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How does Street Fighter 6 stack up to Street Fighter 5?
Street Fighter 6 has been praised heavily, and much of that comes from what it does differently than SF5, and what it improves on. Here’s everything you should know if you haven’t hopped in yet.
Street Fighter 6’s 2023 release was met with levels of success that even Capcom might not have anticipated. Like SF5 before it, SF6 set an EVO record for entrants, totalling over 7,000 competitors at EVO 2023. The next closest game at the tournament, Guilty Gear Strive, had about 2,500 in comparison. The new Street Fighter was poised to set the tone for a new generation of fighting game players, and Capcom rose to the occasion.
Comparatively, Street Fighter 5, or with its Roman numeral V, launched to a rather rocky reception, but over time and with many updates, ended its lifespan as a very well put together game.
01
Lessons learned from Street Fighter V
The fifth mainline title in the series, Street Fighter V, released in February 2016 with little to do aside from versus play among its 16 initial characters. There was a small story mode for each character and a survival mode, but nothing resembling a single-player campaign. The servers were struggling and, at first, the online rooms were only big enough for two players. Solo players had few distractions, for better or worse. And while the game improved over the years, totalling 40 characters to pick from, the initial lack of fervour meant that Capcom had its work cut out for what felt like the entirety of the game's lifespan.
Capcom definitely learned from this, as SF6 launched with enough side content to fill out a separate game. Eighteen characters filled up the base roster, while four additional DLC characters have been added to the game with each successive year so far, bringing the total to 26, with another four due later this year. World Tour, for example, is a story mode taking the player through Metro City and Nayshall, with stops at the home locations of each character around the world.
Training your character gives them more abilities
© Pregan Pillay/Red Bull Content Pool
With your created character – that you can also use online during Avatar Battles in the Battle Hub – you undertake missions and train under the game’s iconic characters like Ryu and Chun-Li. Your avatar will use their style, and you can gain more of their abilities by interacting with them, learning more about their character at the same time.
This mode serves as a tutorial, story, and comfort zone. Between missions, you can stop by restaurants, do minigames to learn the game's mechanics, or beat up gang members in the street. The ability to boot up and still enjoy yourself even if you don’t feel like testing yourself against the fires of ranked netplay is integral.
Capcom also levelled up their online offerings. Your place in ranked mode is unique to each character, so if you reach Master as Ken, you don’t have to worry about your secondary Zangief bringing your rank down. You’re definitely encouraged to take more characters for a spin.
The netcode is heavily improved over the previous title, with people routinely practising against opponents across the globe. The online lobby has eight spots, can run four games at once and each slot can be turned into an online training room. SFV had a problem with visual clipping, and the hair physics didn’t always make sense, but SF6 has clean animations and no noticeable physics problems occurring with the current roster.
02
Shaking up the gameplay foundations
Each version of Street Fighter delivers a fresh take on this decades-old series, and SF6 incorporates all of them in some way. The Super meter from Super Turbo, Street Fighter III’s Parry, Focus Attack Dash Cancel techniques from IV, and Street Fighter V’s V-system. For Street Fighter 6, the Drive system acts as the title’s core. Each of the game’s system mechanics, aside from Supers, relies on it, even the series’ iconic special attacks (called Overdrive moves in this title, and EX moves in previous entries). In Street Fighter V, IV and III, EX moves relied on the Super meter.
In SFV, you had to build your V Gauge by taking damage or using your V-Skill. In 6, you immediately start off with a full Drive gauge. This means players have much of their character's strength up front, making each battle a strategic match-up right from the get-go. Many criticised Street Fighter V's V-Trigger for being too good a comeback mechanic, locking away the "real" character to the end of the match.
The other uses of the Drive meter in Street Fighter 6 are Drive Impact, Drive Rush, and Drive Reversal. Drive Rush is a command dash that powers up the next normal move, giving it better recovery on hit or block, leading to better damage and mixups. Drive Reversal is this game's guard cancel, serving the same “get off me” purpose as V-Reversal in SFV.
Drive Impact is a forward-moving attack with two hits of armour that launches the opponent or causes a crumple state when it punishes the opponent. Players are encouraged to use their own Drive Impact to absorb the opponents and strike back with a devastating combo once they’re crumpled.
