the only thing i think i like that most people dont is the music. people really hate the Zangief theme that much?? its my favorite track in the game. Chun Li's is a close second.

the newcomers are all super good, easily the best bunch since SF3. not especially hard to go up after SF5's mostly pitiful newcomers. they all have excellent designs and fun fighting styles. my personal favorite is JP. Manon and Marisa are also big likes.

fuck the drive system, it makes zero sense to me why you get punished to the point of losing the ability to block when you get pushed into a wall and cant do anything about it. puts me off of playing the game online.

ive been a bit tired of the RE engine for a bit, but it really started to get on my nerves with this game for some reason. all RE engine games look technically incredible of course, but i wish almost every major capcom release in the past almost 7 years (holy fuck) didnt look like they all take place in the same universe. im still mourning MT Framework.

the story mode is some poop. its just some do this do that shit, really mind numbing. pretty much nothing interesting happens. the mini open world is a neat idea. there are many points where you have to grind for money and its a giant slog because theres not many great ways to earn money, mostly just through some minigames that have the feel of a mario party knockoff during the 6th gen of games. hardly any of the playable characters do anything, and if you want anything to do with them, you gotta grind presents to give them which earns you some drawings. its really just Luke and JP doing anything, and theyre just bookends in this. pretty lame.

at least i can make my guy look like Anton Chigurh.

First fighting game I've played at launch and also properly gotten into, I usually just mess around in arcade and a couple casual matches before moving on with fighting games but something made me stick to this one and it's super fun.

The character guides / combo trials might be very basic and (in the case of the combo trials) not be optimal, but for the very basics it gets you going pretty quick. The training mode is always there once you have the basics down anyway and has all the tools to let you figure out everything you need for a basic game plan and beyond.

Not a massive fan of Luke (even if his VA puts out some very funny youtube) but that's made up with the rest of the cast being pretty fun to play as or against. Mannon, Ryu and Ken are my current favourites but Ed seems pretty fun, although a bit more complex.

The world tour mode is kind of goofy but in an entertaining way, I've compared it to sonic adventures hub world before as they both have that fairly off kilter kind of human world but not really vibe but I do find SF6 much better as there's just a lot of things to do / see in Metro City.

As of time of writing I've put about 500 hours into the game with that being about 50 hours ish in the single player, 20 odd in battle hub and the rest in ranked mode. It's pretty nice how the ranked mode is structured to pull people with the basics out of the lower ranks (i.e with win streaks and a ratcheting system where you can't fall back to the super early ranks like iron / bronze) but once you're out of the win streak areas and into plat it feels pretty intuitive to work out what you need to learn to progress - just by watching replays (your own and others) you can pick up enough info to get your characters up to masters with enough practice. And once you're in masters they layer on a new ranking system with the MR points which you gain / lose directly off of the person you play against. This means that iron up to diamond 5 is really a marker of how well you have improved against yourself and master lets you view how well you're doing against others.

Tangentially related, after getting tired of using the hori mini switch fighting stick I ended up building my own arcade stick out of parts from B&Q and Ebay and any game that gets you to do something in the real world must be worth something.