Bonus: You should just use all your Drive immediately in Street Fighter 6

Looking at the gameplay systems and meta a month after launch

I did an early “review” of Street Fighter 6’s basic mechanics after the very first beta, and on the game’s release my mind hadn’t changed much, so I didn’t feel a need to update those early impressions.

But what about a month later? After the first month of serious competition, with all of the best players in the world in a million-dollar race to discover as much as they can about the new game, how would SF6’s meta-game hold up? We’re over a month into the game’s life, I grinded my way up to Diamond rank, and we’ve already had a major tournament. A couple of points have made themselves clear.

Drive meter: spend it all

There was an expectation at the very start of this game’s life— one enforced by first impressions and the in-game commentary— that players would need to keep an eye on the Drive meter and spend this powerful resource conservatively, avoiding at all costs the Burnout status that comes from depleting it.

This pretty quickly— maybe even during the first beta— turned out to be not the case at all. In fact, you might even say the opposite is true. Drive actions are actually so powerful that to hold back on them is to miss out on major opportunities to deal damage to the opponent.

Burnout is temporary. Damage is forever.