During the first season of Street Fighter 6 Russian wrestler Zangief was considered lacking in many ways, but it seems developers may have given him a bit too much in the Season 2 update as a growing number of notable voices in the community are deeming him overly powerful.
Justin Wong joins Kizzie Kay in a recent upload from Fighting Game Select to explain why he feels the Russian Cyclone might be over-tuned here in Season 2.
Indeed it wasn’t more than a few weeks back that we heard Evo 2024 champion FLY|Punk place Zangief at the top of his tier list, and this controversial placement was only backed up by
Zangief user AMG|Kobayan’s big win at Topanga this year.
Wong makes an interesting argument during the video, contrasting the power of a command grab-based fighter like Zangief with the zoning type characters that so often have the edge over grapplers.
He mentions how people tend to get upset when either zoners or grapplers become too strong in Street Fighter games, but that also zoning is only cheap when a character can spam their zoning abilities without much caution.
This, Wong argues, isn’t the case in Street Fighter 6 as zoners are constantly at risk thanks to Drive System mechanics as well as many individual character tools. What’s more, one good jump (or otherwise successful advance) from Gief can quickly spell the end for zoners like Guile or JP.
There’s a whole lot more to the conversation as Justin and Kizzie cover the topic of Zangief’s current status in SF6. Check it all out in the full video below and chime in with your thoughts on the matter in the comments afterwards.