Street Fighter 6 All Characters Reviewed: Part 1

Part two of the Diamond journey, which is part one of another. It makes sense.

Diamonds are Forever

Read part 1 here.

In the previous article, I laid the groundwork for this whole thing, giving my thoughts on the overall ranking system and why I decided to do this. Now it’s finally time for the “every single character” part of this challenge.

I’ll be giving my thoughts on each character overall, talk about how they play and how easy or hard it was to get to Diamond with them. The Creature will make an appearance, too, with the patented Creature Rating, which rates how much control The Creature exerts over you when you play them.

Trying to talk about all 18 base roster characters would be too much for one article, so I’ve split it up into two parts. Part 2 is coming up next.

Jamie

The cool new Kung Fu man who’s supposed to be Luke’s rival, like what Ken is to Ryu. I never got that sense, since they barely interact. They don’t have any special banter in their intros when fighting each other, nothing. In fact, no one has any special intros. You don’t get a sense for who’s who or what they think about the others. The game has a story mode and it’s more about your self-insert beating up homeless people than it is about this new cast of characters meant to replace Ryu and Ken. Did you know Kimberly was supposed to replace Chun Li as “The Girl”? Me neither. They put all this effort into an RPG mode and couldn’t spare a few minutes to give Luke and Jamie a little intro where they bump fists or something? I found out Jamie was supposed to be Luke’s rival by reading an article on a wiki. Excellent world building there, Capcom.

In-game, Jamie has a ton of tools: he has a divekick, a command grab, long-ranged attacks and he does good damage. He’s fantastic... on paper. Reality is a bit cruel to him. He doesn’t have all of his moves available at first, he unlocks them by drinking. Even his damage is tied to his drinks; he starts out doing 80% of his total damage, which increases by 10% for every drink, up to a maximum of 120% with four drinks. The more he drinks, the harder he hits, just like my step-dad.

He’s not drinking alcohol, mind you, he’s drinking a special ki-unleashing drink, okay? The drunken Kung Fu master isn’t drinking alcohol out of his traditional sake bottle. He turns red and sways more when he drinks, but IT’S NOT ALCOHOL, OKAY. It’s a special blend of herbs meant to promote ki-flow. I think they call it Jaegermeister.

Much like every alcoholic, Jamie doesn’t work unless he’s had a few drinks in him, much to his own detriment. Not only because he makes his family worry, but because he has to give up a lot of space to drink. When he knocks an opponent down, he has to pick between getting a drink and being more powerful in the future, or going for more offense with his sub-par sober state. Other characters have their entire toolkit available from the start. Throughout different patches and balance changes, he’s been given more ways to drink from regular moves, which is helpful, but the fact still remains that he needs to stop his offense to drink.

If you do manage to get all four drinks in, you’ll find that the round is almost over. You’ll get the chance to play around in your max-powered state for a few interactions before you finish the round and go back to zero drinks, since they don’t carry over.
Jamie was the first character I played for this challenge. I thought he looked cool and I wanted to try one of the new characters first. He’s fun to play, even with his shortcomings. He has a special-cancellable crouching medium kick, good range on his normals and a lot of fun tricks. I think he can get the job done with just two drinks, which gives him access to his dive kick, good damage and a breakdancing move that goes through projectiles and works as a great combo ender.

He was pretty tough to get to Diamond, mostly because I was new to the game and struggled with a lot of things. After a few hours, I managed to get the hang of his move set and played to his strengths as a tricky rushdown character. Overall a solid character with obvious strengths and weaknesses.

Playing against Jamie: At first, there were a lot of Jamies in ranked. After a few months, the tier lists started coming out, and they put Jamie in low-tier, so everyone dropped him. I fought one or two good Jamies. They knew how to pressure and how to get to three drinks quickly to start doing command-grab mix-ups. The vast majority of Jamies, however, were one-trick ponies. They would just walk backwards and try to catch me off-guard by throwing out a random full-screen palm strike. If that didn’t work, they’d walk backwards and try to catch me off-guard by throwing out a random sweep. Neither of these worked. Whenever I saw I was up against a Jamie, I just saw a piñata full of free points.

