Modern Controls in Street Fighter 6 have brought a whole new generation of players into not only the game but the genre. Taking away directional inputs and replacing them with intuitive single-button alternatives allows just about anyone to pick up the game and see cool stuff happening on screen.
Of course, this simplicity does come at a cost. Modern Controls comes with a hefty damage reduction in addition to the removal of many basic attacks due to the lower button count required to play. This also means that some characters really don’t mesh with Modern quite as well as others, and we are going to go over them in this guide.
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E. Honda
E. Honda is pretty darn notorious in Street Fighter 6. He is often ranked as one of the easiest characters to play, whilst simultaneously being considered pretty top-tier in terms of raw power. This, naturally, makes him a target for Modern Controls. However, we think E. Honda doesn’t go well with this control method.
Firstly, he loses far too much in the exchange. His neutral game – which is normally very strong – takes a huge hit. He loses out on some of his best buttons both on the ground and in the air. Not only that, half of his specials are Charge Motions – something Modern Controls don’t really remove. Throw in that 20 percent damage reduction and Honda feels off.
Simply put, you may as well just learn how to play E. Honda in classic since you are losing a lot with Modern and you aren’t gaining anywhere near enough to justify it.
Marisa
Marisa is very similar to Honda in many ways. They are both large, slow characters who rely on heavy-hitting attacks, and they both really struggle to do that with Modern. Marisa takes a huge damage nerf because percentage-based damage reduction hurts characters who do higher damage per hit.
Not only that, but Marisa loses her best aerial and her neutral game takes a bit of a hit too. The plus side is that you don’t have to do directional inputs for her Specials, but Marisa has some of the easiest inputs in the game. We are firmly in the camp that Marisa should just be played in Classic. It’s not much harder and you get way more.
Guile
Guile is interesting because he does work pretty well with Modern. This begs the question: Why is Guile so high on this list? Well, that’s because Guile isn’t a hard character to learn in classic, and like with Honda, Guile uses Charge Motions. If you want to use his Specials, you are going to have to learn to Charge anyway, so why not just dip into Classic?
Of course, Guile’s nerfs in Modern exist too. Damage aside, Guile can no longer control the speed of his Sonic Booms. This is a key aspect of his character, and sure, you can manually input the Special to vary speeds, but at that point, why not play Classic? Oh, and Guile loses some of his best poking tools making his neutral game decidedly worse.
Blanka
Blanka is a toolbox filled to the brim with specials and interesting ways to approach any given scenario. He is, in short, a very technical character. This does not translate well to Modern because he has far too many options to map to the Modern scheme. If you play Modern Blanka, you struggle.
Blanka loses out on so many of his options that he becomes overly predictable. When you only have a tiny portion of your kit available, your opponents will start to read you like a book. Throw in damage reduction and the standard removal of neutrals and Blanka really struggles to be Blanka.
JP
JP easily takes the top spot for us when it comes to the worst character to use Modern Controls. JP is all about projectiles. Do you know what Modern removes? Most of his projectiles. This functionally makes JP unplayable because he’s too easy to read and his damage is too low.
Considering JP struggles to handle pressure to begin with, he really doesn’t get to do anything with Modern. He will not be able to keep his opponents away, and if they get in, he will struggle to stand up to a melee-based offensive. Avoid JP like the plague unless you are willing to learn him in Classic.
That’s all we have on controllers today. Be sure to check out our other articles for more Street Fighter 6 guides, lists, and the latest news.
