| Platform | Studio | Release | Played |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS5 | Capcom | June 2023 | July 2023 |
I am more a fan of classic 2D fighting games and apart from Mortal Combat X I didn’t play any fighting game in recent years. That is why I was very interested if Street Fighter 6 would match my taste focusing more on casual gameplay and reviving the spirit of old school fighting games.
Street Fighter 6 has three major game mode to select from: World Tour, Battlehub and Fighting Ground.
World Tour is the story driven single player mode. You can create your own fighter and with Luke as your couch you explore a small open world. Every NPC in this world can be fought against by requesting a fight from them. However, there are also gang members which will attack you and force into a fight. There is a main story of around 15 chapters to follow and throughout you will get introduced to the main fighting characters in the game, some of those you can select to become your master. The masters are all introduced with some cut scenes and dialogs, and you can learn and improve moves from their skillset. Besides the main chapters there are plenty of side missions to complete and the game has a good variety in the sense that it does not only boil down to beat up some opponents. For example, sometimes you must find a certain item, sometimes you must take a picture with your mobile’s camera. This does not sound to creative but for a fighting game it is indeed a good level of variety. Main missions, side missions and fights on the street give you XP to level up your character and investing to upgrades on a small skill tree. Using moves from a skillset from one of the different masters you met will increase an individual score for each of these skillsets also. Therefore, it is worth to change the special moves of your character from time to time, learning different fighting styles and moves. This is a real strength of the world tour mode, as it motivates you to find all the different masters and try out new moves continuously. This is further enhanced as the game keeps a score for each master on how much he likes you. This can not only be improved by using his special moves but also by completing special side missions and make gifts to him. It’s worth returning to the masters from time to time for learning more special moves and get some inside on their person and story.
Further RPG-elements are the clothes, shoes and accessories you can either get from certain NPCs but usually you buy them in shops or from merchants highlighted on the map. The shops offer different objects to select from, so it is worth checking each of them. Shirts, pants and shoes boost up your character values and there are interesting entries like a gladiator helmet or an animal custom as well. The game distinguishes the clothes equipped for your stats from the pure look of the character avoiding your character to look like a clown combining all kind of different clothes. Right from the beginning I found this a real plus as most the clothes did not suit my taste at all. Further important objects are energy drinks, meals and all kinds of snacks. Those are recovering health or add certain temporary and persistent buffs. They can be used inside an outside the fights. However, during fights using them can be tricky as you must pause shortly to select them from the menu, usually resulting in catching a hit once retuning to the action.
The world tour mode makes a good job in introducing all this features and serves also as kind of tutorial in the first chapters. The story around gangs in the open world Metro city is not interesting and neither fully logic. In later chapter another areal in the fictive central Asian city of Nashall can be explored in addition to Metro City (where New York served clearly as the blueprint). All other countries around the world tour are just short intermezzos like a visit to a Jamaican beach, streets of London or the Colosseum in Rom. They usually just serve as set-pieces to introduce new masters, so at least two or three more regions to really explore would have been nice. World tour could have functioned as good tutorial as mentioned above but the heavily fluctuating difficulty makes it frustrating sometimes, whereas most of the time fights against standard-enemies are much to easy. Especially in later chapters heavy use of health recovery items and booster-snacks are mandatory to have a chance. For street fighter veterans those challenges might be welcome. For me however world tour mode suffers as being stuck in between a tutorial like casual single player experience and an overly hard fight campaign for more experienced players.
Fighting ground is the second main mode of the game. It contains the training center, allowing you to learn the game initially and improve on learning combos. This is important as here you can improve the different punches, hits, kicks and blocks. You learn how to fill and use the drive-meter allowing you to perform drive attacks and drive blocks and how to throw your enemy as well. Street Fighter 6’s gameplay is complex and needs time to learn. This is especially true as timing windows of button presses are very narrow in order to perform the right action or combo. After some training I personally switches from classic street fighter to modern control. In this mode timing is still crucial but special attacks can be performed by pressing once button (in addition to R2) only. The controls are precise in both modes allowing you to learn and improve. Still for full control I preferred to use the Digi-Pad instead of control stick of my PS5 controller as it gave me the impression of having better control on character movement.