Creature Rating: 6 out of 10. The Creature likes to drink.

Tier: C. Cs get degrees.

Luke

Luke is the new main character of Street Fighter. He gets a lot more screen time than his supposed rival Jamie, and you don’t get to see them do much of anything together. Unlike with Jamie, who’s supposed to be a main character but doesn’t show it, Luke is everywhere in the game. He’s on the cover, he’s the guy that guides you through the story, he’s constantly yapping. He feels like the most complete character, and like the only one they put much effort into developing.

When it comes to his gameplay, he’s a modified shoto. He has his projectile and a dragon punch to anti-air. He also has his Flash Knuckles, which are special moves where he punches. You can hold the button down to give it more power, and if you release the button at a very precise time, the move does a lot of damage and gains special properties, like launching your opponent across the screen. The timing for these is tough at first, but with some practice you can do them by muscle memory.

He was one of the last characters I took to Diamond, wanting to get the supposed low-tier fighters out the way first, so he wasn’t too difficult. I had a better grasp on the game, and even with the nerfs that got him out of S-tier, he’s still a strong character. He has good tools for every situation and can get a lot of damage off a few stray hits. His projectile is fantastic for catching people off-guard or for closing out a round against someone in burn out.

He has a special-cancelable crouching medium kick and a crouching medium punch that is arguably better. Luke uses his big, gorilla arms to swing at superhuman distances and start damaging combos. His Back heavy punch used to move him out of the way of an attack before lunging forward at the opponent’s face with a devastating counter-attack. This was changed in patch where they gave him an invisible hitbox in front of him while he swings back so he can’t dance in front of his opponents that easily, but it’s still a good tool. He’s been reined in a little and he’s still okay, but a lot of histrionic players will see these changes and say he’s mid-tier because they can’t use him for free wins anymore.

Playing against Luke: A lot of Luke players online were the type of autopilot philosophical zombies that saw he was top-tier and picked him to get free wins. This didn’t work out for a lot of them. Sure, he was a nuisance to up against; any mistake could lead you to get counter hit into a massive combo, but he wasn’t an auto-win. You still need some level of execution to get his flash knuckle combos, and you need to know how to play a little bit of neutral to get his big counter hits. A lot of players let The Creature take control and they played him like Ryu. They’d walk backwards and throw projectiles. When that plan failed, they didn’t have any back up, so they’d explode. He became a lot less popular after being demoted in the tier lists, too, replaced by Akuma.

Creature Rating: 6 out of 10.

Tier: A. I can’t put him any lower when he still has great tools and damage.

Ryu

Once the face of the franchise, he’s now overshadowed by Luke in terms of main character and in gameplay. He’s got a new beard and the same tool set he’s had for over 30 years. A solid, straightforward, dependable character that does a lot of things well but doesn’t excel in anything. His lack of tricks or gimmicks have kept him behind Luke and Ken, earning him the title of worst shoto.

He still follows his tried-and-true game plan: throw projectiles until your opponent gets sick of your shit and decides to jump, where you shoryuken him back to earth and repeat the cycle. To compliment his decades-old musty game plan, he has a great cancelable crouching medium kick and short, simple combos that deal an above-average amount of damage.
In Street Fighter 6, he got the denjin charge system, a power up that improves his hadouken or hashougeki, which is like a hadouken but he forgets to throw it. This charging system has the same faults as Jamie’s drinks: Ryu has to sacrifice immediate benefits to charge it, to gain possible benefits in the future. Once powered up, he can use the improved specials to deal a ton of damage without spending any meter, which is great. He only gets one use out of the charge, and he can only get one charge at a time, which is not great. In a recent patch, they added the ability to keep the charge and use it only when you use the heavy version of a special move. This was a much-needed change that should have been there since the beginning and makes the denjin mechanic actually usable instead of a distracting bit of mechanical bloat.

