Capcom’s Street Fighter V (an incredibly good fighter, eventually,) launched in a famously sorry state back in 2016, with no single-player content of note, janky multiplayer, and a roster of fighters that took an age (and lots more money up front) to grow into something that felt fully complete. It was still very good in the end, don’t get us wrong, but what a terrible start it had.
Almost as though it might have learned a lesson from the ensuing roasting from fans, the Japanese giant made sure that it dropped Street Fighter 6 in a much more complete form in 2023. Indeed, it sort of went the other direction entirely. In a good way.
Street Fighter 6, which we all know by now is brilliant, arrived with a huge — and surprisingly addicting — single-player adventure mode (kind of like FIFA or NBA 2K’s story mode, but you here you ‘fight’ people in the ‘street’…so also like Yakuza, then), a full suite of funky new multiplayer diversions, and an arcade mode that’s a step up from what preceded it. These three central modes are divided into World Tour (that’s your single-player RPG-lite adventure), then Battle Hub for those online shenanigans, and finally Fighting Grounds, which is your arcade, versus, and more traditional stuff. Nice.
It’s immediately obvious, as soon as you boot up, in fact, that there’s a ton of content here, and most folk will, I’ll wager, head straight into the World Tour mode as a first port of call. Which is a good idea! Much more than a throwaway offering to appease the angry solo player hordes, World Tour is a joyous celebration of everything Street Fighter, from the present day right back to its beginnings.
There’s an impressive city to strut around, a whole bunch of legendary fighters to find and assign as your trainer (unlocking their skillsets to equip to your fully customisable character), and loads of very silly missions to undertake. It’s a mode that doesn’t take itself in any way seriously (you’ll fight thugs with cardboard boxes on their heads and meet a superhero in the first 10 minutes), but also remembers to be exciting, fun and — most importantly — educational at the same time.
Indeed, in terms of excitement, I’m not sure I’ve ever had a better feeling (whilst playing solo Street Fighter, you understand) than rising up through the ranks, roughing it with the duds (there’s a wee guy called Kenny, who thinks he’s Ken Masters, who I recommend punching at every opportunity) and eventually getting to take on bigger and better opponents in matches framed as big events. It’s all very pleasing. Long-term fans will also be very impressed, I should think, by how many nods to the history of this great series there are here.
Newcomers take note! Diving headlong into World Tour, embracing all of its wackiness and endless customisation, will pay big dividends down the line. You really do get a great intro to everything you need to know about the game’s systems and characters through playing here, and alongside a deep training mode that gives you every option under the sun to analyse and refine, this is an entry that’s got everything you need to become a street-fighting legend.
Oh, and there’s even ‘modern’ controls that streamline everything to four buttons, too, so now is a great time to get into this franchise if you’ve ever been tempted but a bit resistant to all the learning of moves.
With regards to the Battle Hub, the boring menus and lobbies of old have been replaced with a big shiny virtual arcade where you can go hang out, chat to other fighters, challenge avatars to an ‘avatar battle’ or take a seat at an arcade cabinet to kick off a ranked or casual battle. Heck, this virtual arena even has a rotating selection of classic Capcom arcade games to play, too. Final Fight, anyone? Quick round of Vulgus? Suit yourself, mate.
Multiplayer modes, which are split across the Battle Hub and the traditional Fighting Ground modes, cover everything you’d expect with regards to head-to-head ranked and practice battles. You also get lots of special event matches, extreme battles with lots of customisable aspects, the aforementioned avatar battles, and there’s even an AI suite that emulates ranked fighters of various levels. I’ll be honest, I don’t do much in the way of online Street Fighter (too stressful, and I’m crap), but I’ve found myself playing quite a lot of this multiplayer over the past year or two since the game first released. It’s just a fun time, and you can match up with folk of similar (terrible) ability.
So they’ve more that fixed the content part of the equation, as I’ve said. But how’s the auld scrapping? Well, it’s possibly the best it’s ever been since the halcyon days of [INSERT FAVOURITE STREET FIGHTER GAME]. It really is that good.
Street Fighter 6 retools the series’ killer core loops by introducing ‘Drive Impacts’ and a ‘Drive Gauge’. This easy-to-learn system (being welcoming to newcomers certainly is a recurring theme here) builds and recovers as you fight and gives you access to a suite of powered-up versions of your chosen character’s specials. It also allows you to perform reversals, blocks and parries that feel coherent and satisfying to pick up and run with. There’s no sweating it picking up new mechanics and combining them, everything here feels tied together in just the right way, allowing even newbies to get into the underlying aspects that add depth to all the jumping up and down and fireballs.
Super Arts return too, and combined with a roster of fighters which was stacked at launch — and in its ‘Years 1-2 Fighters Edition’ is even moreso — you’ve got a great big street-fighting party to be getting on with.
Of course, most of these things are known quantities by now. The fact that Street Fighter 6 has been in the wild since the summer of ’23 brings with it lots of benefits for Switch 2 players, what with all the tweaking and updates that have come.
And so let’s move to the most vital part of this review: How does it all fare on Switch 2? It fares very, very well, thanks for asking. However, there is one fly in the ointment (and it’s a fly that’s been marinating in there since previous gen versions) in that fights in World Tour Mode drop to 30fps in action. I don’t mind this, personally — I am very old and anything over 20fps feels like you are spoiling someone who played through all of Oblivion at 4fps — but it’s a fairly big deal, let’s face it.
Playing in World Tour is impressive on the whole, the city has seen cuts to how reflective and shiny it all is, and there’s more of that weird dithering effect on surfaces and edges here than in the flashy versions elsewhere, but it feels good and it looks great overall, even on a big TV, and doubly so in portable. I’m even gonna go out on a limb and say it looks slightly better than I remember it looking (and performing) on Xbox Series S.
But there’s still no getting around the fact that some people (maybe a lot of people) will nope out of 30fps fights all day. It’s a shame, but it is at least tempered by the fact that 60fps is here in all other modes and the game feels incredible — especially with a Pro Controller — and looks the business when playing online, in arcade, and everywhere else.
I want to double back to the controller, too, as I reckon this is the first time I’ve used the Joy-Con initially and, almost immediately, switched out to a different pad. The Joy-Con really aren’t the best choice here, so if you’re taking things seriously, a new pad is gonna be something to think on.
Online has felt great, fully in line with other versions (and with cross-play – that’s important!), and besides the odd loading time that seems a tad longer, everything is as it should be. It really is quite the thing, to sit with a new AAA fighter like Street Fighter 6 in portable mode, with any slight graphical drawback a much easier pill to swallow thanks to the fact that performance is so clean and crisp across the entire package.
So, a fantastic fighter arrives day one on Nintendo Switch 2 and, besides that one 30fps stumble with frame rate in World Tour’s scraps, we are good to go. Playing Street Fighter 6 in handheld on this bad boy — and especially with a proper pad — could well end up being my preferred way to rise up the ranks going forward.