Street Fighter 6 (2023)

it's fun, and it's got a good amount of interesting characters, and i really love the sorta graffiti-styled hit effects and animations and whatnot.

but it just... feels like the "safe" fighting game. idk if i'm making any sense when I say that but it just feels like it's not trying to do anything all that unique that makes it stand out from the crowd.

i've sunk a good amount of time into GGST and i also just recently started playing Tekken 8 - and all of these are my first time really sinking my teeth into these series btw - and those games just feel so different from other fighting games because their unique mechanics (GGST's roman cancel and burst system / Tekken 8's 3D arena that allows for sidestepping to dodge or mix up opponents) make them stand out. playing street fighter 6 makes me think "yeah... I sure am playing a fighting game"

maybe I just don't understand the intricacies of SF6's mechanics and am being too harsh, but with all that said it's still not a bad game by any means. it would definitely make a great introduction to the fighting game genre for someone who's never really played them before. i had a good time with this one, but i don't see myself continuing to play it much if at all in the future.

P.S. (at least at the ranks I was in) everyone just sits back and spams whatever projectile or long ranged attack they have, which even if they aren't doing successfully, it's just annoying and unfun to play against.

I've done a lot of thinking since last I tried to make progress a week or two ago, and I just can't see myself being interested in continuing World Tour mode, at least for now. The last few chapters are just too grindy and reliant on either skill I don't have or cheesing with items/levels. I'm just at the point where I feel like I need to grind hard to ensure I don't get killed in 5 hits by each major enemy and that's just not fun.

That said, this is still a very great overall fighting game. I have yet to even touch arcade mode and I've managed to put in around 22 hours, which is a lot for me in a fighting game. Combat is very fun, even when you suck at these games like me and decide to force yourself to use classic style controls. The training modes have a lot of depth and great tips to help kick off your journey if you're new and I assume that even veterans will be pretty well pleased with the options in practice mode.

The base roster does feel a bit limited and I can't be bothered to pay for all the DLC characters who will inevitably be added. Maybe I was just expecting some variety in character design that the game couldn't deliver on when coming from Smash Bros and Skullgirls-- both games with a very over-the-top cartoony aesthetic.

Although... speaking of cartoony aesthetic. What is up with the awful awful hairstyles they gave to a bunch of the female side of the roster? I know some of the "bad" hairstyles in the game are iconic like Guile's, and I can understand wanting to preserve those to some extent, but hair like Manon's and Marisa's looks like one of them "just fuck my shit up" barber shop memes. In the case of those two it totally turned me off from wanting to play those characters because I don't enjoy looking like a tool while doing so. It's a shame because Marisa has a pretty cool design otherwise and I'd love for her to rock the gladiator helmet all the time, rather than only in cutscenes.

Picky roster issues aside, I still had a great time with this game and will likely pop in for some Arcade mode and CPU battles occasionally in the future just because I enjoy the battle system as a whole.

The lack of regional pricing for this game is absurd. On Steam, it costs as much as 5-10 other games combined.

I was pleasantly surprised by the game's matchmaking. I've heard that in fighting games, the multiplayer pool is mostly made up of high-level players, making it feel like the entry barrier is too high to bother. However, with SF6's ranked mode, most of the matches I've had were at a skill level close to mine, and the matchmaking adjusted as I improved.

I love the modern control scheme, and now I can't be bothered to play other fighting games that require all those directional inputs for special moves.

My friend and I split the cost 50/50 and took advantage of the family sharing feature to take turns playing this game. We also played against each other using the Parsec tool, which is similar to Steam Remote Play but better.

Overall, great game, 9/10, loved the 1-button spinning piledriver and the 2-button "I AM... ALMIGHTY". (I play other characters too, but some days you just have 1 active brain cell want to read your opponent and then press Y to win, yes.)

