Street Fighter 6 (Xbox Series) Review

It’s time to get off that couch and dust off your gloves; pop that six-pack back in the fridge and loosen those limbs; because Street Fighter is back and it’s fighting season baby!

The latest entry in Capcom’s long-running and much-iterated fighting game series, Street Fighter 6 comes out of the gate swinging with an exhaustive list of options (not in a bad way mind you), a wealth of content, and some serious changes that update the game’s traditional design for the modern age. It strives to retain its roots for purists while also making it more accessible to everyone than ever before – a high-wire act for any long-running series but Capcom manages to balance on that tripwire gracefully while delivering one of the most comprehensive and fully-featured fighters at launch.

Street Fighter 6 breaks itself down into three categories: World Tour, Battle Hub, and Fighting Ground – so let’s break those down so you can get an idea of where to start.

World Tour is, essentially, “Street Fighter the action RPG”; Battle Hub is a shared social space for all things related to online play; and Fighting Ground is where you’ll find the more traditional fighting game modes and training.

In their drive to make Street Fighter more accessible and comprehensive, Capcom provides multiple ways to learn the ins and outs. You could just jump straight into PvE or PvAI fights, but it’s worth it to take the time to learn about the systems and changes.

Street Fighter vs. Final Fight vs. Yakuza!

World Tour lets you create an avatar for yourself to run around in the conjoined world of Street Fighter and Final Fight. It functions as a semi-open-world action RPG that plays out like a Street Fighter-flavoured Yakuza It’s incredibly, endearingly silly.

It also puts the “street” back into Street Fighter as you roam the concrete wilds of Metro City, beating down cardboard box-wearing gang members, irate accountants, and many other denizens for whom fighting is just another way to say hi. You can customise your character’s move-set, change their looks with a wonderful character creation system, and outfit them with stat-changing gear. Then you can pick a fight with practically anyone here, with each win giving you XP to level up your character, or items to use if you’ve beaten them with specific techniques.

Once triggered, battles play out as traditional 2D fights, though – in a break from tradition – you’ll be facing off against multiple opponents at a time. It works wonderfully well and the mode is impressively fleshed out. As you progress, you meet up with the game’s main cast and become their disciples. Doing so gives you access to their move-set and lets you further customise your avatar with a mix of moves. Of course, you’re also learning the move-set of the core characters as you go.

While the World Tour mode is full of silly side quests, some are incredibly useful. Capcom has worked the game’s traditional tutorials into a succession of increasingly difficult side missions to ensure you’re up to speed with the core Street Fighter 6 fighting outside of this mode. As a result, while World Tour feels like it was created with newcomers in mind, even veterans can have a fun time practicing here if they’re open to its wonderful absurdity.

Fightclub!

Once you’re done with the Wold Tour, you can bring your avatar into the Battle Hub, which functions as a virtual online arcade for you to run around in.

It’s a wonderful space meant to evoke the classic arcade experience, where you would sit around waiting for your turn on a machine. Only this time, it’s virtual and populated by other players’ avatars.

You can stand and spectate a match at a cabinet if you just want to learn, or sit down and throw out requests to participate in matches. You have access to both standard matches and ranked ones, and there are shops to buy cosmetic items using real or virtual currency.

Traditionalists are still catered for!

Finally, Fighting Ground is where you’ll find the discover more traditional menues and game modes, including direct access to online matches if you don’t feel like running around Battle Hub’s virtual space to pick a fight.

There are your arcade modes, including a story mode, versus battles, extreme battles, and team battles. There’s also a training area, a general tutorial mode, a character guide mode that functions as a character-focused tutorial, and even a combo trial mode that teaches you how to use specific combos and the situations in which to use them. Capcom, really, really, really wants you to get deep into Street Fighter 6‘s mechanics and all of these teaching tools are incredibly well-designed to transition you from novice to master.

You can also set up matches against the CPU with an impressive range of difficulties or, if you’re lucky enough to have friends nearvy, you can set up those all-important couch tournaments. As great as the online matches feel, nothing beats talking smack to someone sitting next to you that you’ve just trounced.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a virtual arcade to play classic Capcom titles on and a gallery to view unlocked cutscenes, artwork, and music.

