familiar and new. Keeping the nostalgic feelings of the classics but changing it up and giving us something fresh. Which is something the last few games struggled with.

Street Fighter 6’s art style leans a little more on photorealism. The characters now have more realistic textures and designs, and they honestly look great. They even added in some battle damage for characters as they get beat up. It’s admittedly hard to see, but it is there, and I honestly prefer this more subtle approach to battle damage that Mortal Kombat does.

But the characters may look more realistic, they are still Street Fighter characters. Chun-li still has her massive thighs, most of the men are still built like brick shit houses, and Cammy still can’t wear clothes that don’t bond to her ass at a subatomic level.

It skirts the fine line of being photo-realistic and the exaggerated anime style of classic Street Fighter well. Never leaning to hard in either direction. And while things are certainly more toned down than previous 3D Street Fighters, I’m glad it doesn’t lose a lot of the series visual identity in the process.

Speaking of which, one element of Street Fighter 6’s presentation I liked was that it had its own unique sense of style. While Street Fighter 4 looked great, and still does to an extent, it did playthings a little bit safe with the art direction.

5 was even worse in this regard. Given us a nice looking, but artistically bland game with no style of its own. Not to mention the issues with some of the character models, like Ken’s weird ass banana hair.

Street Fighter 6, on the other hand, actually tries to do things a little differently by going for a more hip-hop/urban aesthetic. Something they had tried before with Street Fighter 3 with mixed results. Thankfully Street Fighter 6 handles things better.

A lot of it is in the minor details. The coloured splotches that appear when you do certain attacks being the most prominent as they’re designed to look like street art. But many of the newer characters like Luke and Kimberly also fit in with this aesthetic. Hell, Kimberly even uses spray paint and graffiti as part of her move set.

But it’s in the music where this becomes most apparent. The music goes for a more urban, funky style with the returning characters getting brand new themes to fit this new direction. The music itself is decent. It’s not bad at all, but nothing immediately sticks out as great like the old soundtracks did. There’s no equivalent to Guiles Street fighter 2 theme here. Still, it’s good stuff and I probably just need to give it a few more listens before it clicks with me.

Either way, I’m glad that Capcom is trying something new. They haven’t given these characters new themes since Third Strike, and while I love the classic themes, usually when they try something new with the music it usually slaps. Don’t believe me, listen to the Street Fighter EX OST. Some of the best music to come from the franchise.

Speaking of trying new things, most of the returning cast got new designs and they’re pretty damn good. This Ryu design is the best the character has ever looked, giving him the look of an old master to showcase how far he’s come. Chun-li looks so much more mature and elegant to show how far she’s come as well.

They clearly wanted to make the characters appear older and more mature. Which makes sense when you consider this takes place after Street Fighter 3 canonically. And then you’ve got Dee-Jay’s design.

This might be the biggest glow-up a classic fighting character ever got. His old design was ok, but it was one of the more forgettable ones in the series. This new design gives him much more personality and style.

Some of the new designs aren’t great. E-Honda and Zangief’s are fine but don’t look all that different from their old designs, and I can’t say I’m a big fan of hobo Ken. Yes, it makes sense for the story, but it’s still hard seeing Ken like this. Fortunately, if you prefer the classic outfits, those are still available as unlockables.

The new cast also looks great. I like most of the new designs here. They all have distinct looks that make them stand out while still looking like they belong in the Street Fighter world. Their alternates are a bit more hit and miss, but those are optional so I can’t complain too much.

Bottom line, the presentation is fantastic. It’s not flawless, there was some performance issues in the World Tour mode like texture pop-in, but otherwise it’s great. I don’t know how I would rank it next to the 2D games, since the sprite work in those is God tier, but it’s easily the best-looking 3D Street Fighter.

Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the gameplay. I want to break this down into 2 categories, the actual mechanics and the roster of characters. These are the two most important parts of any fighting game, so it makes sense to focus on those.

Starting with the mechanics, a lot of the basics you’d expect from Street Fighter are here. Normals, specials, supers, command normals, cancelling, juggling, throws, all here and accounted for. If you’ve played any kind of Street Fighter before you should be able to pick this up with relative ease.

If your new to Street Fighter and read that last paragraph with a look of confusion on your face, don’t worry the game has you covered. There’s an extensive in game tutorial that goes over everything you need to start playing the game.

It’s one of the better tutorials I’ve seen in a fighting game. It's not as fun as Guilty Gear Xrd’s excellent tutorial system, but I think it does a better job of explaining things to newcomers in a clear and concise manner.

Once you’ve figured out the basics that have been in the genre since the beginning, Street Fighter 6 also has a bunch of new ideas and mechanics for both newcomers and veterans to master.

Though I use the term new loosely. Truth be told, a lot of the “new” mechanics feel more like remixes of classic Street Fighter mechanics. Overdrives are essentially EX moves, Drive Impact are just more colourful Focus Attacks, Drive Reversals are similar to Alpha Counters, and Drive Parries are, well, like Parrying.

I don’t mind this personally because it makes the game feel like a sort of Street Fighters greatest hits. Taking the best gameplay mechanics from past games and trying to put them into one. Which when you combine that with what I said about stages earlier, makes it feel like this was what they were going for.

You could argue it’s very derivative, but I think it changes things up just enough to make them stand apart. The similarities are there, but not to an overt degree. And it does introduce new mechanics of its own like Drive Rushes which lets you cancel out of any cancellable normal to extend combo’s, or get in on the opponent.

The game has a lot of mechanics to delve into. It can be overwhelming at first but after a few matches you’ll have a general idea of how each is used and it will all become second nature. The fact that the mechanics are really fun doesn’t hurt either.

Street Fighter 6 just feels good to play. Every, attack and movement has the right amount of weight and feedback behind it. Which makes even the basics of combat feel satisfying.

The game feel is tight and responsive, I never felt like I wasn’t in control, and when I did struggle to pll something off I never got the impression that it was the games fault. I just needed to get better at it.

The one part that might be a downside depending on who you ask is the speed. It isn’t as fast as the Classic games like Super Turbo or Alpha, it’s speed is more comparable to 3, 4 and 5. Thankfully it leans closer to the former, so it doesn’t feel sluggish to play as 5.

Now, a lot of people may not like the pace the game runs at. There are people who greatly prefer the fast-paced, manic energy of the classic games and I can respect that opinion. But for me I never found it to be bad.

To be honest, I always felt the turbo speed options in classic Street Fighter was, weird. Like it never like the games were designed with it. It felt like the games were playing in fast forward and I could never really get used to it. Street Fighter 6 feels a lot more planned out in this regard.

And it isn’t like it’s a slow game. Matches still cut a decent pace and doesn’t feel nearly as slow or as sluggish as Street Fighter 5 did. Maybe you could argue throw animations are a little too long, but at that point your nit picking.

And Street Fighter 6’s more deliberate pace works well with the mechanics, and how the game rewards use of those mechanics. Namely through tactile feedback. Take Drive Parries for instance. Normally you can just hold down the parry button, or both heavy attacks, to parry most incoming attacks.

But in Street Fighter 6, if you parry at just the right time you can perform a Perfect Parry. This gives you an advantage and allows for a counterattack but also slows down time very briefly to show you’ve landed it. When you do a good, the game lets you know it, which makes it when rewarding when you pull something cool off.

There is one last thing to cover in terms of the mechanics. You’ve probably noticed a pattern in the names of the new mechanics. Drive Impact, Drive Rush, Overdrive, it’s not hard to spot. This is because all these mechanics are tied to the new meter system.

See, previous Street Fighter games linked a lot of their mechanics into the super meters. The Alpha games used super meter for Alpha Counters, while 3, 4 and 5 all used super meter for EX moves.

Now not every mechanic in those early games were tied to the super meter. Street Fighter 5 had a separate meter for V-Triggers, V-Reversals and V-Shifts, while 4 had the revenge gauge used for Ultra Combos.

This is how Street Fighter 6 handles things too, but it goes a step further. Now, every other mechanic that uses meter of any kind is linked to the new Drive Gauge, hence the naming convention. Meaning the super meter is back to being exclusively for supers.

Right out of the gate I love this change. One of the issues I have with later Street Fighter games is they don’t give you enough resources to do anything cool. Super moves are awesome, they’re big flashy and do a ton of damage, but there’s no reason to use them when you have EX moves that do more for less. This is why in tournaments you almost never see supers being used in Street Fighter 4 or 5 because everyone is using EX moves all the time.