Street Fighter 6 Review Podcast | "The True Meaning of Strength" | VGBC #47

My Final Verdict/Rating:

Street Fighter 6 is an evolutionary leap for the Street Fighter franchise, and just fighting games in general. It takes the bar of what it means to be a traditional fighting game, grapples it, piledrives it into the ground, and proceeds to punch the crap out of it until it redefines what it means to be a fighting game, what it means to be strong, - after it’s done, it picks up that bar gives it a nice firm manly handshake, gg no re, and sets the bar high on the rack - this game is now the traditional fighting game standard.

As a filthy modern control casual myself, I always thought of these fighting games to be pretty daunting with all the button combos, stick inputs, and mathematical formula equations abxyz squared to the 5th power, I just couldn’t comprehend it. BUT the way Street Fighter 6 approaches teaching newcomers about fighting game fundamentals, and its in game mechanics, through a hilarious 20+ hour campaign (which is actually a cleverly disguised tutorial) with killer refrigerators, and angry Mascots… it’s just genius.

You can tell how much love and passion went into developing this game by Capcom - this game is freakin’ oozing with style from its menus, to the character selection screens, to the boppin’ music, and the clean (but sometimes dirty if you’re into that, if you know what I mean) fighting animations are smooth and crisp. Add that to the surprisingly in depth character creation and customization, robust multiplayer options, classic arcade mode, and actual fully coded in Capcom Arcade classics built into the game… and man you got yourself not just one heck of a fighting game, but just a video game in general - this game is LOADED, like stuffed crust loaded. And thank you Capcom for giving us Gear Appearance EARLY in the game, so we can customize our stats without hindering our STYLE. And if you’re listening to the next Monster Hunter game that is secretly under development… let us customize early too dang it.

Now while the game isn’t perfect… I feel like it could use a few more quality of life options like being able to select a mission and the map automatically marking it for you aka the basics of mission select in most games, a few more mobility/traversal options like I mentioned earlier, and I think it would have been AMAZING to see more involvement from the Street Fighter masters in World Tour - would have been sick if your max leveled master or masters were present in the final tournament for instance.It doesn’t detract from how awesome this game is, and I hope they continue to push and develop World Tour even further and they don’t make this just a one time occurrence.

Street Fighter 6 gets 9 questionable Steam character mods for Juri, Cammy, and Chun li, out of 10.

4/5

Played about 140 hours on PS5 + PC.

Competent fighting game - really good system mechanics. Great characters with personality and flair. Solid online mode with good netcode. Fully featured at launch. Very lame monetisation of character outfits. Fairly well balanced from what I can tell. For my own taste - rewards rushdown and being aggressive a little too much and I feel defensive counterplay is more difficult than just going ham. Like other fighting games it has made me salty, joyous and angry. On a personal note, I think getting competitive fighting games are not good for my own wellbeing so will be stepping away from this one.

I’ve been playing SF since I was a kid. Like, on an arcade machine at Blimpies lol Anyway, it’s great to see that after all these years and all the various entries they’ve managed to try out a few different features and inject new life back into the franchise. I really enjoyed the “World Tour” and look forward to seeing Capcom take that idea even further with future releases or updates possibly. But overall, SF6 is tons of fun and one of the best so far for this year.

I'm not much of a fighting game fan outside of Smash Bros. I've played my fair share of Mortal Kombat and Injustice. I enjoyed those games, but I've always struggled getting into fighting games that require you to learn and memorize complex combos.

Street Fighter 6 makes this much easier with Modern Controls. I was able to play against my friends and decently hold my own despite being a total newbie. Being able to use Special Moves (just like Smash) instead of having to learn, memorize, and perform the awkward back + diagonal + down combos it far easier to fight. Of course, there's still Classic Controls for traditional and hardcore players who prefer that style.

There's an actual fleshed out story mode (World Tour) which seems pretty rare for fighting games. From my experience, the story is just a set of random battles strung together by a few cutscenes which somehow leads to a narrative.

