Street Fighter 6: One Year Later
It's better than SFV
Street Fighter 6 debuted about a year ago now and by many accounts it was good, hell I even said at the time it was a signal of a return to form. The thing with modern fighting games, and hell let’s be fair here. Modern gaming is how well the game is doing after a year. This sadly holds in fighting games as some define them as either E-Sports (which I find dumb) or, as a live service game (a name and concept I managed to find even stupider.) With DLC and other little trinkets in play, how well does this stand up? Is it a cash grab, or is the stuff they offer as well, as the game as a whole worth all the drama and slogging involved?
Today we’ll be exploring that in a new type of review on the desk, a one-year-later look at how a game such as this has changed, and how, has it faired against others in its field. We’ll take a deeper dive into the DLC than we normally would as well as other things such as what has been added, how the game feels, and also is a price gouge or just stuff that is for kicks and giggles. We will be using a modified version of the stats with the DLC in mind also, however, playtime will not be reported as it was done on the old one, and that is because I’ll level with you all: I’m kind of lazy…
The Stats
Played on: Still a PS5, still using my old arcade stick…
Cost: The season one pass to SF6 is about 30 dollars, coins are about 6 bucks for a bunch, and drive tickets are earned in-game. So as of right now 36 bucks.
Let’s talk about the Season One pass:
Alright, so I already know, many of us bemoaning the fact; that we are getting DLC, but hey we showed we wanted it. So, now we suffer this and only have ourselves to blame. While I in the past have given Capcom a lot of shit for the DLC. I have to be also giving them their due here also, you at least know what you are paying for upfront. A lot of games like to slowly, reveal the characters you get, I understand the marking behind it. For me though, I prefer to know what I am going to be putting my hard-earned money into instead of being asked to buy something and finding maybe there are some characters I will never touch like ever. So yeah; at least you know what you are buying, unless it is new characters, but that in my mind kind of falls into the risk-reward of DLC. Honestly, you’ve bought games simply cause the characters looked cool. Only to find out they just completely suck and some other character you did not know about you gel with better.
So the list for season one includes the following characters:
-Rashid (from SFV)
-A.K.I. (New character)
-Ed (SFV)
-Akuma (SF2, or Alpha if you wanna go all cannon and shit)
So already, if we break this down that is roughly 7.50 per character, you also get like 4,200 drive tickets (more on those in a bit) you also get the extra colors (3-10) included at no charge. But, if you are still not sold on the characters, fret not they also give you little rental trials that let you work with a character for an hour and see how you like them. This is actually what convinced me to get the pass as I messed around with at the time all 3 (I’m an Akuma guy so I didn’t need convincing) and found I rather enjoyed my use of two of the three. That is not a bad ratio so use the rental tickets to your advantage, you can gain them through the fighter pass to even just check the announcements and see what is there.
Let’s stop for a moment and talk about the drive tickets, when the game first came out they were useless unless you played the World Tour mode (which I did not, and have no plan to do so). As the game has evolved, the drive tickets have begun to show some reason for their existence. They can be used to buy colors, music, and stages it doesn’t sound like a lot but if you are not a fan of rap and just wanna blast old-school SF2 music in your battles, you can now do so with the BGM settings. I also bought a bunch of old-school street fighter music and paired them with characters. So, now I can hear the OG Cammy theme or Urien’s crazy chili dog. BUT I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE BASE MUSIC ANYMORE AND I’M COOL WITH IT! The tickets are gained in a lot of ways. Wanna mess around in the battle hub? Here is a hundred, play arcade mode how about five hundred? Oh you checked the messages and you saw it’s a character’s birthday, take one thousand for your trouble. It is surprisingly easy to gain these and while you are not able to get new skins you can gain music, and stages without having to pay money for them…unless you want to!
This brings us to the fighter coins, yeah you need to use real human monies to get them, it sucks that the skins and such are locked behind them. But, again for what they ask it is not too insane. So let’s say one hundred coins is a dollar of us currency. Most skins will range from about 150-200 coins. Retro ones or outfit three for new characters are only fifty coins or fifty cents, and honestly, if you are mad that they are per character and not a bundle well…are you going to use ALL of the characters? If you are well okay you have a reason to complain I suppose. But realistically you are going to, probably get them for the main ones you use, also this is in the “post-launch” era of things, I know we used to get this type of stuff (well 3d model-wise) on the games back in the day. But, a few things; first of all we covered that we did this to ourselves. Also, do you know how much it costs to make new models, test them, and make sure they look good? The time involved picking colors, and what should go with what and all. And hey this had to start with artists right? We always want to support artists who work hard, and they may not get all the windfall but they get something yes? You are supporting a big corporate machine in Capcom who likes money, but they also pay employees who have, the passion to make this game. So if you got a few bucks to spare, won’t you please think of the artists? Like you say we should…
So, that covers the pass, but what about the game itself? Well the DLC characters are by and large, well done, while I only mainly enjoyed three of the four, I thought Rashid had his place and it was not bad. I enjoyed A.K.I. more cause having studied Chinese martial arts I saw what they were doing and while it was snake-style kung-fu it worked well and you can do some interesting things with her style. Ed, was the one that surprised me the most. Due to his unique use of flicker-style boxing as well as the use of projectiles in clever ways with a nice dose of mix-ups as well that kept me entertained and also pushing myself. Akuma is Akuma, and the glass cannon has continued uninterrupted since 1996. Though if you dig through the taunts you can unlock the Shin version. But if a person lets you do the full taunt, they deserve the ass-kicking that is about to befall them. It’s a pretty good cast for season one, and while if you can get it cheaper I of course always recommend it, 30 dollars for a roster this good is not the worst thing.
