Street Fighter 6 review

Street Fighter 6 review: Street Fighter 6, the newest game in Capcom’s famous series, is coming to our homes with new generation fighters and gameplay improvements that also consider new players. Street Fighter 6, which seems to be coming with a content that can satisfy both new fighting players and old fans who were excitedly waiting for Street Fighter 5 and disappointed, is it a good game? Let’s analyse it together.

Street Fighter 6 review / PC

Let’s start the Street Fighter 6 review with the game modes and playable characters we have. Street Fighter 6 offers three different options when we first log in. We choose one of the World Tour, Battle Hub and Fighting Ground modes and start the game.

We can consider the World Tour as the story mode of the game. Considering that the fifth game didn’t even have a proper character story at the time of its release, this time they really gave importance to the story part. We have a long story that we enter with the character we created, with classic characters in supporting roles. Is the World Tour story good, is it worth playing? I will give the answer to this in its own section.

Read More: Street Fighter 6 characters

Battle Hub is the multiplayer part of the game, one of the areas where you will spend the most time. You can enter the region of your choice and interact with avatars created by other players, buy things to customise your character’s appearance, and play old Capcom games on arcade machines.

Of course, these are all side activities. The most important part of Battle Hub is the chance to compete against other players. You can go to the fighting game machines and fight with other opponents, and you can linger in the “Training” section while waiting. This is the place to come to for casual avatar fights, standard one-on-one fights, ranked matches and tournaments.

Fighting Grounds is the second part where you will spend a lot of time. In this mode, you can experience the stories of the characters in the Arcade section and learn your character thoroughly in the Practice section. Versus, where you can have 1v1 or team fights against artificial intelligence or your friends at home, Special Match, where you can customise the fights with different challenges, and Online, where you can enter ranked or standard matches against other players.

We have a new fighter

There are a total of 18 characters playable in Street Fighter 6, including both old fighters and new faces. Our old Street Fighter characters that we can see the effect of the passing years are Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, Dee Jay, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Guile, Luke, Zangief Juri and Blanka. We’re way ahead of both Street Fighter 4 and 5 in the timeline, with both games taking place before Street Fighter 3, so don’t be surprised when you see the characters.

New characters joining the fight are JP, Jamie Lily, Kimberley, Marisa and Manon. We also have one more character, our avatar, which we created and can use in avatar fights. If we include him, there are 19 characters, but of course I won’t.

The old Street Fighter characters, especially for players who have played the game for a long time, come with renewed moves that will be both familiar and “this was a little different”. The new characters have managed to endear themselves with their unique fighting styles and personalities. Manon, who I didn’t really warm up to at the beginning, is now my favourite. I would like to talk about the characters in more detail, but I didn’t have enough time to spend a long time on each of them.

Read More: Street Fighter Showcase

I mentioned that we can make our own avatar from the character creation screen and use it on both World Tour and Battle Hub. There is almost no limit to what we can do while creating this character. It is possible to create a great fighter who is the beauty of the world, or it is also possible to make weirdos that you would change your way if you saw them during the day. You can adjust your character’s height, colour, skin texture, voice and even shape. I did something I won’t get tired of seeing in story mode, but I expect to see horror film types in Battle Hub.

After you create your character, you can buy items that you can dress up both in the World Tour and in the Battle Hub. There are several different currencies in the game for these. The items you can buy with the coins you get in the story are also available at the vendors in the story mode. These items both change your character’s power and add extra buff/debuff features.

For those sold in the Battle Hub section, you can use both the points you earn by fighting and the game money you buy with real money. This part is a bit controversial, in order to raise money for the products that come in limited stock, you need to either fight back to back or print the money and buy it. I wonder if money is given for these purely visual products, what kind of products the game can sell in the future, whether there will be only those sold with real money. I can’t comment on this for the moment.

It is Aduket Not Hadouken

Street Fighter 6 allows us to choose between different control options for more novice players to enjoy. Fights in Fighting Grounds mode have a choice between three different control schemes, Classic, Modern and Dynamic. Let’s briefly touch on all three.

Firstly, Classic controls are familiar even to “arcade” players, where you have to press buttons in the correct order to pull off moves. It is hard to get used to, has different inputs for each character, but once you learn it, you can use the full potential of the character. It’s the style you need to learn, especially if you want to move up in ranked matches.

The modern controls are semi-automatic, both for players who want to pull off combos and for players who say “I can’t press the buttons the way I want to”. Each attack type has its own special key, and with an extra “assist” key, you can quickly perform different combos and use drive abilities. It can even support classic key combinations. At the beginning, you can get an idea of what your character can do.

Dynamic controls are completely new, even for people who have never played a fighting game. Every button you press does something, it’s completely automatic. I don’t quite understand how it works, but my 9-year-old nephew had a lot of fun playing, which shows me that the control type has achieved its purpose. This control type cannot be used in online games, but this is not a big loss.

The newly added Drive bar is a very valuable resource that can be used for 5 different techniques. Separate from the Super bar, the Drive bar allows you to absorb attacks and hit (Drive Impact), boost your special attacks (Overdrive), parry the opponent’s attack (Drive Parry), block the attack and counter attack (Drive Reversal), and dash at the opponent (Drive Rush).