4 did have a work around with Ultra Combo’s, but that had its own set of issues. 6, thankfully, gives you enough resources to work Super’s into your gameplan. Better yet, every character now has multiple Supers. And not in the same way 3 did where you could choose one of 3 Supers, I mean like in the Alpha games where every character has multiple different Supers they can pull off.

Thank God! I never understood why they limited Supers for so long. I could kind of understand it in 3 because different Supers had different meter sizes, but otherwise it feels too restricting. A big step back from Alpha which just added more options to play with. So to see 6 go back to having multiple supers per character makes me very happy.

That said, the supers aren’t exactly like in Alpha. In the Alpha games characters had multiple supers and levels for those supers that did more damage. Here, characters have 3 Supers but each costs a different amount of meter.

Every character has a level 1 super that costs one bar, a level 2 that costs 2, and a big level 3 that costs the maximum of 3 bars. As well as critical arts which are more powerful level 3 Supers that can be done at low health.

While I still prefer the more free form method of the Alpha games, I don’t mind the way supers are handled here. it still gives you tons of options, and it’s balanced in a way where it makes sense for things to be like this.

For example, a lot of character level 2’s are some kind of install super. For those unaware, this is a super that acts as a boost, giving characters different properties for a limited time. Install supers can be quite powerful and can turn the tide of a fight, which is why a lot of them have a hefty cost in a lot of games.

Street Fighter 6 making these the level 2 for a lot of characters makes a lot of sense in that regard. Not every character has an install, but those that don’t usually have a very powerful attack for their level 2. Something more powerful than a level 1 but for a bigger cost, but still not as big as a level 3, which is more powerful but riskier to pull off.

It’s all very well balanced and can lead to a lot of interesting mind games as both players gauge their options. Do you go for the big level 3 for massive damage, but risk losing it all if it fails, or gor for the level 1 for less reward, but save your valuable resources for later. Or just go down the middle for a level 2.

But that just covers the Supers. Now let’s talk about the Drive Gauge. As I said, every other mechanic is linked to the Drive Gauge in some way, but it goes beyond that. Even blocking is linked to the Drive Gauge. Instead of getting chip damage while blocking an attack, it just drains a bit of the Drive Gauge.

The Drive Gauge gives you a lot of options, and when you combine that with Supers having their own meter now, this really opens the possibilities for you to do some really dope shit. With so many things being available via the Drive Gauge it can be easy for it to run out. Which is absolutely not something you want to happen.

When you run out of Drive Gauge your character enters an exhausted state. Where they lose all access to drive abilities, get chip damage from blocking, have more recovery frames on attacks, and are liable to being stunned if slammed into a wall via Drive Impacts.

It’s a very disadvantageous state to be in and one that can last a while if you’re not trying to recover Drive Gauge. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid this. Drive gauge recovers automatically, and you can regain Drive Gauge by landing attacks and parrying. So as long as you’re not abusing it, you should have plenty of resources to avoid being exhausted.

This creates an interesting push and pull. You want to use the drive abilities but not to the point where you become exhausted. But there might be instances where you want to risk being exhausted to get big damage, like launching using an Overdrive to end a combo, or using a Drive Impact to counter an attack.

It creates a lot of in the moment decision making that adds a lot to the depth of the combat. Fighting games are all about that kind of decision making, and Street Fighter 6 manages to do it in a way that’s easy to understand but difficult to master.

In fact, Street Fighter 6 is the most accessible in the series yet. Aside from the great tutorial I mentioned earlier, it also has a new control style designed for newer players called Modern Controls.

The Classic Control scheme is what you’d expect. Six button representing punches and kick of varying strength and motion inputs for special moves and supers. Modern Control is much simpler. You now have only 3 buttons of light medium and heavy attacks, special moves are now mapped to a dedicated button with a Smash Bros like input system, mostly you still need to do charge inputs, supers are now down by pressing the special and heavy buttons simultaneously and there’s even an auto combo system.

It can be easy to just call Modern Controls casual mode, but that’s being unfair. Modern Controls does still offer a lot of options and depth, it just simplifies the controls. It’s mainly designed for players not used to motion inputs and want to focus on stuff like spacing or timing.

Which is great since that’s usually the first hurdle for a lot of gamers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to play Street Fighter with friends and family only to have none of them get the controls. There’s a reason Mortal Kombat is the most popular fighting game currently on the market because its motion inputs are simpler to understand for casual audiences.

