Street Fighter 6 was released in 2023 and seemingly kicked off a new golden age of fighting games that has continued into 2024 with the launches of Under Night In-Birth 2 and Tekken 8. SF6's success can be accredited to numerous factors. The title has a greater single-player offering than almost any other fighting game on the market, its core gameplay is well-balanced, and the quality of the online play is genre-leading. Street Fighter6 is far from being the first great game in the series, but its success stands out given the failure of its predecessor, at least at launch. Street Fighter 5 may have been a disappointment in many ways, but it laid the foundations for SF6's triumphant return.

Street Fighter 5 will be remembered as one of the franchise's most controversial entries. By the time SF6 launched, its predecessor was generally held in high regard, but this goodwill took many years to build up. When the game was released, it lacked substantial single-player modes and was primarily trying to appeal to the competitive community. The lack of a story mode and arcade mode alienated the game's casual audience. To make things worse, the 16-character roster's move sets and combos had been restricted when compared to betas for the game, and the online functionality was poor. These issues plagued the game throughout its life, and many pro fighting-game players spoke out about Street Fighter 5 as a result.

Playable characters that haven't appeared in Street Fighter 6
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Dozens of Street Fighter Characters Aren't in SF6, But 4 Deserve to Return The Most

The Street Fighter franchise has more than 100 playable fighters, meaning there are lots of options for SF6 DLC - though a few characters stand out.

What Were Street Fighter 5's Problems?

Street Fighter 5 was built around fighting game eSports rather than being entertaining. As a result, it feels formulaic to play because characters have more limited options than in SF4 and SF6. Furthermore, the game's V-Gauge rewards poor play and was criticized for being a comeback mechanic, since it is filled when the player is hit. V-Triggers are a powerful tool that can change the course of a match by enabling overwhelming offensive power. Furthermore, outside of V-Reversals, the game lacked defensive options, meaning that competent players were essentially taking turns attacking and blocking with little to disturb the back-and-forth rhythm.

Starting with the DLC in Season 5, which was kicked off with the release of Dan Hibiki in 2021, things started to turn around for the game. Under a new director, Takayuki Nakayama, Street Fighter 5 received five new characters that had much more interesting and diverse mechanics than much of the game's cast up until that point. By the time content releases concluded for the game, SF5 had strong single-player offerings, a new defensive mechanic, and technical issues such as long input delays that varied greatly between PlayStation and PC had been ironed out. All of SF5's improvements showed that the studio understood the game's initial shortcomings.

Street Fighter 6 Is Built on SF5's Failures

street fighter 6

Takayuki Nakayama is the lead developer of SF6 as well, and many of the priorities he showed in the final season of SF5 carried over to this new game. Street Fighter 6's drive system can be used both offensively and defensively, and characters are all given a tremendous amount of freedom. While many of the technical improvements made to SF5 were made before Nakayama took control of the game, Street Fighter 6 continued to build upon them. The input delay across all versions is minuscule, and the online performance is the best in the genre.

SF5 Laid the Foundations for SF6

In crafting Street Fighter 6, Capcom clearly took into consideration the failures of the series' previous entry. Technically, the game is superb. It has the densest single-player offerings the series has ever seen, and the core gameplay is built around freedom and flexibility. Rather than simplifying the gameplay to make it accessible, SF6 has Modern Controls and comprehensive learning tools. Street Fighter 5 is now a great game that will never be remembered as such, but its legacy lives on in SF6. So much of what makes Street Fighter 6 a success was developed in response to the failure of its predecessor and with the knowledge the team behind it gained in fixing it.