Both games have a unique mechanic that incentivises players to try to punish reckless attacks their opponent throws out. SFV’s Crush Counter gives certain normals much more pronounced benefits than regular counter hits.
SF6 debuted a similar idea, Punish Counter. When punishing the opponent’s whiffed or blocked attacks, the first attack you land gains hitstun, opening up the combo game to deal more damage or get better oki.
This makes whiff-punishing much more important. Knowing this, Capcom gave normals in SF6 bigger hurtboxes and more recovery, opening up opportunities to use this punish counter during neutral.
V-Trigger and V-Skill were huge parts of each character's kit. SF6 simply packages these major tools within each character's regular moveset. Cammy's Spin Knuckle is just a special move, while Guile's V-Trigger install is now his Level 2 super.
Speaking of supers, each character has three as opposed to just one in SFV. The level 3 super is the cinematic, high-damage combo ender. Like Guile, some characters have installs for a level 2, but many have extra damaging supers with varying properties.
03
Character design and art direction
This might be more subjective than the concrete differences in content and gameplay, but SF6 feels much more stylish. Hip hop, graffiti street art and punk culture felt like a big part of SFIII and SFIV (nothing will beat SFIV’s Indestructible intro song), and Capcom knew the community missed that feeling.
The logo itself has paint splattered behind it, clueing us in on the design philosophy. Kimberly and Jamie, the first newcomers we are introduced to, both embody this culture. Kimberly's level 3 special activates her headphones, and her main special move shoots spray cans. Jamie breakdances on you as his best combo ender.
The new outfits for classic characters are much more in line with modern-day standards or have additions that give a bit of flair. Ryu’s sash, for example, marks his steps to mastery, and he’s finally not fighting in swamps barefoot. Luke, Cammy, and Guile all have examples of outfits you might see walking around outside.
The paint streak effects on Drive Impact are reminiscent of SF4’s Focus Attack, and the paint splatter when you interrupt the opponent with a perfect parry illustrates the feeling exactly. Drive Rush and Drive Reversal are similarly colourful, offering visual clarity and flair.
The graphics in Street Fighter 6 are bright and artistic
© Pregan Pillay/Red Bull Content Pool
Street Fighter V's visual flair, in comparison, almost looks flat. It's not that Street Fighter V is a bad-looking title – it's anything but, with animation flourishes galore, painstaking details, and a solid level of polish – it just seems, comparatively, safe. The Street Fighter III titles, from New Generation to Third Strike, showcased the pinnacle of Capcom's 2D artistry, while Street Fighter IV took the transition to 3D with paint-like and ink-splattered visuals that detailed its own style. It's a relief to see SF6 push the boundaries further, and showcase some experimentation, and that it leaves the somewhat sterile stylings of SFV behind.
04
Outside the game
Capcom clearly put their heart and soul into SF6. That’s what the community responds to, proven by the immense success of the game’s release. Capcom understands the opportunity on their hands, and are proudly supplementing SF6 by going just as hard in promotional material and the competitive ecosystem.
Just a month after the release of SF6, they revealed a collaboration with the hugely popular shooting game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile and Luke are all playable characters in the battle royale.
The competitive scene has also received a huge amount of support from Capcom, too. The first Capcom Pro Tour to feature Street Fighter 6 had a prize pool of over two million dollars. Half of that went to the winner of Capcom Cup X, where Wang "UMA" Yuan-hao became an instant millionaire following the grand final. Similarly, 2025's Capcom Cup 11 held a prize pool of 1.2 million dollars, where the $1,000,000 first-place prize went to ZETA DIVISION's Kakeru, while a similarly huge prize will be up for grabs when Capcom Cup 12 kicks off next year.
Capcom was definitely ahead of its peers in prize pools already – the last two SFV Capcom Cups combined first place earnings were almost 400k dollars. But Capcom has clearly raised the bar tremendously for SF6.
The hype for SF6 events are through the roof: its 7,000 plus entrants had a big hand in EVO 2023 possibly being the esport event with most participants, and the momentum continued with over 5,000 players competing at EVO 2024. Capcom is clearly rising to the occasion, building on the good from SFV, while throwing in some upgrades where necessary – and we can't wait to see where the game goes next following Season 3 and beyond.