Now I stuck to Classic Controls. Partly because it’s what I know best, but also because it is a little more nuanced than Modern Controls. Don’t misunderstand me, there’s some sauce when it comes to Modern Controls, you can still do some cool stuff with it, but your given a little more freedom with Classic Controls and I prefer that.

Suffice to say I don’t think Modern Controls will be a staple in the competitive scene, but it’s great for casual players or players looking to get into Street Fighter for the first time. It’s a fine addition to the series.

As you can tell, Street Fighter 6 has a lot of depth to its mechanics. There’s a lot to dive into and discover. It’s a blast to play on a purely mechanical basis. But none of that means anything if the characters aren’t fun to play. How can I properly dive into these mechanics if there isn’t a character I want to play after all.

Thankfully, Street Fighter 6’s base roster of 18 character gives you plenty of variety to pick from. Whether you play grapplers, rush down, keep away or just good old fashioned Shoto’s, there’s a character in Street Fighter 6 for you.

It’s a pretty decent selection with 11 returning veterans and 7 newcomers. The old characters all play mostly like they did before so if you enjoyed them in previous game, you’ll probably enjoy them here. I say probably because they aren’t exactly the same as they once were.

There have been some changes to the motion inputs, but it only effects a handful of moves. The most notable change I noticed was the complete removal of mash input specials. For those unaware, these were moves where you had to mash either punch or kick for the move to come out. This is longer the case, as these moves are now mapped to quarter circle inputs.

This was likely done to accommodate for the Modern Control’s. It’s not something that bothers me personally, I’ve always hated mash specials so I’m glad they‘re gone, but I know others won’t be as indifferent. I know there are players who despise when move sets change like this.

Though it should be noted that this only affects certain moves. They never pull a Street Fighter 5 Vega where they change everything so completely he felt like a different character. They’ve kept the core of each character’s playstyle.

But it isn’t just the motions that make them different. While the core of what makes each character is still intact, they’ve each been given something new. A little extra spice that makes them feel fresh. Ryu can now charge his Hadokens with electric Ki, Blanka has little dolls he can throw out that act like a makeshift projectile, Honda can now boost the power of his Hundred-Hand Slaps etc.

It’s small things admittedly, but they go a long way to make these characters feel new again. Which helps them keep up with a lot of the new characters who all have new unique playstyles and gimmicks.

This is an issue a lot of Fighting games suffer from. Newer characters can be a lot more fun and interesting than the old ones which make them feel outdated. Smash Bros suffers from this a lot. You want to update the old characters so they can keep up, but you don’t want to go overboard and lose what makes the character who they are.

There’s a balance that needs to be struck, and I think Street Fighter 6 is a perfect example of that. And unlike in 5 where all the cool stuff was locked behind the V Trigger system, here you can do that right out of the gate. They feel restricted in anyway which really opens up what you can do with them.

As for the new characters, they’re great. This is the best set of newcomers the series has seen in years. They all have cool new playstyles, and I can’t really pick a bad one from the bunch. I’m not big on Kimberly or Lily myself, but I wouldn’t call them bad, they just aren’t my cup of tea.

I can’t cover every new character otherwise this review would be way longer, and it’s already long enough as is, so I’ll only cover a few of them.

The first is Luke, who is an American MMA fighter who acts as the new face of the series. He’s a good beginner friendly character, so if you want someone who’s easy to pick up and play go for him. And yes, I know he’s not a “new” character as he was introduced as the final DLC character in 5, but that was meant as a preview for this game. So, I’m counting this as his first proper appearance.

Next there’s Jamie, a drunken kung fu character. This guy is all about the rush down, having lots of multi-hit special moves. The catch is he needs to drink his special tea to gain access to his best techniques, so there’s a balance in trying to keep up the offensive while giving space to get a quick drink in. It’s tricky but he can be a fun character to play when you figure him out.

Then there’s Manon, a French Judoka/super model/ballerina character. It’s a weird combo but it surprisingly works. Essentially, she’s a grappler but with the graceful motions of a ballet dancer. She’s all about controlling the pace of the fight while getting command throws in. Which get stronger the more you do. If you play Manon, you’ll want to work on reading the opponent because you will dominate when you do.

And finally, my favourite of the bunch, Marisa. She’s the exact opposite of Manon, being a big bruiser who ‘s all about getting big hits that do a ton of damage. She’s a more deliberate character, you’ll need to be patient to get the most out of her. But when you do, she’s a goddamn wrecking ball.

So as far as the base roster goes, I’d say they did a solid job. Obviously there are some characters I wish were here but aren’t right now like Akuma, but that’s for DLC to fix. Right now, I’m happy with the roster we currently have.

Street Fighter 6 is a good fighting game. On a purely mechanical basis it’s fantastic, by far the most fun I’ve had with the series in years. I could end the review here and recommend it whole heartedly, but I can’t because we need to talk about the modes now.

Street Fighter 6 is broken up into 3 sections, World Tour, Battle Hub, and Fighting Ground. I’ll cover Fighting Ground first since there’s not much to talk about since it contains a lot of the standard fighting game fare.

This is where you’ll find the tutorial section, which includes character guides that teach you how to play each character and combo trials which gives an idea of the combo’s you can perform, as well as the standard training mode. It’s a good resource for those looking to get started.

Then there’s the standard VS mode. Not much to say there, but there is an additional VS mode in the form of Extreme Battle. This is a party mode of sorts where you can add different rules and gimmicks to the fight, like changing win conditions to knocking the opponent down a set number of times, dodging bulls that run across the screen or avoiding Mettaurs from Mega Man that drop from the sky.

There’s a bunch of different options to mix and match. It reminds me most of the Test Your Luck mode from Mortal Kombat 9 only not as random or chaotic. It’s a fun little mode to play with friends, family or anyone who doesn’t want to take the game too seriously.

On that note, I should mention there’s a third control style called Dynamic Control. This is an even more simplified control style that lets you just bash buttons and have cool stuff happen. It’s very clearly made for pure casuals who don’t want to learn the game and just have fun with everyone and is only available in offline vs, you can’t use it anywhere else.

Next we have the tried and tested Arcade Mode. You pick a character, get their story, fight through a series of opponents with a few bonus games thrown in and get the characters ending. A classic staple of fighting games and it’s done pretty well here.

The actual stories aren’t much to write home about. There’s not a whole lot of substance to them with most being there to simply introduce the new characters. There’s not even much of a main plot or villain, its purely character driven. It’s not bad stuff though. Some of the endings are very entertaining and give us some funny character interactions.

The art for these stories is also well drawn. And unlike the last game where everything was drawn by Bengus, now we have different artists which leads to better visual variety. With Bengus’ own art seeing a noticeable improvement in quality.

One feature I like is being able to choose the length of an arcade run. You can choose between a quick 5 match run or a longer 12 match run. The former being faster and easier but only having one bonus game, with the former being longer and harder but having both bonus games.

So, if you just want to get a characters ending, you can just do a 5 match run and be done with it in about 5 minutes. But if you want a longer run that’s a little bit more challenging, you have that option too.

Though in general Street Fighter 6’s AI isn’t that difficult. It can put up a fight, especially on higher levels, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was in older games. Even if you do struggle in Arcade Mode, the game will lower the difficulty when you lose so you can get through it easier.

I don’t know how I feel about that. I get why they did this, so everyone regardless of skill level could get through it, but I don’t think it should be forced on the player. Like what SNK does where it gives you a couple of different methods to make it easier when you lose, or just keep things the same. Just make it optional.

As for the bonus games, they’re basically the ones from Street Fighter 3. One has you try to destroy a semi-truck, and the other has you parry basketballs. They’re fun little breaks from the fighting, though I do wish there were some new ones. I like that they didn’t just rely on the Street Fighter 2 bonus games for the hundredth time but give us something original.

And finally, we have the online modes. Where you can play ranked or casual matches with players from around the world. You can jump into these from the Fighting Ground, but this isn’t the main online mode. That would be the Battle Hub.

The best way to describe it would be Capcom’s version of an Ark System Works online mode. You know those games where you have an avatar that can run around a virtual lobby and interact with other players. Yeah, it’s basically that but way more advanced.

You start out Battle Hub by making your own avatar with a shockingly deep character creation system. This is one of the most in-depth character creators I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. No joke, I spent the first hour of the game just trying to get my character right.

You can tweak almost any aspect of the character, from the length of their arms and legs, to the size of their gut. You can make your character as normal looking as you want or make them into an absolute abomination against nature, it gives you that much freedom. If this becomes the new standard for character creation in fighting games, Soulcalibur is going to have a lot to live up to.