Overall state of the game one year later:
The game as a whole has managed to hold onto its luster, I am not going to bother going over balance changes, cause while some are welcome and some are not that is the blessing and curse of live service. I will say player base-wise it is healthy and I still do not have to wait more than five minutes (on a bad day) to get matched with someone. I also am noticing less modern play styles being used (IE one-button controls) and more people moving over to classic. I am not sure if people either transitioned over or the people who wanted to play for the first few weeks faded away. I still stand firm though: If you play a modern style, get off your ass and just learn classic. You are missing a lot of the good combos and other little things that are useable and dangerous.
I also noticed a lot of people not using the newer-gen characters aside from the DLC ones, the exception being Maron and a few others. But, when I encounter Jamies or Lukes it’s usually with the dreaded “M” on their profile. But that may, just be my experience, but the usual mainstays of Ken, Ryu, and others are present with the rotating slot of DLC flavor of the month.
When it comes to Battle Hub, my opinion has still not changed, but I see people in it often. Still, when I drop in to collect my drive tickets. I also admit I’ll wander over to the metagame within the game arcade cabinet with Alpha 2, Final Fight, or even Mega Man: The Power Fighters appearing on them. It’s a cool way to show off their history of arcade games and also you can free-play them is a nice touch. The stuff for the avatars all to me honestly looks the same, but I still think the creating a character stuff is kind of dumb in a game whose bread and butter is two people beating the shit out of one another for a victory. As long as they don’t make the next game “Pick an avatar and special moves” the main part I can stomach the avatars and let World Tour collect dust in the digital trash bin of my PlayStation.
I put out some posts on social media asking for what you, the reader were curious of one year later. For once, I did get a response asking about how the game runs solo, or not online. While the game does have its world tour mode. I found no need or urge to grind through it, even for a story-obsessed nut like myself. The bread-and-butter gameplay is good, I will also say the CPU on the hardest difficulty now actually gives me fits. When in the past, I would only struggle with the final character. I now get two or three away and begin to struggle against the computer. So, if you like to just play a computer; you can do a lot just in the arcade mode on that alone. If you don’t wanna do the bonus rounds, you can turn them off. It does go more old school in that you win you can get story stuff for the character (which once done if you wanna just turn off, you can) and artwork related or near related to the character to go look at in a gallery. There are also tutorials and practice modes to keep you going also if you want to finesse. But, compared to how SFV started, there is quite a bit of single-player content to go through depending on what you are looking for.
Compared to other games out right now?
We are going to compare to the genre, not the service here, I’ll list them by game
KOF XV: This kind of comes down to your tribal preference here, SNK and Capcom are like chocolate and Peanut Butter, when they combine into Reese’s they are amazing (I just want a re-release of Capcom Vs SNK 2 guys, do some online and I’ll be happy really.) On their own, it will be down to what you like. I will say they do give out free characters and other things in KOF XV which is a plus. But as a whole, I feel SF6 has an edge if nothing else cause I enjoy the drive system more than the shatter whatever in XV. But, we have City of the Wolves waiting in the wings, so don’t write off SNK just yet.
MK1: I have not played this one, but from the DLC end of it, I like the characters more, and also from what I have seen you are not nearly as gouged for money in SF6 as you are in MK1, I mean 10 bucks for a fatality? That gets you one and a quarter character roughly in SF6, also they are not depending DLC almost entirely on guests. (I am aware of season 2, we’ll talk about that at the end.)
Tekken 8: So, I don’t count gameplay in this one, cause 2d and 3d function very differently. I would say the two games when it comes to online are evenly matched, there is a story mode which, hey is fun but does not wear out its welcome and isn’t a grind. The one place T8 has over Street Fighter is the character customization available for free is a lot more than SF6, and more creative than just the “Look it’s me I can do a hadoken” that SF6 wound up with. The pricing on the DLC cosmetics, I’d say is split even. But I do like that you can get fighters that can be bought separately, as opposed to a pack. But, again give SF6 this, you know what you are getting up front for your money unlike Tekken 8.
Final thoughts:
So, is this game worth picking up or continuing one year later? Here is the sum-up
Continue: The player base is still very active, and the DLC characters present a strong first-season class that is looking to be only the start of good things. The upfront reveals of the season pass are good, and if you are curious a rental pass can make you decide if it is worth a purchase
Picking up: I would say look at my review I did at this point and add in what I said about the DLC, still a good game to jump into.
As for the next season, well it’s kind of hard to not be surprised by it. Street Fighter has never done guest DLC before and now we’re getting Terry and Mai from SNK, which is making fans minds run with wild speculation. But we will see how it goes in time.