Street Fighter 6

Round one: the first night

Street Fighter 6 is the game we hand to people who have never owned a fighting game. You make a character, walk into Metro City in World Tour mode and learn by doing: masters teach you their moves, street scraps test them, and by the end of an evening you have a feel for spacing without ever opening a menu called Tutorial.

The real trick is Modern controls. Specials sit on one button plus a direction, and an assist button strings together a solid combo for you. You lose a little damage in exchange, and that is the whole cost. Classic controls are there when you want them, with the same characters, the same rules and the same ranked ladder.

Modern controls are not a crutch. They are a second way to play the same game, and some of the best players in the world use them.

Round two: online

Capcom built it on rollback netcode, and matches against players across Europe feel close to local. Crossplay pools PC with PlayStation and Xbox, so queues fill at any hour. The Battle Hub lobby turns waiting into something social: sit at a cabinet, watch the match before yours, challenge whoever stands up.

Ranked is clear about where you are, and the Master tier is a real summit rather than a place everyone reaches. Replays and the frame meter in training let you see exactly why a round went wrong.

Round three: depth

The Drive system is the heart of it: one bar that pays for parries, rushes, reversals and armoured hits, and runs out if you spend it all. Every round becomes a quiet argument about who is wasting meter. It is easy to see and hard to master, which is exactly what a fighting game should be.

With 32 fighters the cast covers everything from grapplers to keep-away specialists, and the balance patches have kept most of them viable. Cammy, the British special-forces fighter, is as sharp as ever.

Round four: the bill

The base game is £34.99. Four years of fighters are sold as four Character Passes at £24.99 each, which puts the full roster at a little under £135 today. That is a lot, and it is why the score in this round is lower. The good news is that you do not need any of it to play online, and single fighters can be bought alone.

Our advice: buy the base game, play World Tour and ranked for a fortnight, then buy the one fighter you keep wishing you had.

Capcom sells one Character Pass a year, four fighters each. Years 1 to 3 are complete. Year 4 has Yasmine and Arjun out now, with Tifa Lockhart and Bosch due in 2027. The Ultimate Pass for each year (£39.99) adds outfits and Fighter Coins but no extra fighters. Any single pass fighter can also be bought alone with Fighter Coins.

Who to pick first

Before your first ranked match

1. Start on Modern controls for your first week. Switch later if you like: the characters and the ranked ladder are the same either way.
2. Learn the Drive Parry before any combo. Holding it against a fireball is the single most useful thing in the game.
3. Watch your Drive gauge. If it empties you are burned out and every blocked hit chips you; that is when rounds are lost.

Is it for you?