The latest update for Street Fighter 6 has been out for around a week now and it’s pretty huge. While a lot of the focus has been on the latest DLC character, Terry Bogard, Capcom also added a few new bells and whistles to the game. The latest update also included some balance changes for some of the characters as well as a relatively hefty update to the moves you can give your Avatar. Not only can you give your World Tour persona Terry’s moves, you can also give him or her several moves from Joe Higashi, Blue Mary and even Trasher and Rudra‘s special attacks!

However, the most interesting update Capcom added to Street Fighter 6 is the new V-Rival setup. Created by Li-Fen, Chun-Li‘s genius adopted daughter, the V-Rival system can be found in the Battle Hub near the main entrance. You will be able to see Li-Fen as well as Sim Sim, the machine that houses the V-Rival system. By interacting with Sim Sim, you can play against AI simulations of other Street Fighter 6 characters and their skill level can be adjusted from a one star Rookie player all the way to Master ranked opponents.

What makes the V-Rival unique is these AI opponents are supposedly not based on preprogrammed computer scripts. Rather, their reactions, combos and even mistakes are taken from other real life players of those same skill levels. Not only that, Li-Fen will supposedly give you valuable feedback to help you get better by analyzing your battles against Sim Sim’s V-Rival AI opponents.

Now, I immediately had some doubts about the entire V-Rival system. While it is a nice idea, I wasn’t really sure if Capcom was skilled enough to develop an AI that can actually simulate a human opponent. I had to see it for myself and, now that I’ve had some considerable time with the V-Rival system, I can say it’s good… but way away from being perfect.

Capcom did a reasonable job making the V-Rival opponents feel more human. If you’ve ever played against a Level 7 or Level 8 CPU opponent in Street Fighter 6’s Arcade mode, you can see the AI cheating as it’ll read your inputs, break each and every throw and react to all of your Drive Impact attempts. This CPU doesn’t play fair. The V-Rivals aren’t that broken. Sure, at Master ranks, they’ll break most of your throws and react to most of your Drive Impact attempts. But they won’t do it every time. I’m also surprised that they will even drop combos once in a while, which is a very human thing to do.

At the same time, unfortunately, the V-Rival AI opponents are play very inconsistently skill-wise. There are some moments where you can simply bully the Sim Sim controlled character by spamming buttons and there are moments when Sim Sim will hand the input reading Level 8 CPU his controller. So, sometimes Sim Sim can be too easy to beat, even if they’re set to Master rank.

Speaking of easy, it’s simply too easy to get to level up in the V-Rival setup. Going against other human opponents in Ranked can feel like a grind as it can feel your clawing for every win for just a few measly Rank points. With the V-Rival system, they’re practically giving Master ranks away! In order to level up to a higher rank, all you have to do is beat a V-Rival that has their AI set higher than yours.

So, if you’re something like three star Diamond Rank in Sim Sim’s systems, fighting a four star Diamond Ranked AI opponent will get you to four stars instantly! And since you don’t lose any points for losing, you can keep on playing against the same AI opponent until you eke out a win to rank up! I see this mostly as a mixed bag. For new players, it does give them a lot of incentive to keep on playing higher ranked AI opponents. But for those who are already Master ranks or have some more than decent skills, it’s not a challenge to get all of your characters to Master rank. I should know because I’ve gotten most of the roster to Master rank in the span of a week! And I don’t even have a single Master ranked character in real life!

I also do see this immediate positive feedback of leveling up to Master Rank a kind of detriment to some player’s improvement as there are going to be some of them who will shun real life opponents! As Li-Fen and the Sim Sim simulation system is in the Battle Hub, you will almost always see a crowd of people surrounding them. This can lead to the majority of Battle Hub’s arcade machines vacant as no one nowadays wants to play against another person! Hopefully, that’s just because the V-Rival system is still pretty fresh and it’s luster will fade out in a couple of weeks.

I do have to mention that you can be your own V-Rival! Yes, you can actually face against an AI version of yourself using Sim Sim! However, there is a prerequisite of playing at least ten online matches so that Capcom can gather enough fighting energy… I mean, information to create a simulation of yourself. It does recommend fifty but that can be difficult for me nowadays because, like I said, not many people are playing against other humans in the Battle Hub! I test out the “ten matches” version and, honestly, I don’t see it. I mean, I beat myself handily most of the time. If I were facing off against myself, I would assume the matches would be close. Nope! Still, this was the “ten matches” version so maybe it’ll be better if I put more online matches in?

Li-Fen also will give you some feedback after each match and, well, these aren’t all that helpful. It gives you praise for things that worked and she’ll try to give your suggestions on what you need to work on. Still, the feedback is very generic as it just tells you what happened in the match but never why you should be doing what you did in the match. Also, you can talk directly to Li-Fen to allegedly get more detailed advice and, once again, it’s more of the same thing. It’s nice but you won’t get any valuable tips and tricks from her.

I will say, while I do still think the V-Rival AI can be too easy, it can be a adequate training tool for most Street Fighter 6 players. I personally struggle performing counter Drive Impacts but, after playing against a few Master ranked Sim Sim characters, I was surprised to find out that I can now react to them more often. So I did kind of level up after using it. However, I can see this being much more useful for more intermediate players. Advanced players may find this a nice distraction but won’t really help elevate their gameplay all that much. Li-Fen doesn’t need to start from scratch but Sim Sim definitely needs a bit of an upgrade in the future.

Have you tried out Street Fighter 6’s V-Rival system yet? What was your experience like with it? Let me know in the comments section below!