Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode will go down as a great attempt on Capcom’s part to create a robust single-player addition to the game’s main and core fighting game options. It gives players the option to experience a several-hours-long quest that involves trekking across Metro City and Nayshall, and visit other Street Fighter characters around the world. For as fun as it is, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Let’s go through the features that could use adjustments as Capcom continues to update the game over time.
7. Let Players Use Different Names for the Mode
Carlos, seen here using is broken sword attack against the "Fighter." (It's a name made for the screenshot.)
The player avatar is referred to by their username in the World Tour mode, usually when an NPC addresses them directly in a conversation. Every time this happens is a reminder of how awkward the handle on whatever platform you’re playing the game on likely sounds in what resembles a casual conversation. It feels goofy every time it’s uttered, and likely won’t fit the name of a character.
The game sadly forces the player to use their handle as the main name for their avatar throughout the mode, with no option to change it outside of altering the entire username. It’s enough to take anyone out of the experience, unless the player is among the few e lucky souls who nailed down a more conventional-sounding online handle before it was taken. Chances are, they didn’t. Not to mention that no one should have to alter that name just for THIS mode.
It would be nice if players had the option to use a separate name for their avatar. The World Tour mode, after all, doesn’t have many features that require a persistent internet connection, unless they venture into the Battle Hub. The system and overall game should be able to handle players having two separate names for distinct modes and environments. It doesn’t sound too difficult to implement, so Capcom should add the option in a future update. A mode that allows for character customization should allow for further creation, after all.
6. Less Random Encounters
There are a LOT of random encounters to deal with. Too many.
There are too many sections in both Metro City and Nayshall with ridiculous encounter rates. Being physically assaulted by one enemy is one thing, in a skirmish likely to wrap up quickly. But this gets overbearing when another one guns right for the avatar before they can even start moving again.
This reaches its worst point as the player is strolling through narrow alleyways in both cities, small crevices in the mountains, and smaller locations in buildings. These same enemies will get terrified of the player after they get too powerful, but it will take hours before the avatar reaches that over-leveled point for specific locations.
Here’s a suggestion: Lower the number of enemies that want to fight the player, and increase the number of them that will fight the player in battles themselves. Also increase the experience points each encounter provides. This will cut down on the grind of wandering through specific locations to keep the adventure going at a nice pace, and lower the repetitiveness and annoyance.
5. Enemies with More Diverse Move Sets
You only fight a small handful of enemy types across the game's lengthy World Tour.
The enemy encounters wouldn’t feel as repetitive if so many of the enemies themselves didn’t have the same move sets. Every other battle with human enemies features one capable of performing a slow dropkick and a typhoon-style command throw in addition to their normal attacks, or more petite humans which throw plenty of knives. Once you’ve fought one of them, sometimes simultaneously, you’ve nearly fought them all.
Let’s mix this up by throwing more enemies at the player capable of using other attacks, more from the main 20 characters themselves. Their move sets can be further expanded when more characters are added. The combination of this and lowering the overall encounter rate will make random fights easier to bear thanks to added variety.
The added variety should absolutely NOT come in the form of more machinery that can be annoying to fight, including evil Roombas, drones, and, uh, those possessed refrigerators. They do make for some nice variety, though, unless the opponents are two fridges that can suck the avatar in with little room for a counterattack.. It’s not as fun as it sounds.
4. Eliminate the Overlapping Command Move Restrictions
There's a wide variety of moves, but not all of them can be used.
The World Tour mode allows for plenty of freedom when it comes to forming the avatar’s move set, especially after all the slots for extra special moves have been unlocked. But there’s an annoying command restriction preventing this flexibility from being as good as it can be. The avatar, for instance, can’t have moves that require quarter-circle forward punch and quarter-circle forward kick commands equipped simultaneously, despite this not being a problem for several characters on the roster.
