Sean H.

the first thing that got me thinking about this is the way that supers are catalogued in sf6. they're called super arts, just like they were in street fighter 3, and each character has 3 of them, just like in street fighter 3. each super art has different functions--some are power-up states for characters, while others just do straight damage, and some super arts can alter their properties with the right input. for example, guile's super art 1 in street fighter 6 shoots at different angles depending on which punch you use to activate it, and juri's super art 1 in street fighter 6 will get stronger if you hold down a kick button while doing it with a fuha stock.

this is also true in street fighter 3, where the descent angle of makoto's super art 2, for instance, will change depending on which kick button you use for it; the stronger the button the farther she flies across the screen.

this where i started to see where sf6 feels more like "sf3 modernized".

street fighter 3 super arts:

• each have different lengths and stocks of meter (makoto SA1 in 3rd strike is one long gauge that you can only hold one maximum stock of, while her SA2 is a bit shorter and you can stock up to two uses of it).
• are mutually exclusive in a match (so if you pick a character's SA1, you're not going to be able to use 2 or 3 unless you go back to character select and change it).
• compete with EX moves for meter usage--using an EX move will use up some of the super arts meter.

street fighter 6 super arts:

• all have the same meter length and the same amount of stocks (you can hold 3 super arts stocks at maximum).
• are not mutually exclusive in a match--using super art 1 requires 1 stock, super art 2 requires 2, super art 3 requires 3, but they're all available to you without having to go back to character select.
• do not compete with EX moves (or Overdrive moves, as they're called in SF6) for meter usage--super arts meter is just for super arts, and the Drive Meter is for Overdrives.

the sf6 implementation basically condenses a few concepts from sf3 at once. players don't have to strategize as much about which super art they have to "take" with them into the fight, and can just use them as they become available. there's less worry about how frequently or infrequently any given super art can be used in a match, in the sense that the meter lengths are all equal. super arts can also synchronize with overdrives in ways that are still calculated but less constrained than having both of them draw from the same meter would allow. i alluded to this in my previous sf6 beta 2 post, but juri, with 2 bars of drive meter and 1 super art stock, can guarantee an easy combo into super art 1--and the powered up version of it at that. there's still an element of risk and resource management (do i want to burn both of these resources at the same time? will it kill? so on), but they're linked together without being tangled together.

this is another big one. parries in SF3 are...divisive, to say the least. basically, by tapping either forward (for high and mid attacks) or down (for low attacks) right as an attack is about to hit, you can parry it. unlike blocking, parries don't cause you to take any chip damage from special moves. additionally, a successful parry will give you a bit of meter and generally lets you punish people once you have the timing windows correct. while it's a powerful and very interesting mechanic, there was a general sentiment that it made fireballs way weaker in SF3 because, well. why block a fireball when you can parry it?

now, granted, because you can't do a parry input "defensively" (which is to say, you have to commit to it--trying to go back to a block when you fumble a parry doesn't quite work), it's not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds on paper, but it's not as simple a system to master as it sounds like. SF6 has functionally left parries mostly the same in the form of "drive parries", but:

• rather than tapping forward or down, you press MP+MK to parry, and you can hold it to keep parrying. this makes parrying multiple moves a lot easier, and so far as i know you don't have to account for what side your opponent is attacking you from like you would in sf3. however, sf6 parry takes about half a chunk of a bar from the drive gauge, and holding the parry will drain more gauge; successfully parrying an attack will return some of the drive gauge that was spent.
• unlike sf3 parrying, sf6 parries do have an actual attempt and whiff animation, meaning that the opponent will be able to very easily tell when you went for it and will have an easier time punishing it if you botch it.
• you can also cancel out of a held drive parry with a "parry drive rush", which is basically the already existing drive rush mechanic.
• if you are able to time a parry input perfectly (a la SF3), then you get a Perfect Parry, which has a much stronger visual effect and basically guarantees a punish of your choice.

