Hiya!

Capcom has gone all out with promoting Akuma, the latest character to join Street Fighter 6‘s roster. Not only did the release him along with the 3rd Outfits for the the Year 1 DLC characters, they also revamped the game’s Battle Hub to add more Akuma as they’re devoting a good chunk of the rest of the month with their Giant Attack promotion, wherein you and a group of your online buddies chuck a powerful Hadoken in the hopes of defeating the gigantic Akuma hologram in the middle of the Battle Hub!

You cannot, however, just keep on throwing plasma at the giant red Akuma in the middle. You do have to gain something called Attack Points. You can earn Attack points by doing various activities in the Battle Hub, like playing against other players on the arcade cabinets like normal. However, you can earn a huge amount of Attack Points by defeating the SIrN versions of Akuma as each time you defeat him, you get 4,000 Attack Points! Honestly, the easiest way to beat SIrN Akuma is going through an Avatar Battle with him as a Level 100 Avatar with the necessary abilities, like Uou’s Belt, which grant the wearer the Fatal Counter buff, to absolutely destroy him.

If you’re like me, you might want to challenge yourself and defeat SIrN the intended way: playing on the designated arcade cabinets with your favorite character. However, the SIrN Akuma you face off in these cabinets is much more difficult as the CPU is generally an input reading bastard, builds Drive and Super Meter incredibly fast, shakes off Burnout much faster than normal and he even has 2 additional Supers on top of the ones regular Akuma already has!

SIrN Akuma has proven to be a nightmare for a lot of players, even pro players who would wipe the floor with me. This makes beating him look like a daunting task because, if someone like Justin Wong, an EVO Champion several times over, struggles to beat him, what chance to us casuals have?

Well, here’s the thing: I have beating SIrN Akuma. I have beaten him several times. In fact, that’s me being humble as, in a first-to-ten match I had with him last night, I beat him 10 to 2! I honestly stopped playing because, well, I got bored because, once I picked up the winning strategy, all I had to do was continue to do it and, based on that first-to-ten match, it works more than 80% of the time!

First, we do have to talk about SIrN Akuma’s movelist. He’s basically a slightly nerfed version of Shin Akuma. That is to say he’s stronger than regular Akuma but not as strong as Shin Akuma. He can choose to throw out 2 fireballs while jumping instead of just 1. His normals are basically like regular Street Fighter 6 Akuma and he also gets all of his Super Arts. However, SIrN Akuma gains a couple of new Level 2 Super Arts from his past. SIrN Akuma can do the Kongou Kokuretsu Zan pillar super from Street Fighter III: Third Strike and the Misogi teleporting downward chop from Capcom vs. SNK 2. Fun fact: you can actually play as SIrN Akuma but there’s no way you’ll be able to do so in an actual match as it involves taunting and Akuma eating a riceball. No, really.

Now, the biggest mistake I see a lot of players do when facing off against SIrN Akuma is that they’re treating him like a human opponent. You have to remember he’s CPU controlled and he’s constantly reading your inputs. I’ve seen some people trying to trick SIrN Akuma with shimmies and frame traps. He won’t usually fall for those tricks. However, as SIrN Akuma is just a CPU following a program, there are definitely ways to exploit this, which is why I said it’s much easier to beat him than you would think.

I do have to preface that I use Guile because I’m the most comfortable using charge characters. However, how I discovered the AI exploit against SIrN Akuma doesn’t really involve using his charge moves like his Sonic Boom or his Flash Kick. Rather, the move that trips up SIrN Akuma is his Sonic Blade, which is where Guile tosses a stationary projectile right in front of him. For some strange reason, the SIrN Akuma AI can’t really figure out how to deal with it. Sometimes, he’ll just run right into it with a Drive Rush. Other times, he’ll try to jump kick it for some reason. Most of the time, he’ll try to jump over it. Well, since tossing the Sonic Blade allows Guile to buffer a downward charge, you can knock them away with a Flash Kick. Afterward, rinse and repeat to win.

The only real tricky part to this strategy is knocking SIrN Akuma down so Guile can lay down the Sonic Blade safely. The best way I’ve found is to counter SIrN Akuma with an Overdrive Flash Kick while they’re doing something. You can do so whenever he does try to jump at you but the most obvious way is to do an Overdrive Flash Kick when SIrN Akuma does a Drive Rush as he’ll always go for an attack and never try to fake you out. Remember: he’s just a CPU following a program so he’ll never adjust to this. Once you knock SIrN Akuma on their back, immediately throw out the heavy version of the Sonic Blade and repeat the strategy.

Now, this may be my strategy to beat out SIrN Akuma easily but I know there had to be other ways to do it. Guess what? I found a couple of other braindead ways to beat this supposedly difficult CPU character. SIrN Akuma is also highly susceptible to Cammy‘s Fatal Leg Twister throw from her Hooligan Combination. SIrN Akuma is also helpless against the power of E. Honda‘s butt as you can spam his Sumo Smash repeatedly to victory.

Honestly, if I knew about the E. Honda technique, I would’ve written about that first. However, I do think the Guile technique I discovered is much more fun as you do have to use your brain a little bit. So, if you just want to get that victory against SIrN Akuma, you now have 3 ways to do it. If you’re not all that good, then just turn on Modern E. Honda and butt slam your way to victory. If you want a little more pizzaz, use the Guile tech. Still, just remember you’re fighting a CPU. Don’t try to get too fancy. Just do what you need to do to win. I don’t think SIrN Akuma will call you a spammer anyways.

Byee!

What’s your personal strategy to beating SIrN Akuma? Let me know in the comments section below!