So what’s new in the world of Street Fighter?

The latest combat system introduced in Street Fighter 6 is the “Drive Gauge”. You start off with a full Gauge each round, which allows you access to Drive moves, such as Drive Parries and Drive Rushes. Drive moves, which are super flashy to look at, cover a variety of special moves such as getting you across the ring quickly, parrying all incoming attacks, or opening up a block so you can trigger combos you couldn’t otherwise. What I loved about this system is how much it could change up a fight without feeling like it was an overpowered coup de grace in the process.

Of course, the combat depth goes well beyond this and includes some familiar or refined systems. There are the returning Super Arts that have three levels, each one allowing you to pull a different Super, and Capcom has reworked the games returning cast of character moves to fit the new system. For the most part, it all feels well-balanced though there’s at least one character whose moves I can see becoming a frustrating wall of spam attacks.

As part of their accessibility push, Capcom has rolled out three control methods for Street Fighter 6: Classic, Modern, and Dynamic.

Modern is meant for both newcomers and those who prefer the relatively simplified control method of most modern fighters. With this configuration, you have a special button; light, medium, and heavy attack buttons; and one of the triggers helps you to auto-combo. It removes the need for traditional directional move inputs and makes fancy combos a breeze to pull off. There is a ceiling to it, however, with you being locked out of specific moves, but I can’t overstate how comfortable a control scheme it is. That said, once you start to face off against higher-level CPU opponents or, better yet, an accomplished payer, you’ll quickly discover how its almost button-mashing-style setup will limit you.

Classic Controls are the traditional six-button control scheme meant for purists and experienced players and while Modern will get you going and keep you going to a certain point, learning the Classic controls will expand the tactical complexity and your available move-set considerably.

Finally, there’s Dynamic, which chooses the attacks to use for a specific situation. You essentially push one button while the CPU pretty much does everything else. It’s great for accessibility or newer/younger players just coming to grips with a gamepad, but it’s the control scheme I spent the least time with.

If there’s one area that Street Fighter 6 feels massively enhanced in, it’s the timing. Street Fighter games have always had a very specific rhythm to how and when you should attack, defend, or attempt a combo.

I don’t doubt this change might make or break the game for some classic players, but with Street Fighter 6 that timing system seems to have been radically changed to better suit a full-on 3D fighter. I found the timing faster and easier to get a grip on, and it transformed the combat for me radically by making the combo rhythm feel faster, more dynamic, and more fluid. Combos flow easier from one move to another, and that’s not just because of the stunning animations.

Make no mistake, Street Fighter 6 is still as tactical as ever and none of the depth has disappeared, it’s merely become easier to get into. There’s that old adage: easy to learn, hard to master – and that that still applies here.

As an example, I struggled to get to grip with Street Fighter 4 controls at launch and it felt incredibly stiff for me. In contrast, Street Fighter 6 has been an absolute joy from the get-go, not least of all because I could pull off insane-looking combos within a couple of days of playing. Of course, going online quickly put me in my place as I realised how much I still had to learn. However, instead of coming away feeling demoralised, I was stoked to jump back into more World Tour missions, more training, and then more online matches as I could feel and see myself grow.

Fightin’ ’round the world!

Street Fighter 6 really does come out swinging and takes into account all the criticism Street Fighter 5 faced on launch.

Capcom has responded with a release that is fully-featured, in-depth, easy for everyone to get into, and yet full of tactical depth that will take you ages to master. It’s brash, it’s beautiful, it’s silly and fun, and sometimes so absurd that it left me with a smile on my face regardless of whether I won or lost a battle. Most important of all, it’s an incredibly stupid amount of fun even when you’re playing by yourself. This is both the best Street Fighter has been in years and the most fun I have had with a fighting game in a long time.

A review code for Street Fighter 6 was provided to gameblur by the publisher.

Street Fighter 6 is also available on PlayStation 4/5 and PC.

If you’re in South Africa, you can pick up Street Fighter 6 at Loot, Nexus, and Koodoo.