these changes largely surface parrying in a way that wasn't apparent in sf3 on a casual glance AND tie it in with the drive mechanics already present, while reducing some of the difficulty in using parries in the first place. at the same time, none of the risk of using a parry is removed either. it's a marriage of making it a more visibly perceivable mechanic and also making it easier to use.

this--this is where i feel like the way sf6 is somewhat shucking sf4 and sf5's legacy really becomes apparent.

so to bring this back to yoshinori ono, who was the producer for all the street fighter 4 games, and headed up street fighter 5 till about 2020 when he left capcom--i feel like a large portion of what he and his team did with sf4 was a counter-reaction to sf3. ex moves remain, but every character is back to a standard super meter gauge. each character only has one super move they can use, period. parries are out, replaced with the armored focus attack mechanic (and focus attack dash cancels, retaining at least some of the more technical nature of an attack that intercepts and allows for offensive openings that parries did, but unlike parries, you take damage when you focus attack through something and some moves can outright break a focus attack wide open).

the biggest change was the introduction of the ultra combo--a high damage move that only became available once you lost a certain amount of health, and then got stronger if you lost more. the proper use of an ultra could pretty much take a match and completely turn it around due to the sheer amount of power it could pump out. though later versions of sf4 would give you the option to pick between two ultra combos (or take both with reduced effects for each), sf4's initial release only gave you one ultra per character. (remember this for later.)

street fighter v kept the standardized super meter + one super move rule from sf4, but the ultra combo is replaced by the v-system, specifically the v-trigger. a v-trigger is either a limited time power-up state, a permanent state, or a powerful one-use move that has incredible versatility. you can only use the v-trigger by filling up your v-meter (either by getting hit or using your character's unique v-skill) and each v-trigger will have its own length of v-meter--some are 1 bar long, others are 2, others are 3. more often than not most characters will only have v-trigger available when they've been busted up a bit--at which point, landing a v-trigger in the right circumstance more or less lets them pop off. though later versions of sf5 would give you the option to pick one v-trigger or the other (with the same caveat applied separately to your v-skill choice), sf5's initial release only gave you one v-skill and one v-trigger per character. (this should sound familiar.)

ultra combos and v-triggers are what i call a crisis mechanic--something that only becomes available when your ass is in the fire and you need something that can flip the tables HARD if you use it right. v-triggers in particular were extremely central to certain characters, as their kits were...a lot more lackluster without some of the power afforded by specific v-triggers, and the v-system itself focused on only those two things. it wasn't until around or after ono left capcom that the new producers started integrating other options into the v-system, such as the v-shift for an additional defensive option that didn't have to do with concentrating your offense.

sf6...has one thing that's kind of like a crisis mechanic. your super art 3 becomes a critical art when you're at low health, and does more damage when so. that's about it. it's an important option to consider but it's not such a domineering thing as an ultra combo is, or a v-trigger is. you have other options that you can weigh alongside whether or not you want to pop off with a sa3/critical art or not (drive setups, choosing to pop a super art 2 instead, so on), whereas a v-trigger or an ultra is the fighting game equivalent of chekov's gun--when you see it readied up you know someone's going to try to use it by the time the third act rolls around. and while street fighter 2 doesn't have ex moves or ultra combos or v-triggers, the nature of that game made it such that a super move (and you only had one super move, sound familiar?) was functionally a lot like an ultra combo or a v-trigger--high-damage, or high table-turning potential.

and that's why I said earlier that ono's attachment to street fighter 2 was a large part of what constrained sf4 and sf5 a bit too much--or maybe, to be fair, sf5 more so. functionally--and I do not mean this reductively--sf4's core conceit was "make it sf2 but with an armored move, ex moves, and an even more super-y super move." sf5's core conceit was "make it sf2 but everyone gets an install super or something kind of like an ultra but not, strip some things out of their kits, and give them one v-skill to make up the difference". this is not explicitly a bad thing per se, but street fighter 2 is a very particular game, and not everyone wants to be playing it with a coat and a half of new paint.