Review: STREET FIGHTER 6 Packs a Punch For New and Old Fighters

DISCLAIMER: I do enjoy a lot of fighting games, but I am not a pro or even that frequent of a fighting game player. Also, this review will be based solely on its single-player and off-line modes. An update about online play and stability will be coming this weekend after some time playing with the general public. This review is based on the PS5 version of Street Fighter 6.

As one of the oldest mainstream fighting games, any new iteration of Street Fighter has to deal with a plethora of modern issues. Be it an increasingly dedicated fanbase, a plethora of newcomers, accessibility options, new gaming expectations, a more intense online presence, or many other things, Street Fighter 6 does a great job of checking all those boxes in one polished package. While there are still flaws in its main storyline and character design, Street Fighter 6 feels like its best version of itself we could have expected.

Street Fighter 6 is easily one of the most approachable and accessible fighting games in a long time. For veterans of the franchise, the roster of new and old characters is well-balanced and strong. The controls feel slick and responsive, and the competitive gameplay is very satisfactory. But for players who aren’t used to Street Fighter games or fighting games in general, the added modern-controls settings are phenomenal and allow you to focus more on the back-and-forth of playing against your enemy, instead of trying to do the correct inputs. The world tour single player mode is especially good for new players, but can be exhaustive for anyone who is remotely familiar with fighting games. It starts out slow, and continues slowly, which is good for those who are unfamiliar with fighting games. But the sluggish pacing can be relatively boring for everyone else. The best part of the world tour is being able to create your own character and use various special moves and inputs from characters in the game. Unfortunately, players can’t bring those created characters into off-line modes. Hopefully later on the developers will bring the ability to play those uniquely designed characters into spaces where we can show them off to other people.

Let’s keep talking about the World Tour, off-line single-player story mode. It’s really slow and should’ve taken about half the amount of time to finish. There are a lot of really great ideas, but those ideas are bogged down by loads of side quests and a relatively pointless open world to just pad out the time. A more streamlined experience, giving players the option to spend more time discovering what they wanted or letting them push quickly to the end would’ve been better overall. It’s a fine mode when it is looked at as more of an extended tutorial with creative features, but it is not the reason to play Street Fighter 6.

As for other off-line modes, the game offers just the right amount of options to keep players entertained by themselves, or with other people for plenty of time. The standard arcade mode has the option of being shorter or longer, allowing players to fight through a classic set of battles with a short story for each character. As for offline PvP, there is 1v1, team battles, and wild and wacky extreme battles that introduce interesting approaches to health bars, wacky fighting conditions, and much more. It may not feel that robust at first, but after looking at the details of all the options inside of each mode, there is plenty to keep a player busy as they get to know all the characters and work on their own proficiency in those characters.

As beautiful as the game is aesthetically, there is something off about the characters. While the unique design of Street Fighter has taken shape over the last couple of entries, starting especially with Street Fighter 4, the extremely bulkiness and stylized shaping is starting to hit an uncanny valley as textures, facial expressions, and other aspects become more realistic. Basically, the game is looking too good for its own good. The individual parts like the eyes, colors, lighting and textures all look really amazing, but the character proportions and bodies feel overly exaggerated and off-putting. This is especially apparent during the World Tour mode. Trying to create a character that isn’t horrifying to look at is kind of difficult. And you will deal with dozens or hundreds of randomly generated characters that love to swing in that uncanny valley of weird and disproportionate. Maybe this is just a very personal opinion on the style of Street fighter 6, but at least the main characters look pretty nice. It can be really fun to make amazingly weird characters, but it is unfortunate that the style of the main characters rolls over so poorly to the created characters and world tour that it can become bothersome.

The last things to really mention here is the game’s actual tutorial/training mode and in-game announcers. The tutorial/training mode is by far one of the best ever made. Going from learning the basics of movement to using special techniques, reversals, and other moves is fast and fun. This allows players of all levels the chance to increase their fighting skills efficiently and that is how all tutorials should be moving forward. And to quickly mention the in-game commentator feature, it is fantastic. The voices and comments feel lively, engaging, and make each match more exciting.

Street Fighter 6 is a very strong entry in the franchise and an excellent fighting game in general. It does have its various flaws, especially in the World Tour mode, but it is a really great game for new and old players or anyone else anywhere in between.

UPDATE: After some time with the online public and Battle Hub, the score for this review is being bumped up to a 9 out of 10. Usually, these online spaces where players have an avatar and walk around asking people to fight can feel awkward, difficult to navigate and cheesy at best. However, SF6 offers a number of options of battles, how to get into those battles, mini-games, shops and more in this social place. The Battle Hub is an excellent execution of many ideas and a great way to add a lot of life to a great game.