Hiya!
Capcom has revealed the roster for Street Fighter 6‘s Year 4 and, to the surprise of everyone, it consists of all new characters… and Final Fantasy VII‘s Tifa. So, the leaks were only a quarter correct with the most absurd pick, Tifa, being correct. I am quite surprised Capcom would decide to only have new characters in Year 4 but, in retrospect, the mere fact they got Tifa already made this a must-buy DLC pack.
Now, I would’ve preferred it if Capcom slowly integrated new characters instead of slapping all of them into a single DLC pack but this is what we have. Right now, all Capcom has shown us are the official key art and a quick press release about each character’s backstory. So, none of us have a clue on how each of them will play. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate! So, let me give you my guesses on how each of the Year 4 characters will be like. I’m going to try to predict their general archetype and their central “gimmick” which is something Capcom has been applying to all of the Street Fighter 6 characters.
Yasmine is the first ever Street Fighter character to come from the Philippines and, hey! I’m from the Philippines! So, yay!
Anyway, the official press release from Capcom says Yasmine is a high school girl and is looking for her brother. I’m assuming her brother is one of the people who were kidnapped and experimented on by Shadaloo from World Tour. Her official martial art is silat and eskrima, which she learned from her grandfather. Yasmine, while being generally shy around people, is a different person when fighting as she’s very confident in her combat prowess, using her quickness and her karambit crescent knife to take out her opponents.
It’s pretty obvious Yasmine is going to be a rushdown character because they mentioned how she uses her speed. I’m also picturing her to be a very mixup heavy character with some rushing in high and low attacks with her blade much like Nakoruru from Samurai Shodown.
However, there’s going to be much more than just high/low mixups as her central gimmick would be her ability to dodge attacks and/or go through opponents. To really emphasize her speed, I can see Capcom giving Yasmine a move where she can sidestep attacks. It would work something like a counter but, from that, she can immediately do a counterattack. She would also be able to use the sidestep move to get behind her opponents if she’s close enough. I’m also going to go on a limb here and predict her Level 2 Super Art will be an install where she can zip around the screen ala Jill Valentine from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 just to add some more chaos to her rushdown ability.
According to the official press release, Arjun is a policeman from India who was framed for killing his partner. He’s now on the run but, because of his strong sense of justice, he now travels the world searching for the real killer. His official fighting style is stego yoga, which is some fictional offshoot of yoga. Arjun can use stego yoga to focus on his breathing to unleash power. Side note: Arjun is not the same police officer from Dhalsim‘s story mode in Street Fighter V as that cop had a totally different name.
Despite all of his official art showing him being a hulking figure, I think Capcom is being a little bit deceptive. Yes, he will be a big guy, making you believe he’s going to either be a grappler or a brawler. It’s going to be half right as I believe Arjun will be a pure stance character like Gen from Street Fighter IV. What I mean is, much like Gen, Arjun will have 2 completely different fighting styles! The first will be his “inhale” stance, where he would control like a grappler and brawler. From this, he can enter his “exhale” stance and he would be able to do perform much quicker strikes and have a much faster Drive Rush. This also would be Arjun would have totally different normal attacks, command normals, target combos, special attacks and different Super Arts depending on what stance he’s in.
Like with Gen, he would be able to switch his stance on the fly and possibly even mid combo. Arjun would be a very complex character because of this as you would have to be very familiar with both his “inhale” and “exhale” stances as well as when would it be best to change stances.
Despite him being in the game from day one, Bosch is actually the most difficult to get a handle on as, well, he was kind of a doofus in World Tour mode. Here’s the thing: Capcom actually gave Bosch some special attacks unique to him. However, the problem is, because of him getting never dying thanks to Ingrid and your Avatar’s meddling in the time-space continuum, it’s kind of hard to determine which of his special moves he’ll retain.
Besides the ending, his revised backstory after the retcon is still pretty much the same, though. Bosch travelled from Nayshall to Metro City to train under Luke. He then combines Luke’s more modern fighting techniques with Nayshall’s traditional martial arts to create his own unique fighting style and actually win the martial arts tournament and not die from a bomb explosion.
This does actually lead me to believe Bosch could be another stance character, switching between a more ancient fighting stance to a more modern style. That could definitely be the case if I’m wrong about Arjun, which is very possible. However, I’m still going with my take on Arjun’s gimmick because I just like the idea of a big body having different stances.
I do think Capcom would make Bosch be the straightforward character of the Year 4 roster. He would have very good normals and his specials would be slight variations from Luke’s special attacks sans the Sand Blast projectile. His gameplay gimmick would also be a variation of Luke’s gimmick but Bosch would be able to tack on extra hits from all of his special attacks, not just the Overdrive versions. You would have to pick if you want more damage by adding that extra hit or get more oki by just doing the single attack. I’m just spitballing here because, besides giving him a stance, this is the best I can come up with based on his backstory.
Tifa
We then come to Tifa and we actually have a good deal of information on how Capcom will develop her in-game fighting style. During Summer Game Fest, they mentioned that materia will be “reimagined” to work with Street Fighter 6. The question is how and how will the combine that with Tifa’s already brawler style of fighting? Well, Tifa already has her “abilities” from Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth and I imagine most of these, like her Dive Kick and Whirling Uppercut, will be her special moves and some of them, like Reverse Gale and Rise and Fall will be her myriad of target combos.
So, where does the materia work into her gameplay gimmick? This might be a little hard to explain but, how I imagine it would work is Tifa will have access to the 3 primary material elements: fire, blizzard and thunder. Each of these elements will be connected to a different attack, such as fire being a fireball, blizzard being an ice mine she can place on the field like Kimberly‘s spray can Shuriken Bombs and thunder being something akin to JP‘s Departure portals or something like that. However, she will not have access to these moves all at once and she’ll have to switch between which materia to use. It would work like down, down with a kick button being how she picks which materia, with the light kick being fire, medium being ice and heavy kick being thunder. Then, doing something like down, down with the punch button will launch the special move. Like I said, it’s hard to explain but I hope you get the idea.
Now, unlike the other characters in Year 4, I actually have an idea of what Tifa’s Level 2 would be as we do have some representation from the Final Fantasy games. My idea is Tifa’s Level 2 would be Unbridled Strength and it would work as an install. It would work like Juri‘s Feng Shui Engine but, instead of her normals cancelling out to her other normals, Tifa’s Unbridled Strength would allow her to cancel her special moves into other special moves. So, for example, with Unbridled Strength active, she can do her Rise and Fall target combo, cancel that into her True Stike, then cancel that into her Whirling Uppercut, then cancel that into her Dive Kick. While this may seem very powerful, this would lead to some very heavy combo scaling to balance it out.
Will all of my predictions regarding how Street Fighter 6’s Year 4 characters actually be real? I don’t really think so but it’s just fun to think of all the possibilities of how these new characters will work with just a few images and writeups we have. If they are correct though, well, then I can say you heard it here first and Capcom should hire me on their developer team!
Byee!
Are you excited for Street Fighter 6’s Year 4 DLC character lineup? Are you just excited for Tifa? Let me know in the comments section below!
3rd World Geeks 