Street Fighter 6: A Strong First Impression

This won’t come as a surprise to my regular readers, but I’m knee deep in Street Fighter 6 right now. I spent the bulk of my free time over the weekend playing it, and was really impressed. There’s so many things that the game gets right, which I hope become standard across the genre. With any luck, Street Fighter 6 will act as the shepherd for a new generation of fighting games – a generation where robust features allow players of all sorts to enjoy playing them.

Having said that, I think it’s important to establish some context. I am no longer a genre newcomer. I was years ago, but over the past 5 years I’ve grown both my understanding of fighting games, and my love of the genre. There’s still a boatload to keep learning, but I’m not approaching Street Fighter 6 as a casual fan, or a new player. This will almost certainly shape my perspective while covering the game. I’m seasoned. Heavily seasoned.

No where is my previous experience more evident than my time playing ranked. I had a very good time here, and that is undoubtedly because of how much of a step up it was from Guilty Gear Strive. I don’t like to make the comparison, but it’s true. I didn’t have to screw around with the lobbies, nor deal with a barrage of connection issues. It was really as easy as clicking a button, and waiting 30 seconds for the game to find an opponent. You really come to appreciate that simplicity when you’ve gone without it for so long.

The only other noteworthy observation I had from ranked was just how far a firm understanding of the basics carried me. I’m still in the bottom rungs of the online ladder because I can’t execute combos with any degree of reliability, but I still managed a 12 game win streak with nothing but a sweep, anti-air, and a command throw. It turns out it’s possible to both play, and enjoy these games with just the basics.

While those aforementioned basics are a fine place to start, I’m sure I’ll run into a wall once I find players who’ve spent time learning combos. That’s where Street Fighter’s training mode comes in. In this regard, Capcom has really hit the ball out of the park. The training mode is so feature rich that I haven’t actually finished messing around with all of its different settings. That said, a few key components are present: frame data, save states, and programmable dummy settings. If you know what all of those words mean then you’re probably as happy as I was upon finding these different features. For the rest of you: these settings make it easier to figure out some of the more opaque aspects of the game. Having them available on day 1 is a huge boon.

Speaking of figuring the game out, the tutorials included within Street Fighter 6 are fairly robust. These things cover everything from the game’s basic controls to a variety of different genre specific topics including, but not limited to: how armor works, what a cross-up is, how to cancel into supers, and even how to play neutral. The sheer volume of information on offer is staggering, and organized in such a way that it’s easy to delve into specific topics. What’s really special though is how players can pause these tutorials to try out what’s being explained. As a kinesthetic learner, I love having stuff like this available. It really helps the information sink into my brain in a way that reading simply doesn’t manage.

Along with the more generalized content, there are also tutorials for every single character. These go into detail about each fighter’s special moves, and any additional techniques they might have. For example, one of the first things covered in Manon’s tutorial was her medium, and heavy combos that apply a vacuum effect drawing the opponent closer. This puts them at the ideal range to be hit by either a quick jab combo, or a throw. This made understanding Manon’s different tools, and how they relate to one another far easier than simply experimenting in training mode.

Finally, we have the Battle Hub. This is Street Fighter 6’s public lobby system, and is where I spent the majority of my time. As soon as I finished work on Friday, I hopped on a discord call with my friend from overseas, and we started beating the tar out of one another. Neither of us understood much of anything about the characters we were playing, and we had a blast. In fact, we had so much fun that we continued playing Street Fighter for several more hours the following Saturday.

There isn’t much to say about the Battle Hub, aside from that my experience playing was just as good as ranked. This is of particular note because I was playing someone from halfway across the globe, instead of people in my backyard. I don’t know if I’ve conveyed it well enough in the past, but a good online experience will make, or break a game for me. That’s doubly true in fighting games, so the smooth experience across my entire playtime with Street Fighter 6 was incredibly welcome.

I lied – the Battle Hub isn’t the final thing I’ll be covering: I couldn’t round things off without mentioning Manon. She plays exactly how I thought she would, and I couldn’t be happier. She’s like 80% leg, and those legs give Manon several long reaching attacks to poke opponents with. Once you’re in close the real magic happens though. You have a command throw where you start dancing with your opponent, and it gets stronger the more times you land it. Using the threat of that ever increasing damage opens your opponent up powerful combos though, so you can really mess with people. Manon is just so full of goblin technology and I can’t wait to dig into more of it as I continue to play her. I can already sense I’m going to have a LOT of fun messing around with her over the next several months.

Well, that about covers everything I’ve done in Street Fighter 6 so far. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but you have to understand that I spent something like 8 hours playing my friend, and another 4 in training mode, or adjacent facilities. I realize that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly given Street Fighter 6 a very strong first impression. For me it did at least.

What about you? Are you also playing Street Fighter 6? How has your experience been so far? I’d love to hear about how others are finding the game.