After you’ve made your affront to God’s work, your dropped into the Battle Hub proper. Here you can interact with other players, buy clothes with the in-game currency to customise your avatar, or battle players from one of the many cabinets littered about the place.

There’s in game events and tournaments to partake in, you can battle other players avatars in Avatar Battles, I’ll go over this in a bit more detail later, or even play a round of a classic Capcom arcade game. I love that we’re in a day and age where gaming studios are just giving us a way to play their older games for free in their newer titles. First Yakuza and now this? If Nintendo actually got a clue and did this themselves again, just imagine the possibilities.

The Battle Hub isn’t exactly a novel way to handle an online lobby. As I said Ark System Works have been doing this for a while now and they weren’t even the first to do this, that was Dead or Alive. But I do think this is the best way this lobby style has been done.

For one thing having your own custom avatar instead of one you select from a menu makes it feel a lot more personal. It makes it feel like it’s you interacting with other players around the world, even if it isn’t a character that looks like you.

And playing matches via arcade cabinets harkens back to the old arcade days of going into an arcade and throwing down with people. And there’s a bunch of little touches I enjoy like emotes or the photo mode. It’s just a very entertaining method of doing the online.

And the online itself runs great from what I’ve played. I’ve had some connection issues, but for the most part matches were smooth and lag free, matchmaking was quick and easy, I never had much of an issue with it.

It has a lot of the standard features you would expect from an online mode. Ranked and Casual matches, you can create rooms to play with friends, typical stuff. One new feature is being able to make your own clubs. Even being able to make your own logos and t-shirts.

I get the feeling that Capcom want to build a sense of community with Street Fighter 6. Between the clubs and harkening back to the old arcade days it’s not hard to see the attempt. And personally, I think it works. It just creates a more inviting atmosphere than any other fighting game online I’ve seen.

My only issue with the online is the monetisation. There’s a battle pass involved and some microtransactions if you want to unlock all the character colours. You can get these through another in game currency, because of course there’s multiple of them, but this can take a while to accumulate.

For what it’s worth, all of this monetization only covers cosmetics. Nothing important or game changing is locked behind it. So, it never becomes anything more than a mild irritation. It’s not the worst example of this I have seen.

Which brings us, at last, to the World Tour mode. The big single player campaign in Street Fighter 6 that everyone was excited about. And let me tell you something folks, it did not disappoint.

Before the game had even released, people were comparing World Tour to Mortal Kombat’s Konquest mode. Specifically, the one from Deception, and after playing World Tour it’s not hard to make the connection between the two.

Both involve taking a player character and exploring the wider world of the games while interacting with and learning the moves of the various characters. it’s not hard to see the comparisons, but at the same time it’s not hard to see World Tour as an evolution of what Konquest did.

World Tour is essentially a full-on Street Fighter RPG. You make your own playable character, or just use the one from Battle Hub, and are dropped into the world. Where you’re then able to run around and interact with NPC’s, battle street thugs, do side missions and minigames, all the while levelling up and making your character stronger.

The main bulk of World Tour takes place in Metro City. Yeah, the city from Final Fight is the main setting in this game and they did a phenomenal job of bringing it into 3D. While it’s not exactly as you remember it from the original, you’ll still be able to find a bunch of landmarks that harken back to the original game, along with new areas that really bring it to life.

Metro City is a character in itself. It’s filled with life and memorable iconography, along with a ton of fun easter eggs for hardcore fans. The city itself isn’t large, but it’s densely packed with a lot of hidden areas to explore. There’s even a day and night cycle which changes the city to give it a different feel, almost giving the day and night versions a different personality.

Metro City isn’t the only major location you’ll explore. There’s another area that I won’t spoil in this review, but it’s just as lovingly crafted as Metro City. There’s also smaller areas to visit around the globe, but these exist simply so you can meet other characters who aren’t part of the main story.

The story itself is alright. It involves you going on a journey to discover what strength is while getting involved with a rival character caught up in international intrigue. It’s nothing great, but it was entertaining enough, though it ended in an anticlimactic way. It doesn’t end so much as it stops.

The best part of the story is interacting with the cast of Street Fighter. It was interesting because you get to see a side of these characters you don’t often see otherwise. You get to learn a little bit more about them, they’re hobbies, which characters they’ve been keeping in contact with, some more information about their backstories.

