Nintendo Switch 2 owners have had to catch up on a lot when it comes to Street Fighter 6. Arriving alongside the launch of the console, Street Fighter 6 was thankfully made available with a handy pack that included the first two packs of DLC characters. Not long after that, the Year 3 DLC started to roll out. A little over a year later, we now have Year 4 getting going. Serious fans of the game are probably grabbing things as they come out, even if only the character packs. How about for everyone else, though? Does Year 4 look to measure up to past offerings? We don’t have much to go on yet as only the initial salvo is upon us, but let’s have a look at it anyway.
Year 4 is different from previous seasons in some ways and similar in others. It will still eventually include four new characters for the playable roster, but this time they’re all fresh faces. Yasmine, Arjun, Tifa, and Bosch are making their debuts as playable Street Fighter characters, though you might recognize a couple of them. Notably, Bosch is the rival character from Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode. Tifa is that Tifa, the one from the role-playing game featuring the spiky-haired lad with the large sword. She’ll likely be along around the release date of Final Fantasy VII Revelation early next year. This assortment of characters has met with a mixed reception among players as it lacks any of the famous Street Fighter faces who are yet to show up in the sixth game.
There are no new stages at all this time around, and for the first time ever, the new characters are not integrated into the World Tour mode. While many Street Fighter 6 players have more than had their fill of World Tour, it feels a little weird for Capcom to give up on it partway through Street Fighter 6’s life. Things like outfits that you would have earned from playing World Tour now require considerable grinding in other modes, and I’m not sure that outcome is good for anyone. It also means there’s even less story content for the new characters than we would usually get, and with these being new faces, that’s a real blow.
Still, the play’s the thing. We have one new character to get started with, and it’s Yasmine. She’s a high schooler from the Philippines who wields a karambit knife and uses a mix of Eskrima and Yaw-Yan. Her older brother suddenly went missing one day, and she’s trying to find out what happened to him. Interestingly, she swings between two very different personalities. In fights, her hair is tied back, and she’s incredibly intense, while in everyday life her hair is down and she’s actually kind of shy. Sure, why not? She’s almost immediately likable, and her style is certainly distinctive.
In terms of how she plays, she reminds me a bit of a cross between Fei-Long and maybe Balrog? She’s very rush-heavy, but she can also take to the air and drop on her foe in a couple of different ways. You’ll definitely want to keep in close quarters with her as she doesn’t have a ton of options at long-range. I’ve only spent a couple of weeks playing with her, so there’s still a lot of learning ahead of me, but so far I really like Yasmine. There’s a great flow to her moves, and I think she’ll find a lot of fans among players of all skill levels. My only real concern so far is whether or not she has the variety of moves to keep opponents guessing in the long run. Time will tell on that one.
Look, it’s fun to see old favorites return, but getting some new blood never hurts. If the rest of Year 4’s characters are as good as Yasmine, I think this will be a great addition to the game and well worth picking up. It’s harder than ever to recommend the Ultimate bundle over the Character pack due to the lack of new stages and the lack of integration of the new stuff with the World Tour mode, however. You might want to wait until more characters arrive to see if Year 4 is a good value for you, but I’m already really happy to have Yasmine in the roster and hope the other newcomers are just as cool.
