Deluxe and Ultimate Editions DO NOT include Season 2 as of July 3. You will NOT be able to play as Bison or any other S2 character with Deluxe or Ultimate.

Deluxe gives access to every Season 1 character as well as all of their default colors and some Drive Tickets (4,200) to spend on things like cosmetics. Ultimate is the same except you get two costumes per Season 1 character, 2 other stages, and 7,700 Drive Tickets. The bundles may change eventually as Capcom has often given modern Street Fighter discounts and free bundles to older seasons for players who haven't owned them yet. This usually happens near the end of development, so don't expect anything free anytime soon.

As of right now (July 3), we're in 2nd Season. Here's the current DLC roster:

Season 1
- Rashid
- Aki
- Akuma
- Ed

Season 2
- Bison
- Terry (Fall 2024)
- Mai (Winter 2024-25)
- Elena (Spring 2025)

You do have an opportunity to receive Rental Fighter tickets. However, don't count on these as they are pretty rare and depend on the fighter pass.

CHARACTERS MAY BE BOUGHT SEPARATELY WITH PREMIUM CURRENCY. You must do this in-game. Characters are 350 fight coins each. To give you an idea of the cost, you can purchase 610 Fight Coins for $12. Buying coins in a higher bulk will have them discounted and can be spent on many things outside of characters.

Currently, the base price for Seasons are pretty steep at $30 each, though Season 1 is shown on sale with the base version of SF6. It is more than likely that Season 2 will be on sale later or bundled with Season 1 in another set once they start trickling out. Whether you wish to buy S2 now or later (or never) is entirely up to you. If you wish to buy the game now, I would recommend Deluxe on sale and save your money once you get a feel for whether you'll be sticking around or not. You can even play the demo version of the game if you are still on the fence.


Whether you are a beginner or a vet of fighting games, this game will satisfy both itches. This is an amazing fighting game with an excellent launch window and a ton of single player content, as well as buttery-smooth online play and a fun lobby system. It's fun to watch and fun to goof off in addition to getting good in. If you want to get into fighting games, this is the perfect one to start with. While it allows you to use classic motion inputs, you also have the option to play on Modern Controls. This is a control scheme considered to be of equal footing to Classic Controls by nerfing the damage output of your moves while allowing you to do automatic combos and one-button presses for special moves like fireball. It's a great way to start and is not nearly OP as it seems. Balance with Modern/Classic is pretty solid, and Classic players who complain about Modern are pretty bad anyway.

WORLD TOUR & BATTLE HUB
By far the best single player content I have ever seen in a fighting game. And by that, I mean it's pretty good. You create your avatar using the Character Creator then go out into the world learning moves from playable characters like Ryu or Chun-Li. Similar to Yakuza, you fight random foes on the streets as well as complete missions, level up, and gain stats while following an overarching story to tie it all together. You can even do your special moves outside of battle in an open 3D world to reach places you normally wouldn't. It's pretty cool.

It's not only fun and goofy, but also allows you to get your feet wet into mechanics at your own pace. It's a great way to learn the game by just running around and exploring. Typical runthroughs will usually be about 30 hours, so it's not exactly short either. You can change your fighting style to be similar to whatever character you want with customizable specials, allowing you to do things like use Zangief's Pile Driver move with Chun Li's elegant poses and normals. Character creation is also very open-ended, allowing you to have all sorts of insane designs. Character Creator feels similar to Oblivion's ridiculous customization options except Capcom is aware just how crazy you can get. I once fought a guy in the Battle Hub who was just a burrito with sunglasses and boxing gloves.

Speeking of which, Battle Hub is a place where you can meet other players as your avatar. You can walk around a huge 3D lobby and challenge other avatars to fight you in 1v1 battles as well as chat with them via text and emotes. You can also sit in one of the many arcade cabinets and just start playing regular SF6 with regular characters. There are also fully-ported ROMs of other arcade games like Street Fighter II, Final Fight, and Puzzle Fighter in the corner of the battle hub that rotate weekly. They are unfortunately not multiplayer, but they are otherwise playable from start to finish. Even Mega Man: The Power Battle has an arcade game. Sometimes they'll show up on the monthly premium Fighting Pass, where you can easily unlock and play them at your own leisure.

Long story short, Battle Hub is a fun and casual setting to hang out and meet randoms. You can even join clubs and tournaments if you really wanted to.

GAMEPLAY
Now for the meat and potatoes of this game.

Your way of attack is through a new system called Drive. You have a Drive Meter at the top of the screen which is full-up on 6 ticks and refills slowly over time. Your EX moves and two new moves called Drive Parry and Drive Impact are linked to this new meter.

Drive Parry allows you to negate damage for any non-grab attack on the ground by holding two mediums. You can hold it for as long as you have Drive, and it even recovers Drive when you parry the enemy. Seems pretty powerful on paper, but it is very suseptible to throws and has a pretty long recovery window.

You can also use Drive Impact, used by pressing two heavies. This incredibly powerful move allows every character to have a forward-stepping blow with two hits of armor. If a foe can see your Drive Impact coming, they can react with a Drive Impact of their own. It's pretty situational, but very powerful and allows for punishing followups.

There is also Drive Rush. This allows you to rush towards the enemy with advantage on your next normal attack (non-special non-super attack). You can also use Drive Rush to cancel your normal move into another one to extend your combo, similar to Roman Cancel in Guilty Gear. While advanced, this is a very versitile way of playing the game and is very fun to use.

All of these things cost a good chunk of your Drive (typically 2 ticks). Your Drive will refill by itself over time, but if you completely empty your Drive, you will succumb to Burnout. This will exhaust your Drive meter, forcing you to wait on a timer for your bar to refill again. In this state, you can't use any moves that cost Drive, and you experience reduced defense, damage, and speed across the board. Getting hit with a Drive Impact in the corner will stun you for a good few seconds, allowing the opponent to get a good finishing move on you.

In general, your Drive depletes to Burnout when you are being too wreckless. Managing your Drive and using it to its maximum potential is a huge part of this game, as exhaustion is something you typically want to avoid. That said, it is very surprising and welcoming to see Street Fighter focus less on blocking and boring plays from SF5/SF4 and instead focus on being a bit crazy and insane. Knowing that the enemy could DI or parry at any point makes matches very tense. I became less willing to throw out fireballs towards people as a result of Drive Parry and now have a gameplan to focus getting close to the opponent.

Overall, the game itself is the best Street Fighter we've seen in years, and it's only getting better. Not only is the single player content great, but so is the multiplayer. I highly recommend it for both beginners and vets alike. See you at Evo!