Akuma’s been out in the wild for almost three weeks already in Street Fighter 6 alongside the Season 2 balance update, and fans are extremely curious to see how the typically top tier demon performs on the competitive level.
One of the best players in the world most recognized for his Akuma play, Rohto|Tokido, is now saying he won’t be making the switch to his old main in SF6.
During a recent live stream (while he’s ironically checking out EventHubs), an American fan asks Tokido directly if he’s still playing Akuma or if he’s planning to stick it out with Ken now.
The long time pro had a pretty direct answer.
“I will be playing only Ken, for various reasons, please clip it,” replies Tokido.
He then quickly moves on to other subjects, so he doesn’t go farther into what those reasons are exactly.
Tokido said he will stick with Ken from now, for various reasons (and said “please clip this”)
Last week Tokido also said on his livestream that he would stick with only Akuma for BAM, then used Akuma for one match and won the tournament with mostly Ken pic.twitter.com/j0R9arBgIr
— HiFight(ハイファイト) (@HiFightTH) June 10, 2024
Previously, Tokido released a video after using Akuma for a week where he sounded quite a bit more positive about using the demon while still getting used to him.
He does note how he has to play differently compared to Ken in seemingly more aggressive fashion to push his agenda and try and force advantage situations while the other Shoto can more comfortably sit back and wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.
Tokido also talks about having some difficulty switching between them because their combo structures are surprisingly quite separate from each other.
As for matchups, the competitor says JP was giving him trouble as well as Zangief and Guile requiring some special countermeasures.
Everyone laughs in the chat when he said that
(they don’t believe this at all) pic.twitter.com/W4idN0AI4J— HiFight(ハイファイト) (@HiFightTH) June 10, 2024
We do have to note, however, too that Tokido’s chat was laughing about what he was saying about sticking with Ken because at the end of this video, he stated he was going to try and run mostly Akuma at Battle Arena Melbourne 2024.
Tokido did win the event, but he also basically exclusively played Ken after the first few rounds.
There’s obviously nothing preventing him from changing his mind further as he spends more time with SF6’s second season, so we’ll see if the demon returns by his hands.