Street Fighter 6 Closed Beta Test Impressions

Hope has arrived for Capcom's renovation of their fighting game image.

Street Fighter 6 and showcasing it's art style based in the RE Engine.

Even though Street Fighter 6 has had extensive coverage from various gaming news publications and pro fighting game players on Twitter, it is a very different experience to personally experience a fighting game for yourself, especially from someone like my stature, who's played fighting games since their childhood, and somewhat "professionally" (loosely) for years.

I consider myself lucky getting into the beta test, as many pro players didn't get selected from the random lottery process Capcom used for the beta. Resorting to some people using their "eSports connections" to get a code, or (hopefully not) resorting to gray-market key sites or listings on eBay who were charging close to hundreds of dollars for a 72-hour beta test.

I got just over 10 hours of play time with the beta and by the end of it, I had a basic understanding of the core fighting game mechanics, doing 40% health combos with Kimberly by the end of it.

Character Selection

Personally, I went with Kimberly as my main character to learn the game, as her play style is very much a rush down style with tools to control the neutral game. Also, she's the only character representing Metro City, the fictional city from Final Fight which I'm a huge fan of, so I'm kind of obligated to mainly use her throughout the beta test. The 8 playable characters provided a great variety of play styles for players to try out, such as Guile being a charge-character power house and Chun-Li having many utilities to rush in and attack. Speaking of utilities, it feels as if all the returning characters have all their tools from previous games and then some, whether they were from the Street Fighter series like Ryu having traits of his character from 3rd Strike, IV, and V, or like Chun-Li where she could start a combo with her super and end the combo with another super move, similar to Marvel VS Capcom. Plus, Ryu has a completely new move, which is rare in the series to give a returning character a new special move.

Online & Lobby System

With Street Fighter 6 being announced, many players were asking Capcom if the game had rollback netcode, which has become a recent staple for fighting games due to the pandemic moving all tournaments to online, and fighting game developers slacking previously on the online play experience for their games and their players. During the summer, Capcom confirmed rollback netcode and cross play will be implemented, which is what we saw in the beta. And personally, I had almost no issues with the netcode. Sure, I had Wi-Fi players, which made my game laggy but not unplayable. A great feature they introduced in the game is to request to vote for the match to be ended early if the game detects lag or a bad connection. If the other player accepts the early termination, no players suffer a loss penalty, which is given when a person rage-quits.

The lobby was a unique surprise as you have your created avatar from the story mode (that wasn't in the beta) roam a lobby with arcade set-ups to play the game and match up with friends, almost like an open-world game. I was surprised with how much it felt like going to an actual arcade that specializes in fighting games, or going to a tournament in person as you stroll by, browse who is playing, what character they are using, see if they gathered a crowd to watch their match, or even queue up for to take the loser's spot. Also, a fun bonus was the classic section where classic games like Final Fight, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and Magic Sword are playable to ease your mind from the game or simply to wait for your turn in a tournament or to wait for a friend to arrive at the lobby. It's interesting that they made the lobby so immersive, as usually in other fighting games you just queue up for Ranked or Casual matches in a menu and wait in training mode or in the menu, in which Street Fighter 6 totally lets you do, which is great.

Fighting System

Lastly, the new systems implemented are the Drive Gauge which also for parries, and EX Moves to be recharged with time or with offensive strikes. The main meaning of this change for me was splitting EX moves and Super moves separately, as the Super meter is independently it's thing, the Super meter is only for Super moves. Meaning... you can do a big combo ending with an EX Move into a Super Move which creates massive damage. And with so much damage, I'm beginning to think the matches go by a lot faster, which is definitely something to consider for tournaments whether matches should be first to 3 and finals being first to 4 wins. I think the main negative point of the new systems is the perfect parry, while it is satisfying to successfully attempt the party, any attacks you follow up with only do half the damage, which is odd. Maybe this is a deterrent to not have people spam parry, which is fine, but perfect parrying can only be done within the frame of the opponent's move connecting (like in 3rd Strike). I entered feedback on this decision in the player survey, which I'll get into shortly.

Final thoughts:

It's very surprising to see how polished the game is like even though we are almost half a year away from the final game releasing, give or take. Even with the content that wasn't included with the beta, I definitely feel like the future for Street Fighter 6, and the launch for this game can be huge, far bigger than Street Fighter V's abysmal launch. I don't want to recommend anything too early, but try the game out if there's an open beta in the future and decide for yourself.

It's funny to think when Resident Evil 7: Biohazard released in 2017, it being the first game to use the highly praised RE Engine, with the next games using it being more games with high appraisal, Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Devil May Cry V in 2019, people asked why are Capcom's output of games solid even though their fighting games are faltering? The fighting games at the time that were being supported were Street Fighter V and Marvel VS Capcom Infinite, both had poor launches, with the latter selling way below expectations. Perhaps the "magic" of the RE Engine "blessing" the Street Fighter IP now is what is giving hope for both developers and players alike...

The online response for the beta has definitely been favorable, which is a good sign of things to come. I'll close out with the feedback response I entered in the player survey Capcom released for beta participants:

"I think performing a perfect parry successful should warrant more damage than what it currently is now. I also had controller compatibility issues on the steam version with my Qanba Obsidian. I had to switch my arcade stick to PS4 mode instead of the usual PC mode I always use for every other game. To note, I had the game crash during a ranked match twice, but overall the closed beta was a pretty polished experience. I also want more Final Fight characters/representation! I love how the game takes place in Metro City!"