Street Fighter 6 (PC & Playstation 5) Reviewed

I played Street Fighter II when it came out in the arcades. I was just a kid in Primary School back then, but I remember the hype about it. It was a cultural phenomenon. There were sticker albums (both licensed AND unlicensed), there were posters, there were trading cards (again, some licensed but most weren’t) and hell, there were even bootleg modded version of the game! Fast forward more than 30 years later…and here we are, with Street Fighter 6.

The series might not have the cultural cache as it did back in the day, but a mainline Street Fighter release is still something to be excited for these days! After Capcom’s rejuvenation of the series with Street Fighter IV, the games have just been getting better and better.

That begs the question, doesn’t it then?

Is Street Fighter 6 the best yet?

What is Street Fighter 6?

Street Fighter 6 is a 2D fighting game (with 3D characters). It is available right now on Steam, and Playstation and Xbox consoles. The game is cross-platform compatible, which means that all the different platforms can fight together, anytime and anywhere.

The fighter is developed and published by Capcom, who were awesome enough to provide us with two copies of the game so we can test it out on the PC and Playstation 5. Thanks so much for the copies oh great people at Capcom! We really appreciate it!

As a Street Fighter veteran, I’ve honestly been awaiting Street Fighter 6 (along with this month’s Exoprimal) ever since I had the opportunity to test it out at the Tokyo Game Show in 2022. Sky and I had a couple of really hectic matches (I love the new Drive mechanics) with the version there and I came away really impressed.

With the full version in my hands, I’m really pleased to say that as high as my expectations were, they were blown out of the water.

It’s not just because of the nuanced and incredible combat, it’s because Capcom went above and beyond and created a semi-open world action RPG based off the core Street Fighter gameplay.

Yes, for single players, there is FINALLY a reason to play a fighting game. It’s called World Tour and it’s available right from the get go in Street Fighter 6.

Now, fighters with RPG modes aren’t exactly new.

The SoulCalibur series had a couple of instalments with a similar concept. Hell, Tobal 2 and even Ehrgeiz on the original Playstation had them. What they didn’t have is the cohesiveness that Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode has.

There’s actually a decent plotline in the mode, something which is lacking in the game’s other modes.

You don’t just move your cursor to pick your destination in World Tour mode. Your fighter (which you have to create from scratch) actually has to navigate the maps. The game’s mainly set in Metro City (with locales right out of Final Fight) but you’ll also get to travel to other countries such as Italy and Jamaica.

Unfortunately, the other locations aren’t as huge as Metro City but considering that World Tour mode isn’t exactly the main focus of Street Fighter 6, I’m surprised we got them at all.

Your time in Metro City will be spent mostly by beating up random people on the streets. That’s right. True to the name, you can literally go up to pretty much any NPC on the streets and challenge them to a fight. Hell, you can start a fight with a cheap shot (like a shoryuken or spinning bird kick) if you like.

Due to that, fights can break out anywhere. They’re spontaneous, they don’t have loads (it’s literally you and the other fighter acknowledging each other and then you’re duking it out) and they incorporate the core Street Fighter 6 mechanics.

Better yet, they incorporate custom mechanics that are unique to the World Tour mode.

For you see, sometimes you can have fights with multiple opponents at once! Or rarely, team up with an AI and fight other opponents! It’s the Dramatic Battle mode that first appeared in Street Fighter Alpha 3 taken to its furthermost extreme…and it is AWESOME!

There’s a ton of depth to the mode.

Your choice of Master dictates your skillset, which in turn evolves as you gain experience. You get stronger, you get new moves and you can even blend moves from different characters into your avatar’s movelist. My character had Marissa’s pummeling punches, Manon’s command throw (the one that buffs up the more you use it) and Luke’s Rising Uppercut.

Was I overpowered? Probably. Did I have fun? Hell yeah!

World Tour is limited only by your skill and your drive to grow stronger. The more you play and fight, the stronger you get (and the stronger your opponents get), the more quests you unlock and the more Masters you can train under. It’s a viciously fun cycle.

The only issues I had with the World Tour mode has nothing to do with the gameplay.

