Street Fighter 6 review: Capcom made the ultimate fighting game toolbox

It can be similar to learning an instrument. To begin, it’s important to learn the fundamentals: how to use it, what you can do with it and where your fingers should be placed. With practice, you’ll learn chords and melodies, developing skills that will help you achieve any sound you want. When playing at an advanced level, fighting games require dedication. It takes dozens of practice hours to learn your moves, your opponents’ space, and the best way to punish them for mistakes.

Street Fighter 6This game is no exception. It’s a wild conjunction of complex systems and mechanics that may leave you perplexed the first time you sit down to play it. Street Fighter may have become a familiar game after more than 35 years. The Drive System, which is a brand new feature in the Street Fighter series, allows you to parry powerful attacks, make your special moves even more deadly, and perform other impressive feats.

You can also play Street Fighter 6 casually, mashing buttons and beating up your friends; you’ll have a blast. Delve deeper than the surface, however, and you’ll be rewarded.

Street Fighter 6Capcom is going to extreme lengths to make sure that players have the right tools. World Tour is an amazing tutorial that masquerades as a single-player story mode. It lets you build your fighter and level it up while traveling around the globe.

World Tour gives you the essentials and guides you through your journey. They’ll send you on missions and quests across the semi-open world of Metro City, as you meet new characters, buy fancy clothes, and battle anyone and everyone in your way. Everyone is at risk: old ladies in cardboard boxes, mimes and punks. World Tour is a mixture of a comedy-adventure and introductory tutorial. The battles get harder as the game progresses.

Capcom

What makes World Tour so brilliant is how few tools you’re given at first — punches, kicks, and maybe a projectile and an uppercut. You learn them until they become a part of you, not just through street fighting, but also through amusing minigames, like one about making pizzas that stealthily teaches you Street Fighter’s standard motion inputs. The secondary missions are minimal, with only a few moves or attacks to use against your rivals. However, they reward you for learning and keep you from getting frustrated by online players. Some fighting games throw you into the wild and leave it to you.

World Tour doesn’t come without its caveats. Many locations are bland dioramas with set backgrounds, dialogue is often cheesy (to say the least), exploration is pretty limited, and the overall story isn’t all that interesting. This is the first Street Fighter game to offer a 20-hour long campaign that will entertain and teach you the basics of the complex combat system.

Capcom

You can also play the World Tour in a different mode. Street Fighter 6 offers a wide variety of offline and online modes where you can test what you’ve learned so far, to keep making progress in an endless journey of perfecting your instrument. The robust training mode and trials are very useful. You can also create your own character guide with helpful tutorials and watch other people play while you check their frame data.

Battle Hub serves as a new social area where you’ll meet other players and sit at arcade cabinets, waiting for your turn to fight. The scene reminded me of my childhood arcade days, when groups of strange-looking avatars would gather to fight a persistent player. Some aspects of the hub, such as how to alter your control scheme, would be better presented. But the hub reminds me of Sony’s now-shuttered PlayStation Home, meaning that in the kindest way possible, with its charming presentation and limited but joyful ways of interacting with other people.

Capcom

Online matches feel smooth, even when playing against players in other countries, based on my experiences with the game’s beta tests and a limited window during the review period. It’s quick and easy to get into a match. More importantly, rematches can happen in just a few seconds, an improvement that will keep you asking for “just one more fight.”

Street Fighter 6Capcom has taken a further step to welcome new players, by redesigning the controls. As an alternative to Street Fighter’s long-established six-button control scheme, Capcom introduces new, streamlined Modern and Dynamic control schemes.

Modern controls effectively reduce the six-button layout to three, plus one dedicated “special” button. There’s also an “assist” button that will help you perform a combo that can end with a super move without breaking a sweat. Simple, yes, but you’ll lose an important number of options and strategic resources for your fighter.

This simplified control system allows new players to get familiar with their character and the feel of a battle without having the dexterity needed to execute a quarter-circle forward move or draconian punch. When you start a new fighting game, it’s far more important to learn about spacing, footsies, situations in which you can punish your opponent, and other elemental aspects than learning long combos or difficult inputs.

Capcom

Dynamic is for those who want to just have fun. The game takes care of the rest when you press any button, regardless of the distance. This contradicts the idea of making you better in the long run, but it’s ideal for those who want to play a few quick and dirty matches at a party. Dynamic controls can only be used in battles offline.

Capcom understands that none of the features are worth anything without a strong cast of characters. At launch, there are 18 unique fighters that look and play distinctively, with a roster of new and familiar faces that’s easily the strongest lineup since Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike.

Highlights include JP, a glamorous old Russian man that attacks with unnerving tricks and grabs from long distances; Marisa, a Roman juggernaut with intimidating armored attacks and chargeable punches that threaten to break her opponents’ bones; and Manon, a beautiful French dancer with a surprising balance between long-range kicks and powerful grabs. Chun-Li and Blanka are among the strongest fighters ever. They also have a wide range of combos and specials.

Capcom

The Everything In Street Fighter 6 looks and sounds incredible, from the characters’ breathtaking animations while performing even the most basic of moves to their amusing gestures in the versus screen to the styling of the menus and the hip-hop tunes that play during battles.

Street Fighter 6’s developers went all-in, delivering spectacle and approachability, robust tools and tutorials, all without limiting the game’s potential. You’ll find a deeply layered combat system that doesn’t limit player expression; instead of trying to make things simpler by reducing character moves and options, you’re given an abundance, all of it correctly explained and presented, encouraging your own discoveries.

It seems absurd to spend weeks, months or years on a video game in an age where there is so much content. Learning to make your own street fighting music can be as rewarding and satisfying as most things in life. Street Fighter 6This is the largest and most approachable franchise package to date. It awaits you in a warm, welcoming way.

Street Fighter 6 The movie will be out on June 2, 2019. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, WindowsPC Xbox Series X. Capcom provided a code for a PS5 pre-release to review the game. Vox Media works with affiliates. Vox Media can earn affiliate commissions, but this does not affect editorial content. Find out more about affiliate links. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.