Read More: Street Fighter 6 Trailer

You really need to pay attention to the Drive bar, if this bar runs out as a result of your actions, both your character is stunned and you can be defeated even while defending. You have to wait for a while for it to fill up again, but this is not enough because it fills up very slowly while defending. If you are more aggressive, you recover faster. Try not to get into this situation called burnout as much as possible, the more effective the Drive abilities are, the more harmful the burnout situation is.

Travelling the World

Street Fighter 6 wanted to fill the missing story mode of the previous game with World Tour, and it didn’t do a bad job. World Tour tells the story of becoming a powerful fighter with your own character. Throughout the story, you start training with Luke and learn new techniques under the tutelage of many different fighters. Meanwhile, you try to solve the situation of Bosch, who suddenly becomes your friend and disappears instantly.

The story is very strange in general, the functioning is very strange, I don’t know why the characters come, why they go, why the events happen. The cutscenes are usually very good, so I kept playing despite the strangeness. The story doesn’t exactly have an end, we see what happens to the characters we love, but we don’t get enough information. If you play for the story, you’ll be disappointed. It has small and fun dialogues though.

In terms of gameplay, I can say that this mode reminds me of PS2 – PS3 era anime fighting games. There were Naruto games like this, there were interesting story modes where we ran around the village and took missions from people. The story works the same here, we take ridiculous missions and try to do them. “Oh, did your friend get kidnapped by an obviously evil woman on a motorbike, let’s travel the world and bring me two souvenirs”!

There are also mini events in the game. These activities, which are referred to as part-time jobs, are small things like breaking boards, making pizzas with attack combos, cutting the mouths of bottles with our hands within the given time. Tasks suitable for earning money and some bonuses are similar to beating trucks in Arcade mode. Although I ignored these missions at first, I started doing them when I ran out of money because there were a lot of items we could buy. Not bad for passing the time.

The game also has RPG mechanics. Every equipment you get provides bonuses that affect your character’s strength or health. If you eat food, you heal, you can eat donuts that strengthen the kick, and so on. Everyone on the street is a fighter, the old uncle sweeping the floor can suddenly do somersaults like Blanka. Also, different vendors around the world (the same vendor in different places) can sell different clothes. Depending on the style your character chooses, you can add skills from different fighters and create a special fighting style for yourself.

I’m complaining, but I played for about 15 hours, beat everyone around once, and tried to earn extra clothes, food, etc. by doing mini missions during the fights. Fun mode, I think I would have paid 40 – 50 if it was sold as a separate game, but as it is, it is a nice addition to the game. There won’t be many people who remember it in the future, but new players should try it just for the side missions that teach the mechanics of the game. Professionals will probably not visit Metro City.

Sound Visuals and Performance

I’m usually careful not to play fighting games on PC because both PC ports are bad and players are more concentrated on the console side. I played Street Fighter 6 on PC and I have no complaints.

The game runs very well in general, I was able to perform the fights with a constant 60 FPS. The servers were open for a very short time for the review, I was only able to play three matches. I had no problems in these matches. But if I interpret the performance on the online side from what I tested during the last beta, it was quite good. It has both rollback netcode and crossplay support, so we can play against other players without any problems.

The Battle Hub may have some performance issues when it’s full with 60 people, but I wasn’t in a lobby crowded enough to say that during the review. The area is large and there’s plenty to do, including playing different games in the arcade booths or posing for selfies in the selfie area. With so many people together, it’s important to see how the servers and the game will perform.

A second controller is a must for the travelling parts of the game. I had a hard time controlling the camera while travelling around with the arcade stick. There are options to steer the camera with a fixed camera or a different button, but they don’t work very well. Especially World Tour mode is not possible to play with the arcade stick. You get kicked in the back until the camera turns.

I really liked the game visually, the designs of the characters, the art style and animations are great. Details such as the colours during Drive attacks, the attack animations of angry refrigerators are very nice. While travelling around the world with World Tour, I can say “not bad”. Metro City, where we can travel freely, seems to have been worked on, but it could have been a little better. Other countries that take place in a fixed location look much better. I can’t say anything about the cutscenes, they all look very good.

I can say both good and bad about the music. The music is very good in the fight part, even in the parts where the characters walk together before entering the fight, it sets a very nice mood. World Tour music, on the other hand, reminds me of games from the PS2 era. I can’t tell you how bored I get with that music. It’s like they made Metro City music by pressing random keys when they were bored.

Conclusion

As an old Street Fighter fan, I was very pleased with Street Fighter 6. I pre-ordered Street Fighter 5 and was so disappointed that I didn’t pick it up for a long time, and I spent almost 30 hours with the game, most of which was spent in the tutorial and World Tour mode as I got used to the new gameplay mechanics. Even with the content it had on release day, Street Fighter 5 is a step above and beyond.

Street Fighter 6 has managed to be a game that offers the opportunity to have fun even for beginner players, has a detailed training area for those who want to learn the game, even allows them to warm up to the game with the World Tour, and satisfies the player with its full content. We have a game that embraces both old (and perhaps resentful) players and new players. If it doesn’t exaggerate the microtransactions or come up with strange advertising campaigns in the future, it can even become much better than it is now.

Street Fighter 6, whose PC version is on sale on Steam, is a game that I can easily recommend especially to fans of the series. For beginner players, I can say that it is a game with much more accessibility than the previous two games, more comfortable to play and learn. You can try the demo for free and make your final decision.