Enjoyment - 8/10
Difficulty - 3/10

To preface, Street Fighter is one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time. I regularly compete in local fighting game tournaments and have been for almost a decade. At one point I had a brief stint as a professional Street Fighter V player when I took the game very seriously. This genre has been close to my heart ever since my first console, the Dreamcast. So safe to say I was extremely excited to see what Street Fighter 6 could bring to a casual and competitive audience.

Casually, Street Fighter 6 has a full single player mode, a battle hub to meet other players, and extreme battles with ridiculous rules for chaotic fun matches. Street Fighter 6’s online netcode is the best in the series. Playing online is almost as good as playing offline which is a huge achievement for a fighting game. You get the whole package with Street Fighter 6 and you will really enjoy these parts of the game. If you are like me and have a competitive itch for fighting games, then this next part might resonate with you.

In the first month of playing Street Fighter 6 competitively, I did see a meta forming with the drive system. In its current state, a gung ho style of play is benefitted from the drive system which makes each round feel like a slobberknocker. Because of the oversimplification of the drive system, input system and buffer windows, I do not find a lot of things in the game to be ‘hype’ or ‘impressive’. There are a lot of checkmate situations in this game and deflates the excitement of competitive matches for players and spectators. If a checkmate scernario, even from a block, can take away 50+% of your health from a simple bread and butter combo, it needs to be adjusted. Street Fighter 6 is a very reactionary kind of fighting game and I have experienced inputs not registering properly in the game (especially super inputs), resulting in me losing the game. This is extremely frustrating and it means I cannot take the game seriously if I am doubting my own inputs.

The trophies are way more manageable compared to Street Fighter V (considered a 10/10 difficulty). Most of the trophies are for playing and winning online matches with some miscellaneous trophies on top. Depending on your skill level, this can take a short or long time, but it is all doable. Given how popular the game is casually, you shouldn’t have much of a problem and even if you do encounter issues, you can use Gaming Sessions on PSNProfiles to boost. Overall, Street Fighter 6 is one of the easiest fighting game platinum trophies you can get!

I am sure with balance patches, mechanical tweaks to the input system and new additional characters I will start to enjoy the game again. Do not let the rantings of a washed-up player like me deter you from trying out Street Fighter 6, especially if this is your first foray into fighting games. If this game sparks your interest and subsequent love for fighting games, then please give it a go!
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