Fighting games are some of the most competitive video games in the industry, with their highly advanced and technical skill expression that players must learn and master. These have been the cornerstone games for e-sports, seeing thousands of tournaments pop up like EVO, Apex and Dreamhack. With so many fighting games out there, we’d like to highlight some of the best games out there in no particular order.
Street Fighter 6
The newest entry in an absolutely classic video game franchise. Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 is a fighting game that focuses on the aspect of spacing, making sure that you’re out of reach from your opponent while keeping them in range at the same time. This is called “footsies” in the fighting game community. This creates an interesting and fluid dynamic where two players must find the right spacing and opportunity to set up a long string of combos.
New to Street Fighter 6 is the Drive Gauge. This mechanic is a combination of other Street Fighter mechanics like the Parry from SF3, Focus Attack from SF4 and Alpha Counter from SF Alpha into one mechanic. These are Drive Parry, Drive Impact, Drive Reversal, respectively. The Drive gauge can also be used to initiate a Drive Rush, which gives a burst of movement speed and enhanced attacks. As many potent offensive and defensive tools use up the Drive resource.
Street Fighter, in general, is responsible for the many gameplay conventions that most modern fighting games follow today. From terms like Dragon Punch and Shoto, many modern fighting games owe much to Street Fighter for setting up the building blocks for the genre today.
Mortal Kombat 1/Mortal Kombat Mobile
Another fighting game classic, NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat series is known for its guts and gore and visceral gameplay. Mortal Kombat goes all the way back to utilizing the most basic aspects of fighting games, with no gimmicks or special mechanics in its gameplay. It’s an honest game that’s all about trading strikes with your opponent, blocking a combo, going for the punishing move with your own combo, and giving your opponent a chance to strike back. Of course, iconic to this series is the Fatalities that all characters have, which is a means of styling on opponents one more time before the match ends.
Unlike most fighting games, many attacks are fairly telegraphed with clear wind-up, attack and recovery frames. One of the most fundamental things to learn in MK1 is reading frame data, as this is the deciding factor to winning matches in the game. By having a good understanding of each character’s frame data, players can use this to read and punish their opponents.
This series also has a mobile port with Mortal Kombat Mobile. In this port, Mortal Kombat Mobile accounts primarily collect characters and fight other players in Faction Wars. This includes different variants of the same character which have different move sets and other gameplay variety.
Tekken 8
Tekken is one of the first 3D fighting games that goes beyond the traditional 2D space that most games in this genre are set. In this game, players can sidestep and dodge attacks by going around enemies, something that is usually impossible for 2Ds. This adds a whole new dimension of complexity, with players now having to worry about their flanks and rear along with everything else. Not only that, but Tekken is one of the series that’s known for its extensive combo strings, where opponents will be juggled in the air for seconds. All this is what makes Tekken a highly technical game with a high skill ceiling, as players not only have to manage 3D space but also utilize it in an offensive and defensive manner.
One of Tekken’s most hype mechanics is the Rage system. When a player reaches low health, their moves become enhanced, and they can even pull off Rage Arts, which can deal extremely high damage. This system is the game’s way to make comebacks possible for disadvantaged players as this levels the playing field. Many iconic comeback moments in the FGC are thanks to the Rage state.
Also new to Tekken is the Heat system that gives aggressive players an advantage over defensive opponents. While in the Heat state, their character has access to new moves and can deal chip damage when hitting a blocking opponent.
Guilty Gear Strive
Arc System’s Guilty Gear Strive is a fast-paced game that’s famously not very restrictive with its combo stringing. This game is very unique in that it rewards hyper-aggressive play. In Guilty Gear, it’s encouraged to stay on the offensive while balancing defense as this game features its iconic Tensions gauge. As gamers play more actively, they’ll gain Tension, which is used for their super moves, and other high-damaging skills. Passive players are punished by losing their Tension meter and, thus, losing any offensive or defensive options in their kit.
In most fighting games, players must commit to an attack, which leaves them open and vulnerable to their opponents. But in Guilty Gear, the use of the Roman Cancel system lets you spend some of what’s on the meter to instantly end your character’s animation. This is super handy and versatile, allowing you to turn the tides in your favor.
Guilty Gear also pioneered the Burst mechanic, which allows you to immediately interrupt an opponent’s combo string and knock them away, resetting both players back to a neutral state. When you use a Burst at the right time, it will determine the outcome of a match. For players who like to play offensively and reactively, Guilty Gear Strive will scratch that itch just fine.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers is a unique fighting game as it does away with most of the genre’s staple mechanics. Unlike other fighting games, Super Smash Brothers is the pioneer of the “platform fighter” genre, where instead of hitting opponents to reduce their life, the goal is to knock an opponent off the stage and into the edge of the screen. To make knocking off an opponent easier, Smash Brothers uses a damage meter where the more hits a player takes, the more powerful they will be knocked back. This means that the game rewards creative gameplay instead of technical fighting game knowledge, as players who have taken more damage can still outplay their opponent using the arena to their advantage.
