Street Fighter 6 just received its latest supposedly not large balance update (that turned out to be quite large after all) and the community is currently plugging away at trying to figure out what all the changes mean. Every character on the current playable roster received changes in some capacity, and among those who got the better hand was none other than classic Street Fighter poster boy Ryu.
The iconic and first-ever Shoto character has been struggling with a bit of an identity crisis in recent years due to the other Shotos in the last few Street Fighter games generally being better equipped, more interesting, and overall better at fighting in the streets making one of the franchise’s most popular characters used less often at high levels than you’d expect. But this new Street Fighter 6 balance patch may have finally gifted Ryu some of the changes people have been asking for, and as a result, he might actually end up having the best fireball game of all the Shotos currently.
Obviously, it is still incredibly early and we don’t know if the changes Ryu received are going to make him stronger overall or make him used more than the other Shotos. However, what we do have here are some very promising looking changes that target a particular aspect of his gameplan that has been the topic of discussion for a while now.
Simply put, many fans (and Capcom themselves) believe that Ryu’s strongest trait should generally be his fireball game. While Ken is more of the offense-heavy rushdown Shoto and Akuma is the glass cannon/strong everywhere Shoto, Ryu is more of an all-arounder that traditionally prides himself on having a powerful fireball game.
Ryu is Mr. Street Fighter, and one of the purest aspects of the entire franchise is throwing fireballs and Dragon Punching the jump attempt. This goes hand-in-hand with one of the most iconic footsies strings in all of Street Fighter, which is crouching medium kick into Hadoken, and while all Shotos tend to be able to do this it only feels right that Ryu should have the best version of this string.
Here in the latest version of Street Fighter 6, it’s looking like Ryu might actually finally have exactly that. One of his most important balance changes reads “window to cancel into a special move is now 2 frames faster” for his crouching medium kick, and that has some very powerful implications.
For starters, this means that Ryu can now toss out a crouching medium kick in neutral and cancel into a Hadoken two frames faster, which results in the light punch and medium punch versions recovering fast enough for him to counter Drive Impact should the opponent attempt to blow through the untrue blockstring with their own Drive Impact.
Even better still is what happens with heavy punch Hadoken now. From max distance, Ryu can now cancel his crouching medium kick into the heavy projectile and it will act as a true blockstring, and this means that the opponent can no longer mash an invincible reversal or a super in between the attacks and get through them.
This is a key pressure tool that, for whatever reason, Ryu just didn’t have before, and Capcom has seemed wary of giving it to him. But he has it now, which should make his footsies and neutral game that much better.
What’s great is that all of these buffs we’re talking about are centered around his normal Hadokens, not the Denjin Charged versions. So even if you haven’t stocked Denjin in a round, you still get the benefits of an overall better fireball game after this latest balance patch.
Twitter users seodesuyo and NurseLee have both put together quick videos that demonstrate exactly what these changes look like in action. In seodesuyo’s compilation, we see Ryu performing the various strengths of his crouching medium kick into fireball blockstring and how they interact now with an opponent trying to Drive Impact through.
We then see fellow Shotos Ken and Akuma attempting the same thing, and the examples show that both of them end up losing out where Ryu no longer does.
Check out both clips below to see one of Ryu’s biggest buffs in the latest Street Fighter 6 balance update in full effect.
リュウ、ケン、豪鬼
それぞれの先端中足波動を弱中強の順に
明らかにこれはリュウの強み pic.twitter.com/574KcIXVDi— セオです (@seodesuyo) December 2, 2024
Ryu Buffs – Crouch Medium Kick –
The “Window to cancel into a special move is now 2 frames faster.”
VERY. SIGNIFICANT. CHANGE!
A quick vid to show the Comparisons!
Dec 2, 2024 Balance Update SF6#SF6 #SF6_Ryu pic.twitter.com/ej4RhB3q9l— NurseLee (@NurseLee_) December 2, 2024