It made the characters a lot more endearing. Watching Ryu being an absolute boomer with technology was some of the best characterisation he’s gotten in years. It was way more entertaining than any of the Satsui-no-hado shit.

A lot of it is very slice of life. There isn’t any major character developments or revelations here, but honestly, I liked this more casual approach. You can learn a lot about a character by what they do between adventures.

How you learn this is where the actual game comes into play. World Tour mode is all about building up your character. You do this by gaining Experience Points to level up, which gives you skill points that let you unlock new skills via the game’s skill tree.

Sometimes it’s a boost to your stats, but other times it’s unlocking certain overworld abilities or being able to use more special moves in combat. Though you won’t be able to learn every skill. The skill tree is set up like a tournament bracket, once you pick a skill from the lower brackets you can’t pick the other one.

The skills you don’t pick will show up in later skill trees, and you can just reset the tree if you think you made a mistake, but the point is that you can’t learn everything. I like this. I can’t stand RPG’s that let you have everything. The whole point of an RPG is to play a role, and that requires sacrificing certain aspects of a character to maximise other aspects. Like sacrificing speed for defence to play a tank.

Street Fighter 6 isn’t exactly a full-on RPG, it is a fighting game first and foremost, but World Tour has deeper RPG mechanics than a lot of actual RPG’s. Even the equipment system is more in depth than I was expecting.

There’s a bunch of different types of equipment that cand boost different stats or give passive abilities. These also change your appearance, but if you find a piece of equipment you like the look of but don’t like its stats, there’s a separate equipment menu that solely affects your appearance. Allowing you to style and profile.

That’s not all, you can also enhance equipment to boost their levels by using other equipment you don’t need, or use special items to enhance them faster, and even change their colours. That’s way more depth than I was expecting from the equipment in this, but it fills my requirement for having strong customisation in RPG’s so I’m not complaining.

All of the equipment, buying it, enhancing it, changing colours, will cost money. And you’ll also need money to buy items to help in combat or buy food which can heal you and give a temporary buff, or debuff in some instances.

It can be costly in Metro City, but it’s not too hard to gain money. Just play a couple of the minigames scattered about and you’ll have of money in no time. The minigames aren’t too difficult and there’s a decent variety to pick from too. From making pizza with motion inputs to breaking boards for a kung fu movie in a way that’s similar to the Bonus game in the original Street Fighter.

You can also gain money from fighting, but the minigames are a faster method. Or you could always do some side missions, which also give some other rewards. The side-quests are some of the better parts of World Tour. Some are basically glorified tutorials, but others have their own stories and some even have a few familiar faces we haven’t seen in a long time.

You also need to do these if you want to meet all the characters and learn their fighting styles. Which leads me to how your character fights in World Tour. The player character doesn’t have their own fighting style, instead they use a hodge podge of the different moves from the other fighters.

The various Street Fighter characters all serve as masters you can train under. When you first enrol under them you learn that mentor’s style which can then be equipped. This style changes your normal moves to that of the master. So if you choose Ken’s style you’ll have all of Ken’s normal punches and kicks, along with his target combo’s and command normals.

Each style has their own ranking which will go up as you use them. Going up a rank will allow you to learn new special and super moves from each master. You can equip these separately from the main style. So, if you want to use Ryu’s Hadoken with Guile’s fighting style, you can. Want to use Ken’s super moves with Zangief’s style? You can do that too.

The only limitation to this, aside from having a set number of specials you can have equipped at any time, is you can’t have 2 special moves that use the same motion input. So, you can’t have two moves that use quarter circle forward motions, even if they use different buttons.

I really don’t understand this. Maybe it was done to accommodate the Modern Control scheme, but that just seems unfair to those using Classic Controls. I can’t even say it’s for balancing reasons because the avatar can’t be played online unless it’s against other avatars, that’s what Avatar Battles are for. It just feels like an unnecessary restriction that limits your creativity.

It also leads to some awkward moments where you’ll learn a character’s special move and not be able to use it because another special uses the same input. One such occasion is with Jamie. When you learn his style the first two specials you get both use the same input, so you can’t even use both of them. They really didn’t think this through.

Even with this restriction, you can still come up with some weird ass move-set combinations. Like Dhalsim’s stretchy Yoga style, mixed with Zangief’s grappling moves. There’s still leeway here to craft whatever fighting style you want.

