Someone made me the mistake of gifting me Street Fighter 6 and yesterday I wound up spending all day doing nothing but playing the World Tour mode (I did play the tutorial and CPU versus for a bit beforehand just to familiarise but 99% of the time has been spend in World Tour)
It took some effort to get World Tour working properly on Linux, I have no idea how that mode is built but it has insane graphical issues in Proton unless you do some fiddling to fix it though the core game seems to work fine. For some reason I thought the game was on UE but I probably should've guessed that it's on RE Engine.
It's... fun. I'm enjoying it. I'm still really not used to wrapping my head around games with this control scheme though. I'm using classic controls and it's been some time since I last played Strive so I'm hoping it helps me derust a bit.
Since Strive is my only true reference point (there's Skullgirls I guess but I really don't have enough substance to compare there), much of my experience of SF6 is measured relative to Strive.
Controls
Strive is the only fighting game I've properly played previously and as far as I'm concerned the control scheme there is ideal for me. I think a lot of it is due to the way my brain categorises things - all the "real" attacks are on the face buttons. Punch, kick and two types of slash. Everything else is movement (the d-pad, dash macro) or I can consider individually (dust, burst macro, etc.) Special moves are also incredibly simple "Do this motion > press this specific button" inputs (I'm a Bedman? main and was on Bridget before that so none of my inputs have any weird variations or real complexities beyond managing Error 6E or the yo-yo)
The strange thing is, with games like Street Fighter or Skullgirls (which I even fully completed the arcade of, excepting DLC characters), it's theoretically simpler. You have a punch and a kick and 3 levels of strength for both. But in my mind, that increases the number of "real" attacks from 4 to 6 and for some reason makes it difficult to follow sequences. On top of that, a lot of specials are a motion followed by any of the punch or kick buttons which changes the properties of the attack depending on the one pressed. This is A MESS for me because in my head it essentially turns each special that's like this into 3 similar specials with different properties and that is just too much for me to keep in mind and process.
And then of course coming from Strive it does feel like a lot of the timing windows for things are a lot more specific and tight in comparison. I don't know if that's true or if it's just me though.
It does, at least, make me appreciate Strive's relative simplicity much more and makes me more excited to go back to the comforts of spamming 236P->214P from across the stage as Bedman? against opponents who have no idea how easy it is to get around it.
The actual game
I can't say much on the actual game, I played through an arcade and did a bunch of easy CPU versus matches just to try it out. I don't feel like I can say much on the actual game beyond the thoughts I gave on the controls until I've played the actual online mode. I'm feeling much the same anxiety in that regard as I did when first starting out in Strive. I'll get around to it.
World Tour
I really like World Tour mode a lot. It's essentially a pseudo-RPG story mode where you create a character and get to run around in a small open world with a main quest and various sidequests. You get to talk to the actual SF characters and learn their fighting style, and you can train in that style to unlock their moves and mix and match styles and movesets as well as unlocking dialogue and sidequests. It's pretty cute.
I will admit that it's the sidequests and character interaction elements which are primarily driving my enjoyment so far. I don't dislike the core thing but the main quest is just so tedious:
Go to location A, go to location B, fight this dude, go to location C, now go to your hideout so you can spend 0.5 seconds in a menu to change the time to night so you can go to location C again but at night. Now go back and change the time to day so you can go to location D. Spend a minute in the world map loading screen so you can meet this character in this new location and then do it again to go back to where you were.
It's all so... padded. It's really not great. You at least get to do the fights as well.
However I do very much love the implication that in this universe it is perfectly acceptable for you to walk up to any random person on the street and blast them with energy and this is regarded as an invitation to engage in combat right there right then. Beating the shit out of random individuals on the street doesn't get old.
It's a shame that Strive doesn't have content like this, especially with the aspect that it lets you interact with all the characters and I very much want more content of them just existing and saying shit. A lot of that dialogue happens through text messages in SF6's story (and even then a bunch of the other dialogue is just written with some generic VN-style barks accompanying them) so they don't even need much VO. However, it is for all intents and purposes, impossible.
The sheer amount of work that would need to be done is staggering to think about. Even design wise you couldn't model it after what SF6 does because 99% of the moves in the game are completely non-transferrable. In SF6 they've clearly got a shared rig and all the characters are humanoid and everything they do uses energy or their body and not much more. Meanwhile, how the fuck would you make Bedman?'s spikes a generic move that can go on a custom character? Potemkin? Even their approach to character scripting and animation makes this very nonviable. It's just not possible - it'd have to be redesigned completely and on top of that would just be so much work to make and implement, it's a shame but oh well.
Still, I wish there was more actual character stuff in Strive outside of the start/end of arcade mode, the in-battle dialogue and the story mode stuff for the handful of characters who actually show up in story mode.
Overall so far
It is good. I am enjoying it very much despite having done very little playing of the actual game. I'll get to it though, and perhaps I'll start juggling both SF6 and Strive. Maybe wrapping my head around some of the stuff with SF6's controls will somehow transfer over to Strive.