Capcom’s 2023 fighting game Street Fighter 6 has been a bit stagnant since release. The nature of current-day fighting games demand at least a modicum of change to keep the player base happy and curious, and aside from the four DLC characters, that change has been largely absent from Street Fighter 6. Luckily for those still playing it looks like Street Fighter 6 Season 2 is on the horizon, and it brings Akuma with it. This balance patch brings changes for most if not all characters, and a Twitter thread of suspected changes can be found below.

SFV Season 2 (Akuma Ver.) Chagelist Summary Thread by Koichi

▼Everyone
– Remove throw oki after back throw

▼Ryu
– Can choose between normal and denjin charged Hadoken/Hashogeki
(Heavy will be denjin) https://t.co/coApPIuDPn

— HiFight(ハイファイト) (@HiFightTH) May 1, 2024

As stated in the thread, the event the Season 2 Akuma preview is held on only allow so much time playing the game and don’t allow training mode or even pictures or videos, so a lot of this is speculation. However, some changes, such as the much demanded change to Ryu’s Denjin charge, are undeniable if the sources aren’t straight up lying much like how some changes like Jamie’s forward throw adding a drink stack were obvious in the Ed patch.

I fully recommend reading the full thread if you’re interested, but the most notable things so far are the changes to Drive Reversal, Ryu’s Denjin charge, the universal oki removal on a back throw, some minor Luke nerfs and, hilariously, Honda nerfs. Now again, nothing is confirmed, and at this point it is all speculation, however the reports seem reasonable enough.

Too reasonable, in fact. A lot of the community find themselves wishing that the much anticipated Season 2 change would bring more to the table than some character adjustments, many members of the community were hoping for system-wide changes to the Drive System as a whole, or at least something to shake up the relentlessly rushdown oriented style of play the game encourages, especially considering Capcom’s strict “one patch a year” policy that they’ve taken with the game.

These patch notes sure don’t feel like a “one patch a year” level of magnitude, lol

— shuckle (@ssshuckle) May 1, 2024

But, as stated, these changes are all speculation and there aren’t even full patch notes out yet. We’ll see for sure if Season 2 can make a splash in the game when Akuma releases on May 22nd.