Street Fighter 6 review round up – still champion material

The big daddy of the fighting franchises is back, as Street Fighter 6 is set to arrive this week -but how has it fared with the critics?

It’s an impressive feat for any series to make it 35 years, but by the same token – the game has a heck of a pedigree to hold up – and so far the initial impressions look promising, with many outlets even declaring that the game is a heavy improvement on its still highly-regarded predecessor, which arrived back in 2016. The headline features are a new single-player World Tour story mode, a new control system for beginners and a bunch more besides – let’s see how they went over.

We’ll dive straight in like a flying kick with the 9-scoring review from Gamespot, who calls the new game “a return to form for the franchise that welcomes both new fighters and seasoned pros” and gives particular praise to the game’s deep character roster. “all 18 characters somehow feel balanced evenly matched. I imagine once the pros get their hands on the game, a few top fighters will emerge, but from the jump there was never a matchup I thought to be too difficult to overcome. Characters who have previously suffered in other areas have new abilities to make up for it – Zangief, for example, has a running throw with armor properties that can absorb projectiles, which are an old nemesis of his.”

A common criticism thrown at SF5 was how it went for a more piece-meal release. Famously, its story mode wasn’t added until a few months down the line – but this isn’t the case here, as many reviews are praising the amount of content for your money. For instance, Eurogamer’s 4 star review says: “Street Fighter 6 follows up (…) with a meaty campaign mode unlike anything we’ve seen in the series, an online hub that recreates the feel of an old-school arcade, and a raft of single-player options to fuss over. All this on top of a world class combat system and fighting feel. It’s a fantastic package – perhaps the best Street Fighter’s ever had.”

The new game’s modern control scheme, designed to help newcomers get into the game, has gone down a treat too. As PlayStation Universe notes in its review “It makes fighting easier for newcomers whilst holding back enough to allow for mastery. It’s a far cry from other simplifications of fighting game control schemes that demean and devalue the intricacies of the systems. It’s perhaps the best balancing act of accessibility and fairness I’ve seen in a fighting game.”

Of course, the single-player World Tour mode is a big focus for many of the reviews we’ve seen – although opinion seems to be divided on how well Capcom has pulled this off. As per Press Start (who still gave the game a 9 overall) says: “World Tour is, for the most part, enjoyable. It was fun to see all my favourite characters behave outside of a match and learn abilities from them to build my perfect characters. It’s not perfect, however. The plot is certainly engaging, but the world just isn’t as interesting or as lore-rich as Mortal Kombat would be in adapting this formula.”

Of course, technical issues and netcode are vitally important to a big chunk of the Street Fighter competitive community, and while there’s some minor quibbles at this early stage, particularly on PC, most reviews are hopeful these will be fixed in due course. Rock Paper Shotgun note a couple of these: “Unfortunately, SF6 isn’t perfect, as I did run into a few technical issues whilst playing on PC. I experienced occasional frame drops, a lot of really prevalent unrendered textures and pop-ins, and weirdly long load times whenever I used the map to fast travel. The good news is that these issues were only present in World Tour mode, as I didn’t notice any kind of graphical or performance-related issues in any online matches.”

It looks as though overall, Street Fighter 6 is a stuffed-full package that’s sure to please fighting fans new and old, but you’ll be able to find out for yourself when the game arrives on June 2 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC.