Street Fighter is one of those perennial game series that everyone knows about but not everyone plays. A major contributor to the oversaturation and near-death of the genre, Capcom learned a ton of lessons from the botched launch of 2016’s Street Fighter V, a game that started off poorly but ended up eventually as one of the finest in the genre. Street Fighter 6, on the other hand, released right out of the gate with excellent quality, a stellar cast, and great modes to learn and experiment with while fine tuning your preferred playstyle. So, is Street Fighter 6 worth going on a world tour with, or should it be left at home? Let’s find out.
Street Fighter 6 launched for the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and for the PC through Steam a couple years ago but playing Street Fighter 6 on a Nintendo platform in decent quality was a pretty unexpected surprise. Especially given the fact that Street Fighter IV Super on the 3DS didn’t exactly have ideal performance or a controls layout for such a title. The good news about Street Fighter 6 is that it runs beautifully on Nintendo Switch 2 without many compromises, allowing you to enjoy the gameplay both docked and on the go (preferably with a wireless controller that’s not a joycon). You get access to three main modes in Street Fighter 6, and a great cast of up to 27 characters at the time of this writing including DLC.
World Tour mode is still in the Switch 2 port of Street Fighter 6, and it performs about as well as you’d expect. Unless you’re on a pretty powerful PC, it’s my experience that World Tour runs poorly on basically all platforms because of the mode’s nature as an “open world fighting” experience. Fights in World Tour mode take place directly on the street, anytime, anywhere, and the NPCs roaming around in the background are still present while you Shoryuken your way to victory. The city is impressively designed, quite large, and will suck away tens of hours of your life venturing around and unlocking goodies if you let it.
The only downside of World Tour mode is that the performance suffers a little with an inconsistent 60fps in exploration mode (while docked, 30fps in handheld), and 30fps fights with frame drops if there are a lot of NPCs and objects in the background that don’t get culled while you fight. That being said, for a fun single player story mode for your custom character, it’s an extremely enjoyable time and expands the world of Street Fighter in unbelievable ways. It’s always fun to run around and see other characters in this universe, even getting mentored by them to make your ultimate fighter.
That being said, World Tour mode is the only mode of this game that doesn’t run at 60 frames per second, which makes sense given that you’re starting fights in large environments with lots of characters around. World Tour, despite its frame rate hitches, makes a great first stop for players new to Street Fighter or fighting games in general. Your avatar character’s move set will be pretty limited at first, which can help you ease into doing motion inputs while moving and attacking, and the light RPG elements can feel addictive as you increase the strength of your character to tackle harder and harder foes in this mode. Oh, and you can also unlock additional costumes for the main cast of characters by befriending them in this mode as well.
The Battle Hub and Fighting Grounds are where you’ll participate in fights against computers and other players, and those modes run absolutely perfectly. The Battle Hub allows you to walk around and interact with other players, send messages, taunts, or challenge people to duels using your avatar or the standard Street Fighter characters we all know and love. There are plenty of special battles, ranking bouts, events, tournaments, and all sorts of things you can join.
The Fighting Grounds are where you go for your more classic Street Fighter experience. If you want to skip right into battles against computers or online opponents without any fluff, you go here. You can access the practice area, where you can train to your heart’s content, the arcade mode which is the story mode equivalent from previous games, versus and online matches, and even special matches that function more like mini-games. There are also two extra mini-game style modes just for the Switch 2 edition, Calorie Contest and Gyro Battle. Both of these modes use the gyro controls and will have you flailing your wrists to use the most calorie-spending special moves.
Street Fighter has a way of innovating and adding new mechanics in each game, and the sixth entry is no different. The new mechanic of 6 is the Drive Meter, which features six segments that you can spend both offensively and defensively. The meter replenishes automatically as you fight, but spending the whole meter can leave you in a burnout state where you’re unable to utilize it at all until it completely fills back up. The Drive system is probably one of the coolest things about Street Fighter 6, and it’s got plenty of depth for both veterans of fighting games and newbies alike.
Drive Meter adds a lot of strategy to fights, with management of it being incredibly important at all skill levels. Drive Impacts let you super armor through opposing attacks with a strong unblockable that can wall splat if you get a foe cornered, and Drive Parries are downright accessible in Street Fighter 6, especially when compared to how tight the timings were back in third Strike. After learning the mechanic, I experienced complete newbies fully attempting to utilize parries when they would have ignored them entirely in other fighting titles, which is just wonderful to see.
Drive Meter can be spent to gap close, perform reversals that can get you out of high pressure situations, and can even be spent to soup up your special moves into Overdrive variants with new effects, similar to Ex Specials from previous Street Fighter games. Overdrive existing is primarily why you’ll see large amounts of Ken players spending half of their matches in burnout at low ranks. The Drive Meter in Street Fighter 6 adds a lot of depth with a low skill floor but that same incredibly high ceiling we all know and love.
Of course, fighting games can seem a little challenging to get into, which is why Street Fighter 6 also introduced a new controls scheme that can aid beginners. Those of us with fighting game experience can stick to traditional motion input controls, but the introduction of modern controls has been pretty handy for introducing Street Fighter 6 to new players. Modern effectively removes some moves from a character’s kit in exchange for easier access to the moves that remain, with them dealing a little less damage to compensate. A character may not be able to pull off an entirely optimal combo due to the removal of some moves but can now use their dragon punch anti-air equivalent by only pressing forward and a single button. This makes defensive play, one of the hardest things for a newbie to learn, much easier.
Generally speaking, modern controls will tend to give characters considerably easier access to their special moves and some straightforward Overdrive combos that anyone can execute. Typically, the Overdrive auto combos are not optimal for damage vs meter spent but apparently don’t waste super meter on block, which is another nice feature. While I definitely preferred to use classic controls given my history playing and reviewing fighting titles, it’s easy to see how this change can get a whole variety of new players into the fighting game scene.
In terms of performance, Street Fighter 6 on Switch 2 looks and performs better than the Xbox Series S, with crisper visuals, less aliasing, and a solid 60fps lock whether you’re entering combat against CPUs or players. There doesn’t seem to be HDR support for Street Fighter 6 on Switch 2, and when playing in handheld mode the game is capped to 1080p but still maintains that rock solid 60 frames per second.
Load times on the Switch 2 are comparable to other platforms, loading slightly faster than an Xbox Series S or X, but a bit slower than a PlayStation 5. There are some compromises present when compared to PS5 or PC, as water in the background of some stages may not be as obviously animated and things of that nature, but when it comes to anything that matters for gameplay, the Switch 2 version is exactly what you’d want out of a port.
It’s worth mentioning that Street Fighter 6 manages to pack all of this game onto the Switch 2 while still looking phenomenal. Being able to play the game portably is a nice feature too, though it’s definitely better to play with a pro controller or arcade controller connected in tabletop mode. Sorry, but the joycons are known to be horrid for fighting games for a very obvious reason. Play with a Nintendo Switch 2 Pro controller is definitely preferred and is a lot more accurate than a Pro controller for the Switch 1 due to the taller pivot for the d-pad. Of course, there are plenty of third-party controller options if that’s the sort of thing you’re into, like I am as well.
All in all, Street Fighter 6 for Nintendo Switch 2 is a version of the game that can stand up to the greats. There is a slight graphical downgrade compared to the PS5 version, but everything in this package performs excellently and without as many compromises as Nintendo Switch fans are used to seeing. The only unfortunate thing is that you can’t carry over progress from another platform to Switch 2, so it may feel like you’re smurfing for a little while on the new platform, though this does support cross-platform play so you’ll quickly be back up against the same players you’re used to.
And ranked is sorted by character, as well, so you never have to feel like you’re going to get walloped for trying out a new character. In any event, Street Fighter 6 is the most newbie friendly version of Street Fighter yet. There is plenty of skill expression on the high end too, so even if you’ve never played a Street Fighter title in your life, it’s never too late to try!
Developers: Capcom
Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X