Personally, I really like Ryu. I used to make fun of Ryu players, wondering why you would pick the character who’s had the same game plan for three decades now. “Ah, a new installment of Street Fighter. Look at all these new options to play with! Who should I pick? Ah, yes, the same guy I’ve been playing since I was an infant. This will surely spice up my life. Thank goodness a new Street Fighter is out”, but then I saw the light. He’s a very solid, dependable guy. He’s not the life of the party, but he’ll get there on time and he won’t break anything. I used to play Ryu in other games, but decided against him for the aforementioned reason, but he’s been the same since the Bush administration (the first one) because he works. They got it right the first time, why fix it if it ain’t broken?

What I did notice while playing him is the appalling number of players who can’t deal with the basic hadou-shoryu. Even up in Diamond I kept going up against players who didn’t know how to deal with the ancient art of not getting hit by hadoukens and not jumping into a rising fist. It’s insane, and it made me lose what little faith I had in the player base.

Playing against Ryu: Playing as Ryu diminished my faith in the player base to near zero. Playing against him evaporated that last little bit and made me lose faith in humanity as a whole. For some reason, Ryu is one of The Creature’s favorite vessels. Whenever someone picks the safe, boring character they get an overwhelming urge to play like complete monkeys. Whenever I saw I was up against a Ryu, I mentally prepared myself to sit in one spot throwing out anti-airs all game. All they do is jump. They don’t walk, dash or do anything other than jump. There were rounds where I beat my opponent just anti-airing. I got jumped in on a few times because I thought that, after the twelfth time they got punished for jumping, they wouldn’t do it a thirteenth time, right? I was wrong, they hopped over to me, got a combo and kept jumping for a fourteenth, fifteenth and thirtieth time. It’s like trying to fight a crackhead on a pogo stick.

If they’re not jumping like they have an invisible trampoline underneath them, they hold down back and turtle or throw projectiles out with no thought.
It’s ironic how the most zen, balanced character that’s supposed to teach you patience and good spacing is in the top-10 most Creature-influenced characters.

Creature Rating: 9.5 out of 10.

Tier: B+. Good work.

Zangief

Many men throughout history have dedicated their life to a single pursuit. Napoleon wanted to conquer, Charles Darwin wanted to learn about the origin of humans, and 50 Cent was all about getting rich, even if he died trying. Zangief is one such man. His entire being revolves around one thing, and one thing only: scooping up his opponent. His laser focus on this one goal has made him into a refined scooping machine. His opponents fear him, they run from him, they jump if he gets too close. They know the power of the scoop.

Zangief is a pure grappler. He can delete an opponent in a few grabs, but he struggles getting there. He’s slow as molasses, with short dashes and slow movement speed. His drive rush is pitiful, it’s slow and barely covers any space. If he manages to get in and throw his opponent, he doesn’t have ways to pressure his opponent afterwards, since after each Spinning Pile Driver Zangief and his opponent get sent to opposite sides of the screen like they were caught dancing too close at prom. From there, he has to drive rush to get mediocre oki.

He’s not all bad, mind you. He has great normal attacks that take up a lot of space and do good damage, which he can use to poke at an opponent and slowly encroach on their territory. He has an armored heavy punch which has great range, and his lariat anti-air can beat almost any air approach, if it doesn’t get crossed up.

Despite all the flaws, I love playing Zangief. I count myself in the ranks of Zangief’s loyal fans, even before the buffs. In fact, I got him to Diamond way before they “fixed” him, when he was still considered one of the worst characters in the game. Then he was buffed and everyone thought he was top-tier for a bit, which is delusional. He’s easy to play, since his gameplan revolves around grabbing his opponent, but getting there is a bit of a nightmare, since most of the cast has ways to keep him out easily. Still, I had a ton of fun scooping people up and hammering them into the ground like a fence post. It’s incredibly rewarding, and getting a hard read and landing an air grab on a jumping opponent gives me enough dopamine to offset several dozen losses.

