Street Fighter 6 just celebrated its seventh month on shelves and the wider conversation surrounding its characters and their overall strengths has been (as is virtually always the case with AAA releases) rife with both debate and, to a lesser but palpable extent, evolution.
A recent evolution has caused quite the stir in fighting game community channels, however, as a character that’s been regarded as matter of fact a whole head and shoulders above almost all the rest, Ken Masters, is suddenly being regarded as landing somewhere between 5th and 10th on the overall tier list. It’s not just a gaggle of inexperienced loud mouths on Twitter that’re saying this, either, but instead a collection of some of the most reputable players on the planet, including BST|Daigo “The Beast” Umehara.
This widely started on Christmas Eve when Chris Tatarian, a two time Capcom Cup finalist and through the years Ken main, tweeted this:
“I’ve said Ken is godlike from day one, but the meta has developed so much over the last few months, that I don’t think Ken is top 5 anymore,” starts the post. “My Top 5: JP, Luke, DJ, Chun, Rashid. Followed by: Cammy, Marisa/Guile, Ken. Twitter will drag me for this, but he’s overhyped.”
Indeed this dissenting opinion was immediately pounced upon by plenty of baffled Twitter users who figured Tatarian must be joking. This was perhaps best exemplified by the addition from two time Capcom Cup Champion, Bandits|MenaRD, who used a “we’re witnessing mental illness” Stephen A. Smith meme to express his feelings.
Said meme seemingly expressed the feelings of many others, as it received over five times as many “likes” as the original post above it did. Still, Tatarian took to his stream to explain in more detail than could ever be possible in an angry Twitter exchange, explaining why Ken wasn’t as good as people had come to think.
Amid his arguments were things such as the fact that “everyone perfect parries Dragonlash now,” (Dragonlash is a leaping kick that leaves Ken at advantage in his foe’s face when it’s blocked) and that while Ken is surely strong, other characters enjoy much better benefits and privileges than he does.
The FGC social media didn’t seem all that convinced, but the sentiment didn’t die. 00|Phenom, a fellow high level Ken player from Norway who shares Tatarian’s views, traveled to Japan to participate in FAV Cup, and while there asked a handful of highly respected Japanese players where they thought Ken ranked.
The aforementioned Daigo noted that Ken was either sixth or seventh adding surprising momentum to the initial claims that the fighter wasn’t in the top three. More major voices chimed in with similar opinions as GyoGun|Moke and then Saishunkan|Shuto and then Rohto|Tokido all opined that Ken was top 5 or worse.
Coincidentally, the grand finals of FAV Cup 2023 wound up being a Ken mirror as Evo champion NASR|Angrybird bested Tokido. Tatarian would speak to this as well, saying that a Ken mirror in grand finals was likely simply because three of the seven invited players were Ken mains to begin with.
This rapidly growing notion (FAV|Ryusei added his voice on Wednesday) that the character is closer to simply being above average has proven a hard pill for the larger SF6 community to swallow, and both Catalyst and I chime in with our thoughts in our latest Talk and Block discussion, which you can view in the video below. Give it a watch and let us know where you land in this current debate in the comments.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Top Players Saying Ken Isn’t Top 3
07:40 – Characters Can Easily Fall Off After Initial Months
14:48 – Downplaying and Being Honest about Your Main
18:49 – Who is Better Than Ken?