One of the most accessible traditional fighting games to date and one of the best games of year 2023.
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For newcomers to the genre, the singleplayer World Tour mode is a 30 to 60 hour open world RPG story campaign which takes the player’s custom character through a couple of city-sized locales. Along the way, players will meet up with various Street Fighter characters as quest-giving Masters and get to mix-and-match special moves belonging to the said masters. Player appearances are highly customizable through the character creator and there is a decent amount of clothing items/ accessories to be earned ingame, each with their own colour variants.

Exploration is fully 3d; combat is done through an instant switch to a 2d side scrolling perspective akin to an actual 2d fighter. Gameplay loop consists of levelling up your main character, upgrading gear and stats, completing quests/side-quests/Master tasks. Content is largely serviceable but does serve as a smooth, if slow, onboarding experience to players unfamiliar with the genre.

Writing can be charming for fans of the franchise, often making references to the cast and events of past iterations. The main plot however does fall flat and lead to an inconclusive finale that will leave most players bewildered.
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There is a separate standalone standard 5-fight / 12-fight arcade mode against increasingly challenging CPU opponents. Each playable character comes with their own intro scenes and arcade mode ending sequences. There is also a decent amount of unlockable artwork for repeated runs through the arcade mode.
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One of the most revolutionary changes in Street Fighter 6 involves the introduction of a new control scheme – the Modern controls.

With this optional input method, gone are the legacy quarter-circle, half-circle, dragon punch motions and the series’ reliance on precisely timed linked combo sequences where players have to properly time each successive attack in a combo sequence.

Modern controls are based around the following contextually designed buttons:

Light Attack – short range normal attacks that are fast to execute, quick to recover, but deal low damage. Rapidly hitting this button will allow the player to string a pre-designed combo that leaves them relatively safe from the opponent.

Medium Attack – mid range attacks more suited for distanced fighting. These are the jack of all trades of normal moves, and usually the go-to button in most bouts.

Heavy Attack – high damage and/or long range moves that are slow to execute and also slow to recover. These would be for long ranged engagements or for landing guaranteed combos to capitalize on particularly glaring opponent mistakes such as missing an uppercut which leaves them extremely vulnerable to huge attacks as they helplessly float their way down from the sky.

Special Attack – the star of the show. Traditional fireball motions involving a down, down-forward, forward punch, has been simplified to just a press of the Special attack button. The perennially tricky uppercut motion (forward, down, down-forward punch) has been replaced with a generic forward Special button input for most characters that possess an anti-air special move. A significant downside comes in the form of a 20% damage penalty for moves performed using this shortcut.

Button mappings for Auto (attack modifier that uses more resources when held down in conjunction with pressing attack buttons), Throw, Drive Impact and Parry, round up the remaining buttons that fit a standard gamepad.
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The full suite of classic 6-button controls is still in effect for players familiar with the genre – with the entire arsenal of character moves and special attacks intact.
A couple of SF6’s mechanics are cribbed from select past iterations as follows:

Drive Impact – a universal forward moving attack that can withstand and “armour through” 2 normal attacks of your opponent, ending with them in a crumpled state and be susceptible to big damage combos. Land this while your opponent is near the corner and this move becomes an unblockable attack too. Extremely intuitive move to grasp and utilize to devastating effect, even for beginners. At a 26frame startup, or 0.43seconds, the most common counter would be to initiate your own drive impact within this narrow, yet achievable reaction time window.

Drive Parry – a dedicated “avoid” button that allows the player to negate damage without having to guess high or low (or even left/right) when blocking. Hitting parry at the exact point of impact even slows the game down and allows the defending player an opportunity to launch their own counterattack mid-move. The downside: Players committed to parrying will be stuck in the parry animation and be extremely vulnerable to throws, to the point of suffering a solid 170% of throw damage.
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1v1 fighting is still the core of this game and its smooth online play delivers without compromise.

Ranked mode brings players into versus matches against opponents of the same skill level. There is an understandable hesitation from newer players to head online, with them assuming that Ranked Matches are only for the professional and serious players. **This is not the case.**
Ranked modes are meant to match the players of similar skill level – new players will largely be matched against new players and they will have relatively close, enjoyable matches. When players focus on improving various aspects of their game plan (execution, reaction to jump-in attacks and Drive Impact attempts, baiting the enemy into mistakes), they will naturally advance up the ranks in this mode.

Battle Hub is an explorable 3d lobby where most non-ranked matches are held. Just find an empty station, sit down and wait for somebody to challenge you to a match with unlimited rematch attempts. Players can also choose to spectate any of the occupied stations and observe the ongoing matches, maybe even queue up to be the next in line to fight against the existing players.
Also of note is the Tournament Mode held 2-3 times a week within the Battle Hub. Sign-ups are open 1 hour before the tournament start time, each tournament lobby can accommodate up to 32 players in a First-to-2 Single Elimination format. Tournaments run for around 30-40minutes, with the route to Grand Finals just taking 5 consecutive matches at max. This serves as a good warm-up ground for players aspiring to attend actual offline/online events within their real world location.
There is also a rotating set of retro Capcom arcade games such as Captain Commando, Puzzle Fighter, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Son Son in case you want to take a breather from all the matches.

A robust training mode with frame data, prebuilt drills (anti air scenario, punish scenario), combo trials, character guides and a bevy of quality-of-life features round up the package.
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Sincerely, a satisfied customer of the game who has completed all Steam achievements, attained Master Rank online as E. Honda, participated in multiple ingame tournaments (and even won 1), and courageously took part in the regional offline and online premiere events of the Capcom Pro Tour 2023 circuit.

Update as of May 2024: Master Marisa rank achieved and looking forward to taking part in CPT Singapore 2024