Getting Zangief to Diamond was a medium challenge. He thrives on punishing his opponent’s mistakes, and people at low ranks make a lot of mistakes. He has a lot of bad match ups, including against Akuma, Ken and other popular characters. He was also one of the first characters I took to Diamond, which meant I was still learning the game. It was a bit of a climb, but with some patience I managed to inch my way up the ladder. What really helped me was learning that his light SPD has a lot more range than I thought, so I could throw it out in neutral more often and get some stray slams.

A lot of players don’t know how to deal with this, and I had more than a few people rage quit on me or refuse to rematch after getting slammed. They try to play patient and keep me out, only for The Creature to take over and they can’t resist trying to drive rush at me, and that’s when I scoop them.

Playing against Zangief: They let The Creature drive. They only know how to throw out heavy punch to armor through pokes and then Drive Impact to catch any attempts at a counter attack. They can’t handle Zangief’s slow movement speed, so they jump everywhere, and since he doesn’t have good reversal options on wake up, you can pressure him and dance around him. Most players are very predictable with their grabs, too, and can be jumped out of easily. Same goes for their level 3 super. They can throw it out whenever, since it’s fast to come out, but they do it on wake up or as a last-ditch effort and you can see it coming a mile away.

Most of them use Modern controls, because doing a 360 motion is too hard, apparently. They sacrifice a lot of damage for some convenience and one-button lariats, but since they can’t kill in three grabs, they have to play smarter. You already know how that turns out. Still, he can be troublesome since getting hit with a stray level 3 super usually ends the round.

Creature Rating: 7 out of 10. Seven is close to ten, which means it’s in throw range.

Tier: C+. He has a lot of bad matchups due to being a grappler, but being able to end a round in three interactions is still pretty scary.

Juri

I’m not sure what Juri’s deal is, story-wise. She started out as a sadistic villain in Street Fighter IV, where she was consumed by some dark force that makes you fight, like everyone else was. Except this wasn’t the satsui-no-hadou, it was something else. I never bothered to check. In 6, her whole character has been boiled down to feet. I miss when she was a weird zoner with held projectiles.

Juri is a rushdown character. Her whole game plan is to get into her opponent’s face and press buttons. She can do this thanks to her dash, which can cross the entire screen in half a frame. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but her dash is so fast it might as well be a teleport. I don’t know why she needs a Drive Rush when she has access to Instant Transmission without needing to use meter. If she decides to use Drive Rush, which most Juri players will do all the time, she has access to an incredibly fast rush that also covers acres of terrain. She doesn’t need to do all that, since she has kick normals that rival Dhalsim in reach, and they’re all special cancelable for some reason. She has a divekick, too. Why? I don’t know. All these tools add up to an oppressive character that can get on her opponent and pressure infinitely and for free.

She was the easiest character to get to Diamond. I did my placement matches with her and ended up in Diamond. No more effort required. I didn’t even practice with her or anything. I just did the same nonsense I’ve seen other Juries do online.

Playing against Juri: Juri players need to be studied. There’s something profoundly wrong with them. The symbol for The Creature is a Blanka-chan doll, but one of its original designs was a decroded, monster version of Juri, because this is the most Creature-controlled character ever. A human isn’t even involved when playing her, The Creature just assumes control of the game and sends inputs telepathically.

Juri players are allergic to blocking. It’s always their turn. Just got knocked down? Time to mash. Are they minus on block? Time to mash. Are they mashing? Mash even harder. It helps that most of Juri’s buttons are safe and/or special cancelable, so they can get rewarded for a stray hit. Thing is, she’s not very popular at high level. She doesn’t get a lot of tournament results, and her match-up spread at high level shows her losing more often than she wins against most characters, but she’s a pain in the ass to fight either way.