Fighting ground also offers a small story mode letting you explore a small background story for each of the character in a small series of fights. In between the fights animated comic cutscenes tell you more about the respective character. The small stories are interesting and really allow you to find your favorite fighter not only in terms of move-set but character as well. As with all fights in fighting ground mode the difficulty can be adjusted, an option that would have been good for the world tour mode as well. After selecting your favorite character and performing enough training you can use Fighting ground to perform classic fights against AI enemies or in 1-vs-1 online matches. There is a ranking system for online matches, but the game allows you to create own lobbies as well. Overall Fighting ground collects all the classic fighting game content for training and matches and has a large variety of options to adjust difficulty level, controls and fight durations for both single player and online matches. Fighting ground alone already has enough content to entertain for a lot of hours.
Battlehub is the central multi-player mode in Street Fighter 6. The battlehub is designed like a sports arena with different zones for different fighting modes. All players joining with their avatars the same lobby enter this arena and you can interact with them via chat or simply walk around the hub to explore. In the center of the battlehub you can engage in avatar fights. In those fights you are playing with the character you designed for the world tour mode. There is no limitation regarding the matches, you can request fights against all players joining the area, regardless of their current experience level. As this sounds unfair at the first glance, I had good fun to see if I can beat someone on level 60 with my character not even on leveled up to 40 yet. Around the central avatar fighting area is the zone for standard online fights with the predefined streetfighter characters. Same as in avatar fights the winner is determined in maximum three-round fights. The extreme-fight area allows you to fight in an even more action loaded stages. Depending on the stage, special events like electro-shockers, running bulls or small bombs will occur occasionally so you must be attentive not only on your opponent’s movement but on these things as well. barely had chances to play this mode online as only very rarely people in the hub played this mode. Therefore, it seems it is not popular compared to avatar and standard fights where match making was always easy. There are also tournaments organized in the battlehub but until the time I wrote this review no tournament was active yet.
Battlehub is the heard of the multiplayer of Street Fighter 6 and serves casual gamers for some quick fights as well as streetfighter enthusiasts. In addition, small things like the presenter, a DJ-set, a big screen allowing just to sit and watch some of the matches and the option to just view fights of other players make it fun to explore the battlehub in more detail upon first entry. The first one to two hours I majorly wandered around watching other fighters and exploring the different zones.
Street Fighter 6 uses the RE-engine and looks extremely good. Fighter design and animation is gorgeous, cutscenes are a real eye-catcher and the stages with their different styles are really showing what current Gen consoles can show off. Textures of some objects and especially the buildings in the open world areas of the world tour mode lack behind the quality of character and stages. The soundtracks are well-selected reaching from hip hop, pop to more electro sound. Character voices are also good and well matching the typical cliché characters in terms of voice tone and language accent.
In Street Fighter 6 everybody will find his favorite characters, game-modes, fighting styles and controls among the tons of possibilities. Surely the world tour mode has some flaws in terms of balancing and precisive controls will need you to practice a lot. Still, there are enough options for casual game sessions as well.
Positive
- game mode for every play style available
- extensive training mode
- excellent character design and graphics
- bonding with master-characters in world tour mode really motivating
- variety of side quests is really good for a fighting game
- small comic stories for single player aside from world tour mode
- battlehub as interactive lobby
Negative
- World tour mode suffers from bad balancing
- main story did not really catch me and looses red line to often
- open world graphics lack behind fighting stages (for example textures of buildings, cars)
- precise controls will require lot of training and do not feel intuitive
Verdict
82
“Street Fighter 6 serves veterans of the series and casual players thanks to it’s large variety of play modes compensating a weak story and balancing issues in the world tour mode.”
Sources: Screenshots: own screen captures