The level of customisation here is impressive. Even the way your character is built will affect how they fight. Give them longer limbs and they’ll have farther reach with their attacks, make them shorter and they’ll have a smaller hitbox. So not only can you make an abomination, your actually encouraged to do so.

Once you’ve picked a style and equipped the special moves and supers you want, you can then start fighting on the streets. You can battle almost any NPC you meet. This is Metro City; fighting is the life blood of the town.

You can also battle random street thugs who can attack you while wandering around. Though you can get the drop on them through Master Actions. These are copies of moves of characters you train under, and you can use these for a variety of things like getting a free hit in before a battle, breaking objects to find items, or reaching areas you can’t normally.

The actual fighting in World Tour is nearly identical to the main game with some differences. One being a unique stagger mechanic. If you can hit an enemy when they glow white you do way more damage and can stun them to set up for a combo.

You can also fight more than one enemy, and in some cases fight alongside another NPC. This is reminiscent of the Dynamic Battle mode from the Alpha series. It’s pretty cool being able to take on multiple guys at once, though it can be a little awkward when surrounded.

And finally, a lot of the NPCs have original fighting styles not seen elsewhere. They’re simplified and clearly meant to be for basic bitch enemies, but they are exclusive to World Tour, so I’d thought I’d bring it up.

There is a lot to World Tour. Way more than I was initially expecting. When I first saw World Tour, I thought it would be a couple of hours of adventure, but I was dead wrong. While the main campaign won’t take long to complete, trying to master every fighting style will take dozens of hours to do.

And you will want to do this. Earning style ranks will unlock new interactions between you and the masters which can improve your bond with them. And increasing the bond with them will unlock new cosmetics and emotes for other modes, with the reward for reaching max bond level being the fighters alternate costumes.

You can also boost a bond by winning sparring matches, doing missions for them, or giving them gifts. With different masters having certain gifts they really like that gives them a larger bond increase. This isn’t too far off from being a dating sim, Hell all its missing is a romance option.

So wait, we have dating sim elements, adventure game elements, RPG mechanics fighting game stuff and a even a little beat em up in here? World Tour has a little something for everyone doesn’t it.

And the thing is it all works. The fighting is solid because the base game’s fighting system is great. The area’s you visit aren’t the largest, but they’re densely packed with lots of things to see and do in them. Even bonding with the characters works because of the great interactions you get out of them.

Really, the only part that isn’t handled the best is the RPG stuff. Not because it’s bad but because it isn’t that well balanced. By the late game you become so over levelled that fights become way too easy to beat, and there isn’t any level scaling to offset this.

I think the game is aware of this though. Later fights, especially against masters, have the AI being way more aggressive. It’s obvious you aren’t meant to win these, except your so over levelled they’re attacks do next to nothing, so you win by war of attrition anyway.

The aggressive AI is also a problem when you’re not over levelled. Some of these fights are way too frustrating, or they would be if you couldn’t trivialise them. Just use some items and you’ll beat them no problem. Even if you do lose, you have continues you can build up with miles you collect in the game. And if you’re like me and explore a lot, you’ll have plenty continues to spare.

But all of those issues, as well as others I’ve already brought up, they don’t take away from the experience of playing World Tour. Just being able to run around and interact with this world on a deeper level was more invigorating than anything this series has done in the last 10 years.

I like cinematic story modes in fighting games. When done well they can be a good time, but World Tour is so much more innovative and engaging. It still has the cinematic element but mixes in the adventure elements of Mortal Kombat’s Konquest mode and even a little bit of the mission mode structure like Soulcalibur’s Weapon Master mode.

It takes the best elements from the best single player fighting game modes, how could it not BE the best. It’s imperfect, but still a blast from start to finish. If you want to know if Street Fighter 6 is worth it just for World Tour, I’d say it is, but it helps that the rest of the game is fantastic.

Street Fighter 6 isn’t just the best Street Fighter in years, it might be the best fighting game in years. The strong core mechanics, sublime presentation and wealth of game modes make it an easy recommendation for fighting game fans. And the accessibility options in Modern Controls and the in-depth tutorials make it a great jumping on point for beginners.

As for me, this has reinvigorated my love of fighting games. After Street Fighter 5 my interest in the genre was nearly dead and this just brought it back from the brink. It gave me what I was looking for and innovated in ways I didn’t know I wanted. In short, Street Fighter just went and reinvented the genre again. Proving why it is, and likely always will be, the king of fighting games.