World Tour lets you create a custom character with one of the most detailed character creation tools I've ever seen. You can create everything from Kratos from God of War to strange abominations with all sliders turned to max. Later on, you'll get all sorts of options for custom clothes that you can even dye to change its colors.

After that, you can learn the fighting styles of any of the main 18 characters who take the role of your Master. Increasing your bond with them will give you more options for movesets and can eventually unlock alternate costumes. It's a cool mix-and-match system where you can have a totally unique moveset borrowing from all pre-existing fighters. Personally, I stuck with Cammy's style with some special moves from Chun-Li, Marisa, and Blanka.

Overall, World Tour is fun but feels wholly unnecessary. You don't unlock anything after beating it. It does a good job of teaching you the basics through one-on-one training sessions with certain NPCs. However, it's not a good way to actually build up skill since you'll mostly be fighting against low-level street thugs that only take a few hits to defeat.

World Tour is also quite lengthy, especially when compared to Story Mode for other fighting games. It probably took me about a whole week to get through it. It's not terribly difficult, especially since you can cheese the final boss by just using all your healing items until you defeat him. The story itself is quite lackluster, but I didn't exactly go in expecting Shakespeare.

Outside of that, most of your time will probably be online battles. The Online Hub is honestly one of the best features. The lobby allows to hang out with other people's Avatars and interact with them. It's set up to be a digital space where you can roam freely instead of just waiting for a match-making robot to set you up with your next battle. You can even send messages, join clubs, and play old Capcom games.

The Training Mode is also a step above anything else I've seen. The game will literally teach you different combos and how/when to use them. It lets you go at your own pace so you can practice the same combo over and over if needed or skip the ones that are too difficult to master. Plus, you can even show frame data on attacks, a feature I've never seen in any other fighting game. To be honest, the whole concept is still very complex but it opens up a whole new world for competitive players.

SF6 is a fantastic game, but not immune to Capcom's greed. There are still a lot of microtransactions, mostly for alternate costume colors. While it's not the end of the world to not be able to switch colors, it's quite frankly ridiculous that the Deluxe Edition is an extra $30. Of course, you can unlock some alternate costumes via World Tour, but I'd love to play with Manon's alt colors without having to pay extra money.

Overall, SF6 is a great entryway into the series. I've put 55 hours into it and am currently trying to get to Bronze with Juri. It's not a perfect game, but it sets the bar for future fighting games very high.

Street Fighter 6 on hieno esimerkki, miten pitää muinainen pelisarja modernina. Se on myös laatuesimerkki siitä, miten uusia pelaajia kannattaa pyrkiä saamaan vanhoihin jekkuihin mukaan.

Street Fighter 6 on pohjimmiltaan edelleen hyvinkin vahvasti juurilleen uskollinen tappelupeli. Uuttaa mekaniikkaa ja jippoa on tuotu uuteen osaan mukaan, kuten tapana taitaa olla, mutta pääosin kyseessä on edelleen nopeatempoinen, tekninen ja visuaalisesti omaleimainen 2D-tappelupeli (3D-grafiikalla). Sinänsä ollaan siis tutuilla vesillä seilaamassa. Mutta eipä siinä vielä kaikki.

Moninpelaamisen priorisoinnin takia tappelupelien tekijöillä tuntuu olevan hieman hankaluuksia keksiä ajanväärtiä yksinpelisisältöä. Usein tämä ratkaistaan arcade-moodilla, jossa taisteluiden lomassa on jotain hyvin levotonta dialogia tai välivideota. Lisäksi, monelle taistelupelit ovat niin ankara ja vaiekastilähestyttävä genre juuri teknisyyden, monipelaamisen ja kilpailullisuuden takia, että pelien kokeilu jää sikseen. Tutoriaaleja löytyy, mutta harva istuu sohvalle ja miettii "haluanpa nyt pelata parin tunnin verran tutoriaaleja". Street Fighter 6 tarjoaa näihin kumpaankin kipupisteeseen isolla kädellä lääkettä.