Whenever she showed up, which was fairly often, I knew it would be a struggle for my life. It was a guaranteed tense, stressful battle against a complete psychopath. I’d have to keep my head on a swivel and watch for twenty different avenues of attack: she could dash in at any second, raw drive rush, dive kick, she could hit me from across the screen with a kick and then drive rush at me. My mind would be racing at a million miles trying to sort out every possibility, while the Juri player wouldn’t be thinking about anything. They weren’t in the room most of the time, it was just an empty white room like in that creepy PlayStation 3 commercial, with a little Blanka-chan doll sitting in front of a controller.

Creature Rating: 11 out of 10.

Tier: A+. She has a ton of good tools and excellent buttons, but she’s easy to defeet.

Dee Jay

Ya mon! Feel da rhythm! Ain’t no ting. Counter hit for 60% of your blood clot health, ya bomboclaat.

I have been informed by the higher ups that, in June of 2027, it will be considered racist to do a Jamaican accent, so I will stop now. They’re coming after Grim from Billy and Mandy next.

Dee Jay is a weird one. He has charge inputs, a projectile and a flash kick, which means he was supposed to be like Guile; he sits back and frustrates his opponent with fireballs until they jump and he kicks them out of the air. Then in Street Fighter 6, they gave him one of the best drive rushes and some incredible, damaging combos. He’s built like a zoner, but he’s supposed to be played in the opponent’s face. This mix of two design archetypes makes Dee Jay into a jack of all trades, master of all, since he can play from afar comfortably, then suddenly spring at you like a pissed-off rattlesnake and dances on your face for half your health.

At first, I didn’t get him. I tried to play him as Guile 2, like he was in the old games, but that didn’t work. I needed to go in and start scoring that signature Dee Jay damage, so I played him at mid-range, playing around his absurd kick range. There I could finally start confirming into combos and putting out some decent damage.

He was a menace at one point. One of the highest rated characters in the game and considered to be the best. After some patches, he was demoted from the shining heights of “God-tier” to the lowly depths of “Incredible”. I played him after his multiple nerfs, and he still felt strong. He can command the screen at any range, he has great buttons, even if a lot aren’t special cancelable, he has a lot of cheesy gimmicks with his sway and fake-outs, and if he wants, he can play solid, honest neutral with his great buttons. I think he’s still one of the best characters in the game.

Getting him to Diamond wasn’t as easy as you’d think. Like I said, I was playing him wrong. I tried to turtle up and keep my opponent at projectile range, but I was missing out on a lot of damage that way. After I watched some high-level replays and a few guides, I started playing more aggressive, and I finally got some wins. After that initial hiccup, it was pretty smooth sailing, but I still have a lot to learn with Dee Jay.

Playing against Dee Jay: There is no such thing as safety against Dee Jay. Every part of the screen is his optimal range. He can start a combo from full-screen off an EX projectile. He can do a raw drive rush and teleport straight on top of you in the blink of an eye. If you try to play at close range, he can sway and counter hit or just keep you out with his flamingo legs. It was a constant nightmare.

The line between creature and genius is blurred with Dee Jay. Sure, you have the morons who flash kick in neutral or keep doing raw drive rush, but when someone does a full-screen drive rush into a feint into a combo for 50% of my health, are they being a creature or are they operating on a higher plane?

Creature rating: ??? out of 10. Inconclusive data. I don’t think The Creature speaks Jamaican.

Tier: A+. Bomboclaat damage (cancelled)

Guile

The most American man returns, pretty much unchanged. He’s the same invincible fortress he’s always been, planting himself in one spot and making you deal with it. Blasting you with Sonic Booms and making you pay with a Flash Kick if you think it’s safe to go in. Guile believes in freedom, but only for himself.

They gave him a slight redesign on his outfit, and they made him the widest man on earth. 90% of his body mass is in his arms and shoulders, the other 10% is in his hair. He needs all that arm strength to throw out Sonic Booms, which is what he’ll do most of the time. His zoning game is still strong, but unlike Dhalsim, his ancient game plan fits perfectly with Street Fighter 6’s more offensive mechanics.