It’s a fault with the visuals. I don’t know why but despite playing on the highest settings the game offers, some of the textures in the game look incredibly blurry! They heavily detract from the experience because everything else would look great and then suddenly you’d have these blurry, low resolution textures that are so out they break immersion completely.

They’re mostly of the signage variety so places like Metro City’s Chinatown are more affected than some other areas. I really hope Capcom patches them out and swaps in the appropriately rendered visuals.

Despite that, I honestly had more fun playing World Tour mode and fighting the AI than I ever did with the game’s Arcade or Online modes.

That’s not to say they were underwhelming. They’re not. They’re just as they were in previous games…hell, perhaps even better. Capcom’s even made Street Fighter 6 the most easy to get into of the series.

The game now has 3 different control schemes; Dynamic (for newbies and button mashers, where hitting buttons randomly is rewarded), Modern (for those too lazy to remember technical stuff like movelists and combos) and Classic (your regular Street Fighter control method).

I stuck to old school Classic for every match (after trying out Modern and Dynamic) so you can guess what I think of the alternate schemes. Right now, if you use any scheme other than Classic, the game slaps you with a flat 20% reduction on all offence. However, gamers have found out that using the easier control schemes and doing the motion for specials using the Classic method bypasses that limitation, which is a bit unfair and will hopefully be patched out in the future.

All of the schemes are available in every mode, so you can use them where ever you like, including the single player Arcade mode.

Arcade mode’s stories are honestly a bit underwhelming, especially with World Tour mode so close at hand. They set the stage nicely for the plot of Street Fighter 6 but leave too many unanswered questions that have you scratching your head after you’re done.

Online multiplayer is a whole new beast.

That’s because there’s a new online lobby system (similar to Dragon Ball FighterZ) where you can walk around with your avatar. This time around, it’s an online virtual arcade with cabinets playing the game littered throughout. There are also some cabinets with Final Fight and Magic Sword and Street Fighter II to play with.

Will Capcom rotate these games in and out? No idea but they’re fun bonuses nonetheless!

Online fights are great…provided of course you get a fight with a good connection. You can pick and choose, so there’s not a problem there but I’ve found even fights with a four bar connection to be playable with barely noticeable lag. Just don’t go for 3 bars and below and you’ll do fine.

I had no issues meeting up with Sky in multiple cross-play sessions. I was on holiday in Europe at the time, so I was playing on Steam while Sky used a Playstation 5. Despite the continental divide between us, Street Fighter 6’s network code was competent enough to provide us enjoyable fights (there were lag spikes that I attribute to the poor Internet at my location).

New to Street Fighter 6 is the ability to have commentators call play by play on the matches. I sincerely hope we never get this ‘feature’ again. It sounds great in theory, but it falls flat on execution. The play by play isn’t interesting or insightful (and sometimes downright wrong).

The dialogue feels canned and stiff and ultimately, boring. Nothing against the commentators who make their money doing this for real, but I’d rather listen to the game’s soundtrack and sound effects than here prerecorded lines that may or may not be accurate to what’s happening onscreen.

Never have I been more thankful to disable a ‘feature’ in a game.

Visually, the game looks outstanding. It’s great on the PC or on modern consoles and the load times are similar. I played both the PC version (my Steam account has my playtime at about 13 hours) and around the same amount on the Playstation 5.

I could scarcely tell both versions apart.

Music is hit and miss this time around…I’m a bit put off by the tunes in the game but then again my tastes are a bit…eclectic. I still love Marvel vs Capcom 2’s jazzy soundtrack and the chiptunes from Street Fighter II, so I might not be the best judge of the score.

However, if your tastes run the same way as mine, then you’ll probably be a bit disappointed by the lack of hummable tracks in the game.

The Bottom Line.

There are a lot of words that can be used to describe Street Fighter 6. Incredible. Phenomenal. Amazing.

It deserves all of that, and more. Street Fighter 6 is hands-down the best game in the main series. It has everything you’d want in a fighting game; a great cast, enjoyable fighting mechanics, solid online (and offline) multiplayer modes and for the first time in the series, an amazing single player RPG mode.

Sure, there are minor issues here and there but as a whole, there’s no way you can not like Street Fighter 6 if you’re a gamer. It’s just impossible.

TLDR:

The best Street Fighter yet!