Street Fighter 6:ssa on toki edellämainitut arcade-moodi sekä erittäin paljon selkeitä ja joka hahmon toimintaa avaavia tutoriaaleja, mutta niiden lisäksi on uutuutena tuotu World Tour -moodi. Tämä pelimuoto on hieno sekoitus yksinpelikampanjaa ja pelin kommervenkit opettavaa tutoriaalia. World Tourissa pelaaja luo oman taistelijan ja hyppää tämän kengissä yhden pelin varsinaisen hahmon, Luken, salin kasvatiksi. Luke kertoo nopeasti taistelun perusasiat ja tämän jälkeen ohjaa menemään kaduille oppimaan ja kahinoimaan. Alkuun siis mennään Luken taistelutyyliä käyttämällä.

Perusrakenne pelimoodissa on kaiken kaikkiaan melko lähellä Yakuza-pelejä, mutta beat-em-up-kahinan sijaan taistellaan 2D-tasolla. Kaduilla voi kahinoida kanssakaupunkilaisten keskuudessa, ostella hahmolleen vaatteita ja esineitä, käydä ravintoloissa tai suorittaa sivutehtäviä erilaisten palkintojen toivossa. Sivutehtävät usein ovat joko tappelua tai erilaisia pelin mekaniikkoja opettavia haastematseja. Tai melko puisia fetch-questeja.

Välillä vastaan tulee muita Street Fighter -hahmoja, jotka voivat otttaa pelaajan taistelutyylinsä kasvatiksi. Opittuja taistelutyylejä voi siis vaihdella, ja näitä käyttämällä ja levuttamalla Street Fighter -hahmot opettavat lisää omia erikoisliikkeitään pelaajalle. Opittuja liikkeitä pelaaja voi equippailla hahmolleen haluamallaan tavalla. Eli pelaajan avatarille voi asettaa vaikka Chun-Lin perusliikkeet Ryun ja E. Hondan erikoisliikkeilla. Tämä motivoi mukavasti kokeilemaan ja käyttämään eri hahmojen tyylejä. Lisäksi, peli tekee erittäin hyvän työn esitellessään eri hahmot myös persoonan puolesta. Uusia hahmoja tavatessa pääsee usein taivastelemaan paria erittäin hyvin animoitua cutsceneä, jossa pelaajan oma hahmo toikkaroi tolvanan näköisenä jumalolennon sulavuudella operoivan Street Fighter -hahmon ympärillä. Hahmojen kanssa voi myös kaveerata taistelutyyliä käyttämällä, hahmon sivutehtäviä tekemällä tai lahjoja antamalla. Tästäkin palkitaan ihan mukavasti. Esimerkiksi melko nopeasti palkinnoksi saa kyvyn, jolla hahmon saa spessumittarilla käytettäväksi "summoniksi" tappeluihin.

Itse World Tourin tarina on puolestaan... ihan ok. Olisi tietysti hienoa, jos moodin tarinakin olisi kovaa laatua ja päräyttävää draamaa. Lisäksi lopussa tarinan fetchquestimäisyys ja inan liian pitkä kesto vesittävät kokonaisuutta. Sentään pelaamisen hauskuus sekä mekaniikkoihin ja hahmoihin tutustuminen on tehty niin kattavasti, että plussan puolella ollaan.

Pelaamisen monimutkaisuuteen ja taistelupelien korkeaan aloittamiskynnykseen on Street Fighter 6:ssa tartuttu "modernin ohjaustyylin" avulla. Käytännössä tämä heivaa monimutkaiset liikesarjat pois ja tekee kontrolleista melko lailla Smash Bros -tyyliset. Tiivistettynä liikkeet tehdään siis iskunappia ja yhtä suuntaa painamalla – myös erikoisliikkeet. Mukana on myös kombojen autopilotti, jossa oikean liipaisimen pohjaan painaminen yhdistelee automaattisesti eri napeista ja suunnista tehtävät liikkeet oikeiksi komboiksi. Lähestyttävyys verrattuna vanhoihin kontrolleihin on mojovasti isompi. Hintana helpotetuille kontrolleille on kuitenkin 20% vähennys damageen, mikä on ihan hyvä myönnytys vaikeamman ja helpomman pelitavan välillä.

