Street Fighter 6 – Year 2 is Upon Us
Street Fighter 6 Year 2 has been announced, with a new Ultimate Pass to purchase. It includes 4 new fighters, their additional outfits and colors, 2 new stages, and 7700 drive tickets. With all these additions on the horizon, COGconnected thought it would be a good idea to look back on the triumph that has been Street Fighter 6 Year 1, and discuss the few ways Capcom can improve the game.
Maybe the important aspect of Street Fighter 6 is that it’s made Street Fighter really cool again. The Battle Hub is an online play space that has the feel of a high profile arcade. Player avatars can wader around and walk up to arcade machines to challenge opponents. It creates the feel of the Street Fighter II boom in the early 90s, where players would line up at arcade machines, to watch top players compete, or attempt to take a crack at them. Them whole game is dripping with a Japanese street style that’s very appealing in a post-Persona video game world.
The Pinnacle of 2D Fighting
The gameplay is still phenomenal. A new Modern combat system was introduced. It makes playing more accessible to newcomers, but the system is so effective that series veterans are enjoying using it. I still play with Classic Street Fighter controls in the Fighting Ground, which has the Arcade and Versus modes. But I use the new Modern style when playing in World Tour.
World Tour is my favorite new addition Street Fighter 6 has brought to the franchise. It’s basically like Street Fighter RPG, where players create an avatar, and play through a story that takes place in Metro City, and other smaller locations around the world. Every fighter in the game becomes a mentor in World Tour. The player gets experience points and levels up overall, but every mentor has their own set of levels for players to gain. As a player levels up with a mentor, they unlock that mentor’s move set. Every new character added to Street Fighter 6 is a mentor in World Tour, in addition to a playable fighter one would expect. New mentors also add additional quests and story content to World Tour, so every new fighter is a big deal.
4 DLC Fighters
The 4 fighters added over the course of Year 1 were Rashid, A.K.I., Ed, and Akuma. When Rashid dropped it was really interesting to play through World Tour and find out I had to play through some new quests in order to find him and begin his mentorship. All 4 fighters were thoughtful, quality additions. But story-wise, the only one fans were clamoring for was Akuma. Street Fighter 6’s core 18 fighters struck a great balance between classic fighters and new ones. The DLC fighters seem to be 3 deep cut past characters, mixed with one classic character.
The fighters coming to Street Fighter 6 in Year 2 are M. Bison, Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, and Elena. These are interesting choices. Bison was an inevitable addition, which would be obvious for anyone who’s played through the story in World Tour. I’m a little surprised he’s arriving so early, but very excited to play as him. He’s an essential franchise villain, and a classic charge fighter. He’s available right now, and his new design screams wanting to know what happened to create the change in appearance. When he was announced I was very curious to see how his presence affected Nayshall and JD. And after only a few days, Bison is already one of my favorite characters to use in the whole game.
Fatal Fury in Street Fighter?
Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui are both from the Fatal Fury franchise. It sounds like Street Fighter 6 will have a Fatal Fury/ King of Fighters crossover storyline, which is fun. But I don’t think it was the right choice this early in the game’s existence. Elena is a deeper cut character. She’s traditionally been very fun to play, with her capoeira fighting style. But she’s not super essential to the ongoing central storyline. All of these new characters could be implemented well, but 3 out of 4 are strange choices when there are so few classic fighters absent.
There are still some changes Capcom could implement to turn Street Fighter 6 from a great game, into a perfect game. The biggest problem is that its DLC is way too overpriced. The Year 2 Ultimate Pass is $50 USD. That’s almost the price of a full game! There are also Character Passes that are slightly cheaper than the Ultimate Pass. They just have the characters, and not the new levels. But right now there’s no way to upgrade from a Character Pass to an Ultimate Pass, without paying the full price of the Ultimate Pass. Hopefully this is a change Capcom makes soon.
Fight Money is Too Expensive
There are also lots of options peppered throughout the game to get players to buy Fight Money with real money, to get cosmetic avatar items. I don’t mind this in theory, but the cost of the items is outrageous. Earlier in the year, there were skins of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I would have loved to have gotten. When I went to buy them it turned out that these avatar skins were close to $20 each, which is absolutely outrageous. $5 per turtle would have been begrudgingly acceptable, but at the $20 price point a lot of people won’t ever consider cosmetic Fight Money purchases.
Avatar creation could be much more robust. The tattoo options are especially slim. Over the course of World Tour, lots of clothing items are unlocked, but it’s still not enough to make a fighter conjured from your imagination. The WWE 2K games have a phenomenal character creation system that I wish the Street Fighter devs would look at. The game is flawless when it comes to creating move builds, but some obvious work needs to be done in the appearance department.
And finally, I’d like to add that by the end of this year there will still be only 26 fighters. The game launched with 18, and 4 fighters per year seems like Capcom’s releasing the bare minimum amount. 6 fighters a year would make a much bigger difference, and would make the $50 price tag hurt less. They do require more effort to implement than in past games, because of the way they’re incorporated into World Tour, but right now, the price still isn’t right.
In Conclusion
Street Fighter 6 is a phenomenal 2D fighting game. Maybe the best ever. But Capcom is taking an approach that makes it feel like a premium product that puts quality over quantity. Everything they’ve done is great, but if they could make the few changes outlined in this article, they’d maybe have something to top Street Fighter II as the greatest fighting game of all time. Year 2 is offering some great content, even if Capcom keeps things more of the same. Mortal Kombat 1 and Tekken 8 were also phenomenal fighting game releases in the past year, but Street Fighter 6 really is the best of the best. See you in the Battle Hub!
What were your favorite parts of Street Fighter 6 Year 1? What are you most looking forward to in Year 2? Let us know in the comments.
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