It's still possible to create broken avatar combinations, but it would be nice to have the entire move set at the disposal of the avatar when they have one Style equipped. If Ken’s style is being used, for instance, it would be nice to have the Shoryuken and Dragonlash Kick at the avatar’s disposal simultaneously. Both require forward, down, down-forward commands, but require pressing the punch and kick buttons for their final executions, respectively. This limitation serves as nothing more than an annoyance, and it would be nice and useful to see it removed.
Capcom likely added this limitation so players would be forced to make their avatar move sets diverse. But come on, let the player be the decision-maker there.
3. More Fun Interactions with Street Fighter Characters
The interactions between the Avatar and the Street Fighter characters are some of the best World Tour moments, like the one between the Avatar and Jamie here.
It’s nice that the avatar has the option to meet the Street Fighter characters and learn their move sets over time after equipping their Styles. It’s even more entertaining and often funny when they explain their stories and purposes for fighting with the avatar, with more conversations unlocking after the Styles are leveled up. There are several of them for the 20 characters available now, but they sadly stop after the avatar reaches level 20 with their Styles.
The conversations and text messages that follow afterward are so good that Capcom should add more. It’s great to learn that Cammy gets nervous when she doesn’t hear back from people she texts (not to mention how relatable it is), or how Ryu is clearly struggling to learn how to use the phone given to him by a friend (likely Ken). Learning about Dee Jay’s continuing friendship with Fei Long, to the point of starring in one of his movies, is similarly great. It’s also worth hearing about how Juri misses her BFF C. Viper.
More characters with their own stories will undoubtedly be added through future updates to the World Tour. But it would be great if the existing characters were given more conversations with the avatar. If this necessitates adding more artwork along with this, then do that too.
2. More Hangout Places
More places to chill with more arcade machines, please.
Arcade cabinets are scattered around both cities in the World Tour mode, including those for (of course) Final Fight and Son Son. More arcade games are available in the Battle Hub, where players can also gather to fight each other in Ranked online play, engage in ridiculous (but fun) avatar battles, and talk to each other in general.
But it would be nice if there were more hangout places in the World Tour mode in general. It’s hilarious to see arcade cabinets in awkward and seemingly-random spots like in alleyways not too far from enemies and near barely-running train stations. It’s also very nice of the enemies to let you play your little arcade game and hold off on attacking you until after you’ve either finished it or got a Game Over. It would be even better if there were full arcades in the World Tour itself to hangout, similar to those in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon titles.
The entire World Tour mode feels like a “lite” version of a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, and it would benefit the locations if they had more optional side content for the player to do. It would be fun to hang out in arcades, or in places like food establishments and bars. These would exist in addition to the food stands that exist in Metro City and Nayshall.
1. Meaningful Story Encounters
The story-related encounters in the World Tour are also good. But they're few and far between.
One of the biggest issues with Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode is how the story feels undercooked and unfinished. It starts with plenty of potential, with Luke sending the avatar out on their way to learn the ways of the Street Fighter, with the player experiencing a developing story. But the player should be involved in more meaningful and dramatic story events and happenings with the World Tour’s original characters and the playable Street Fighter characters.
As it is, the player feels like they’re being sent on a series of fetch quests, the kind that would barely qualify as side quests in most games these days. This makes parts of the World Tour a slog to get through, but it doesn’t prevent it from being worth playing thanks to the fights, exploration, and other fun activities. It would be welcome if the other characters who are secluded in their own little environments around the world were more involved with the story too.
It’s clear there’s more to come, because the World Tour’s ending feels like the closure of only the first chapter in a potential series of them. Perhaps Capcom’s goal involves giving this an actual ending. If not, that should be on the itinerary too.
Documenting the changes the World Tour needs is important, because there’s no way that Capcom is leaving this here. The mode just… ends, with nothing even close to closure. But that’s fine for now. The development team assuredly plans to update it with more content beyond seasonal outfits and collaborations like those for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Updates should come with future seasons and their Fighter Passes, which themselves will include new characters that should also come to this game.
