When Street Fighter 6 launched in 2021, I dug the demo so much I bought it full price (which is rare cuz I’m cheap). 1000 hours later, I’m older, fatter, and balder. Here are some thoughts.
Meat & Potatoes
SF6’s has solid foundations in terms of its gameplay. Everything is tight and just piloting your Mario around the screen and smacking buttons feels so good. The generous input buffer and link timing cuts down some executional frustration at the cost of a bit of sauce at the highest levels. The pace is right in the pocket for my tastes.
No fighting game will ever have perfect balance, but SF6 does a pretty decent job. Low tiers can win against high tiers when played well. Not to say it’s free of gimmicky bullshit characters or lopsided matchups though. Fuck Mai and her stupid fucking fans (the projectiles not the people).
I don’t have too big an issue with SF6’s new Modern control scheme. Even though they get one button specials it’s functionally the same as playing good Classic players. I try to frame things as being about my growth and skill and not worry about how easy the other guy has it. That being said getting one-button supered because they were mashing on a tiny gap in my string is annoying.
I’m mixed on the system mechanics. Drive rush is cool in how it facilitates interesting combo routes and extensions, but raw drive rush in neutral is a nasty jumpscare and is way too abuseable by fast characters. I sort of agree with the people who suggest making checking it a punish counter to discourage raw DR spam. Low forward DRC also feels a bit gimmicky, but I doubt that’d ever be changed. Perfect parry still feels too powerful; I don’t think the directional change actually did much to stop accidental PPs. Drive impact is whatever - it can be annoying when spammed, but you learn to anticipate it. Drive reversal is okay. If I had to tweak it maybe I’d make it so reversal on a DRC gap is safe.
Throw loops are lame but Capcom seems to really like them. If they are staying, all loops should require drive rush to get in imo.
Gravy
Outside the core gameplay, the overall production of the game is really top notch. Capcom really outdid themselves with a lot of the surrounding systems and features
SF6 easily has the best training mode on the market. It has everything you will ever need to lab things out and it’s all accessible relatively smoothly. The tools to get better at the game are all given to you - unless you want to lab against DLC characters you don’t own. They give rental tokens, but I agree it’s still kinda greasy.
The networking is also about as good as it gets. Coast-to-coast connections are perfectly playable as long as you both have ethernet cables. Wifi often plays fine too, but there’s always the risk the connection will just spaz out when the dude on the other side shifts his jellyrolls to block the signal. Which isn’t a big problem because SF6 lets you screen wifi players when accepting games in matchmaking.
NOTE: I’ll gladly play wifi players in the hub or custom rooms since my MR (and hair) aren’t on the line.
The ranked system is also probably one of the best. It’s basically just ELO. Though I wish they awarded MR by set and not game because of how volatile a single game can be.
I like the visuals, but I can see why some people think the mix of realism with SF’s exaggerated proportions is uncanny. I don’t care for the TAA or dithering personally. The stages and characters look good for the most part and all the animations are super high quality.
The music is a mixed bag. You can tell they were going for a stripped down type of thing, the result being a lot of tracks tend to blend into the background too much. Still though there are a lot of songs I enjoy.
Salad
Aside from the standard single player content you’d expect, SF6 also introduces an open world rpg beat-em-up mode called World Tour. It’s okay. The novelty of suplexing random old ladies wears off kinda quick and the RPG stats make the combat feel artificial.
Creating your avatar and mixing and matching styles is interesting. Occasionally taking your abomination to the hub to avatar battle can be fun but again any RPG stat differences will fuck things. However, just watching the high level avatar battle players go ham is pretty sick.
I like the battlehub and think it’s a good place to get long sets in and learn from better players. Much better than casual matchmaking. It also gets little 32 player tournaments and those are always fun (when they work).
The WT and Arcade stories are kinda just there. More interesting in my opinion are the little WT interactions you get with masters where you can get a sense of their personalities or hear little lore tidbits. Wish they expanded a bit more on those.
Iced Cream
Street Fighter 6 is super popular. It’s not good because it’s popular but its popularity helps. The best time to get into a fighting game is when it releases because it’s when there’s a high population and when everyone is learning at the same time. Years post launch, SF6 still maintains a large population meaning that at any given skill level there are plenty of people to play against. You don’t have to get groomed in some stinky discord just to find people to play against and you won’t have to constantly eat shit only being able to fight old-heads.
I’m not knocking dead or low pop FGs - I dabble in a few myself. It’s just in terms of value for people who are new to the genre or are just testing the waters, population is an important factor.
tl;dr
Street Fighter 6 is a polished, fun-to-play fighting game that has a lot of value for new and returning players. It has some very real pain points in it’s balance and design but everything is so well executed and fun to play it dulls the sting a bit (until you are doom spiraling in ranked). It probably is the best 2DFG to get into currently (pending 2XKO/Tokon) since the large playerbase means having a decent pool of opponents at every skill level.