World Tourin ja modernien kontrollien lisäksi, myös nettipeli on melko lailla mukavasti tehty. Pelissä on nettipelille oma hubinsa, jossa voi töötöillä omalla avatar-hahmolla, pelata Capcomin vanhoja arcade-pelejä sekä tietysti hakeutua erilaisiin nettipelimatseihin. Pelistä löytyy oletettavasti niin kasuaalia kuin ranked-moodiakin sekä tämän lisäksi pelaajien omia hahmoja käyttäviä avatar battleja ja partypelimäisiä extreme-battleja. Ranked moodia jonkin verran pelanneena, senkin toteutus on kiitettävää. Placement-matsien jälkeen vastaan on tullut aika lailla omaa tasoa olevia pelaajia, mikä on varsin hyvä asia nettipelin jaksamisen kannalta. Isoimpana miinuksena nettipelissä on sekavat valikot (jotka ovat kyllä sekavat muuallakni pelissä). Montaa varmasti korpeaa myös pelin battlepass-mekaniikka, jollaisilta on nykyään harvinaisen vaikea välttyä. Tiivistettynä siis nettipelin grindaamisesta parhaimmat palkinnot menevät vain maksaville asiakkaille.

Pelin hahmokattaus myöskin odottaa vielä maksullisia lisäyksiä. Perusrosteri on sekin jo kattava ja hyviä, toisitaan selkeästi eroavia hahmoja sisältävä, mutta ehkä pari taistelijaa lisää olisi tehnyt paketista vielä maittavamman jo ennen DLC:itä.

Audiovisuaalisen toteutuksen puolesta peli on pääosin nannaa. Etenkin arcade- ja versus-moodit näyttävät törkeän hyvältä. World Tour -moodissa on enemmän rosoa, vaikkei sekään suoranaisesti hirveältä näytä. Tässä tekstuurit latautuvat välillä hitaasti ja NPC-hahmot ovat melko pökkelön näköisiä. Audiopuoli on taas hölmön arcademaista paisuttelua ja efektitykitystä. Sopii peliin siis. Musiikit ovat ottaneet pelin nimen Street-sanan vakavasti, ja taustalla kuullaankin paljon katukulttuurille olennaista hiphoppia. Hirveästi en näihin ole kyllä keskittynyt taistelujen tuoksinnassa, mutta eivät ne missään kohtaa ole korvaan särähtäneetkään.

Ostin Street Fighter 6:n osittain heräteostoksena, mutta en ole kyllä todellakaan pettynyt. Toivoin pelin kautta kerrankin oppivani hieman paremmin pelaamaan klassisempaa taistelupeliä, ja tällä oppipolulla on jonkinlaista edistymistä tapahtunutkin. Peli on hauska, laadukas ja aloittelijaystävällinen, ja odotan innolla, minkälaisia kahinoita ja kahinoitsijoita tulevaisuudessa odottaa.

• Great character design and matching visuals

• Amazing party game

• Dedicated story mode and character campaigns

• Combat feels great and we finally have true fighting games accepting the Smash Bros. philosophy of easy to learn hard to master, rather than an arbitrary skill check.

• Beautiful women and men, showcasing the pinnacle of the human phyisque.

Generally, the core system of a game should be considered in every aspect of a games design. Many recent game fail to do this, simply stapling in Triple-A fodder. For a fighting game, the core is very simple but difficult. Visuals, music and general sense of agency in the game build towards a feeling when playing - a connection to your fighter. Here we find a genre re-defining quality. The lesson to the triple-A space:

Make the gameplay good.