These are the all-new features in the second season of Street Fighter 6 (2024)

Fighting games have always thrived on regular updates. Even back in the days of Street Fighter II, new versions were regularly released in the arcades to add new mechanics and characters, or address balancing issues.

Fortunately, these days you no longer have to wait for the local arcade to get the next edition of your favourite fighter or pay the full price for a small improvement at a local gaming retailer. Thanks to patches and DLC (downloadable content), you can get new content faster and for less money.

Now, Street Fighter 6 has had a year to simmer it's getting its first major update. Indirectly, Capcom is also heralding the start of the second season of the most current version of the game. Below we've summarised which new features are included in this big patch update and how the title has changed since its release.

This big update in the second season of Street Fighter 6 comes bundled with the release of the last DLC fighter from the first season - Akuma. The following fighters have joined the base version's fighting boys and girls over the past 12 months:

Rashid

After making his debut in Street Fighter V, Rashid now returns, bringing with him a turbulent play style. In particular, his Super Art 2 and Great Desert Storm have proven to be an important tool in his kit early on.

Leevy 'Oil King' Lin has already achieved numerous successes with Rashid in Street Fighter V. Now, he has his old main character back and was able to present him at Red Bull Kumite in New York.

A.K.I

The only completely new lady in the DLC roster is A.K.I. She's the student of F.A.N.G, who, like Rashid, celebrated his debut in Street Fighter V. Her gimmick is Toxin. Many of her attacks poison her opponents, causing them to constantly lose health points. Above all however, she can use it to boost some of her other attacks and land devastating combos.

A.K.I is currently considered a rather weaker character. She has a lot of good tools, but lacks that certain something for a breakthrough, so the buffs in this update may help her reach the top.

Ed

Ed is another a character from the roster of Street Fighter V. However, he wasn't available in the base game, only as a DLC. In Street Fighter 6, Capcom leaned even more heavily on Ed's boxer design, removing all of his kick animations and replacing them with flicker moves.

However, due to his Shadoloo past, he still retains some of his Psycho Energy attacks, so he not only lets his fists do the talking, but also throws fireballs or pulls his opponents into boxing range with energy whips.

Akuma

Akuma filled the last slot of the first season of Street Fighter 6. The demon-like Shotokan fighter is now on an icon level with Ryu, Ken, Guile and Chun-Li. After his introduction in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, he's never missed an opportunity to compete with the rest of the fighters in the SF universe.

In Street Fighter 6, Akuma looks more animalistic than ever, with an even wilder mane and truly massive muscles. He towers menacingly over many of the other characters.

The Drive system is, of course, at the heart of Street Fighter 6 and has been one of the biggest advertised features from the outset. While some players were hoping that entire mechanics such as Drive Impact would be removed completely, it was clear that Capcom wouldn't take such drastic steps if Street Fighter 6's gameplay was built around these features.

However, that doesn't mean that they didn't look closely at how the individual Drive mechanics would affect the game and see if there were any improvements that could be made.

Since the beginning of Street Fighter 6, there have been two camps within the tournament scene, each of which considers one of the Drive mechanics to be too strong: either Drive-Rush or Drive-Parry. Perfect-Parry in particular has clearly dominated high-level gameplay, primarily because of its ability to turn a match around with one exchange, all while the risk of being penalised is relatively low. In this update, four more frames of recovery are added to Drive-Parry. This means it's now easier to punish a missed parry attempt with a throw.

Adel 'Bigbird' Anouche is particularly happy about this change. One of his characters, Marisa, can make opponents bleed from their botched parries with her Command Throw.

Some characters currently suffer from not having a good tool to defend against throw loops, often because they don't have an invulnerable move outside of their Super Arts. Originally, Drive-Reversal, Street Fighter 6's alpha counter, could only be used when blocking an attack. With the new update it's now possible to use the move even after a knockdown. This makes it possible to cancel slow attacks and throws for the cost of a drive segment.

One aspect of Street Fighter 6 that's been criticised by players is the soundtrack. While some songs were well received by the community, many miss the iconic tunes from past titles, especially because characters have so often received new renditions of their themes. Many of these can be unlocked within Street Fighter 6 and then listened to in the Battle Hub, for example.

With the latest update however, you can use your own music collection and assign it to individual (or all) characters as a soundtrack. So, if you prefer Cammy's theme from Super Street Fighter II Turbo, you can now also listen to it in Street Fighter 6.

What most players have been looking forward to are, of course, the adjustments to the gameplay and characters that are coming with this major update. After a year, Street Fighter 6's meta was starting to get a little monotonous. It remains to be seen how the changes will affect the tournament scene in the long term, but every fighter in the game has received buffs. Of course, some characters have been tweaked while others have received more improvements than the rest of the roster, but ultimately every fighter should have new toys to experiment with.

You can find the complete overview of all changes here.

Bigbird has a lot of fun with the buff of Rashid's Tempest Moon. The slide can now be cancelled in Super Arts.

We're curious to see how these adjustments will affect the game and whether we will have to wait another year before we can expect the next balancing changes. Until then, enjoy the brand-new season of Street Fighter 6.