He has a great drive rush, which covers a good distance with decent speed, which is good on its own. What makes it go from good to great is that he can cover his approach with a slow moving projectile to go on the offensive whenever he wants to. Once he’s in, he has great damage, and some of the best normal attacks to contest the mid-range.

He’s a pretty well regarded character, and I noticed that while playing him. Getting him to Diamond was easy; not a lot of people online have the patience to deal with his zoning. A lot of players start out the round by walking backwards, for some reason, and they give up a lot of space, which is good for Guile. They start off pretending they’re patient, but then they take one too many projectiles and The Creature starts telling them to jump in. That’s when they get a boot to the face.

I sort of enjoyed playing Guile. He’s a very strong, solid character that thrives off playing good neutral, which I like, but his defensive play style meant that a lot of rounds took a lot longer than normal. Some players stopped interacting all together and would just crouch on the other side of the screen. I had the life lead, so I waited for them to time themselves out. It’s not great, but if they don’t want to play, I won’t force them to.

Playing against Guile: Guile has some competent players out there. Sure, there are the ones that keep throwing out random flash kicks and the ones that can’t sit still for too long. Not to mention the ones that keep spamming his easy to punish sweep, but they were on the more skilled side of the curve, mostly. Whenever I saw a Guile, I knew I was in for a long match where I’d struggle to gain ground and actually play some neutral.

Creature Ranking: 3.3 out of 10

Tier: A+. He’s the stronk, he’s wide and he doesn’t have any bad match ups.

E. Honda

E. Honda is struggling. He’s been considered one of the worst characters since the game launched. He’s a one-trick pony whose gimmick is to fly at you from across the screen with his headbutts, which is easy to counter. He’s overshadowed by Blanka, who does his job but better and he has better set-ups with his dolls. Then when E. Honda was finally buffed, they put M. Bison in the game, and he’s just a better Honda. The poor sumo man can’t seem to catch a break. Oh well, at least he’s not Dhalsim.

I don’t think Honda’s that bad. Sure, there are better characters than him, but he has some good things going for him. He has great buttons. His standing medium punch is a great pressure tool that can fish for stray hits in neutral, his standing heavy punch is a good anti-air and it has good horizontal range, his headbutt is easy to play around but it’s good to throw out when your opponent least expects it, and he has a good command grab.

He was a lot of fun to play. At first, all I did was throw out random headbutts. No one at low ranks knows how to deal with that. Then, when I started fighting against actual humans, I had to switch tactics and play a more sensible, neutral-focused game, where Honda did surprisingly well. His command throw was useful in these situations. He can do some cheesy things with it using his stomps, throwing them out to make the opponent flinch then canceling them into a command throw. I’m considering picking him as a main since he’s a lot of fun and I love the taste of glue.

Playing against Honda: Honda is another of The Creature’s preferred vessels. The ability to fly across the screen at any moment is too tempting for The Creature, so it spams that constantly. If it’s not doing that, then it’s jumping around and slamming. His tools are made for The Creature’s hands.

After a few months, I stopped going up against Hondas. Every pro player put out their tier lists and they had Honda as one of the worst characters, so the zombie hordes stopped playing him. My experiences with him are old and crusty now. A distant memory, like the last time I felt any joy. All I remember is a blur of nonsense with no real game plan or anything.

Creature Rating: 8.40671 out of 10

Tier: B, as in beef.

Conclusion. For now.

This concludes part 1 of the overly-long, detailed breakdown of every single character in Street Fighter 6. If your favorite character isn’t here, they’re in part 2. If they’re DLC, they’ll be in part something in the distant, distant future. I’m sorry to all of you who were dying to know what I think of Ed, the most interesting character in all of Street Fighter. I’m aware that he has droves of fans, dozens of them, that were clamoring for his return. The return of Ed, the greatest Street Fighter character ever. Best Street Fighter 6 character 2025.

More words, more bad jokes and more questionable tier opinions are on their way in Part 2!