Smash Brothers also has items that occasionally drop in the arena, which have different utilities to help wielders knock their opponents back. When it comes to other games that have characters with long lists of combos, Smash Brothers keeps it nice and easy, with a more simplified list of moves. This makes the game more accessible to a wider market.
However, despite its simplicity, it also has a high skill ceiling that makes it a staple game for many e-sports tournaments, with pro players discovering new tech to beat the opposition. Despite this, Super Smash Brothers is the perfect party game to play with friends and family as it has a low barrier to entry and can be easily picked up by newcomers to the fighting game genre.
Dragon Ball Legends
Dragon Ball Legends is a unique mobile fighting game, as not only does it have the usual fighting game fundamentals, but it also has a card-based skill system that requires Ki to unleash devastating attacks. It is a 3D fighting game, so players have access to the X, Y, and Z axis, making combat much more complex. With so many iconic Dragon Ball characters to collect and face off against other Dragon Ball Legends accounts in PvP matches, this makes for an engaging fighting game experience like no other, emulating the same style of fighting as the legendary manga and anime have done.
In Dragon Ball Legends, spacing is important, as players can choose between long, medium, or short range. Each character has access to skills that excel at certain ranges like Blast Arts at long range and Strike Arts at short. Each character can unleash lethal moves with Ultimate Arts or an even more powerful Awakened Arts, which will guarantee a win if it connects with an opponent.
As a defensive option, players can dodge these attacks by using a Side Step or punish the attacking player with a Vanishing Step. Vanishing Step allows players who time their dodge right to immediately unleash a counterattack on an opponent.
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Marvel vs Capcom is one of the premier fighting games that features a tag team system. In this game, players select up to 3 characters in the roster, which can be swapped in and out at any time during a match. This creates a unique gameplay dynamic where players can string up extremely long combos by swapping out to another character mid-combo. While this game is considered by many to be somewhat imbalanced, many players in the FGC agree that this game is extremely fun and a joy to play.
Of course, as the name implies, players can choose from a list of Marvel heroes and villains along with Capcom’s line of video game characters like Dante and Vergil from Devil may Cry, Megaman, Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter and more. With an extensive cast of characters, UMvC3 is considered by many to be the best tag team fighting game in the industry.
One new mechanic that is special for UMvC3 is the X-Factor, which is a one-time use buff that increases a character’s speed and damage, which increases in strength the more characters are KO’d. Even with UMvC3 dating a couple of years now, many players still enjoy its chaotic gameplay and
Soulcalibur VI
Bandai’s Soulcalibur 6 has characters fighting with weapons instead of bare fists like most fighting games. This game features a cast of characters wielding weapons like swords, spears, polearms and even exotic weapons like whips, magic staves and claws. Like Tekken, it’s a 3D fighter game that uses the full range of motion but also incorporates a platform aspect, where knocking an opponent off the edge of the arena will also result in a win. The game has a unique 8-Way Run system where characters can move in all 8 directions freely.
One aspect of Soulcalibur is that most attacks are either horizontal or vertical. Vertical attacks have more range and distance, but these can be sidestepped away from. Horizontal attacks, on the other hand, have less range but can track players who are sidestepping.
Soulcalibur VI, even with its solid gameplay, is most famous for its in-depth character customization options, allowing players to make accurate characters from other media while implanting a move set from one of the many characters in its roster. This creates some funny and memorable online matches as most in the Soulcalibur community would rather fight with their own characters than use any of the pre-set characters. Still, Soulcalibur VI has a solid gameplay foundation with an excellent grasp in fundamentals.
King of Fighters XV
SnK’s King of Fighters is another classic staple in the fighting game industry that has as much history as Street Fighter. Like many other conventional fighting games, it follows the basic principles of footsies, setups and trading blow for blows that makes them so well regarded. However, King of Fighters XV takes a unique approach to the round-based structure of this genre.
KoF allows players to select 3 characters in the roster, but KoF does not play as a tag team fighting game. Instead, when a character’s life reaches zero, the round ends, and the next character is replaced. Meanwhile, the winner keeps their character, but instead of starting with a full health bar, they only regenerate a small portion of it back This means that if the winner takes the round with low health, they start with a disadvantage. This creates a tense but engaging match-up between players as those with a numbers disadvantage will have to make up for the loss of their character and avoid unnecessary damage.
Many players hold King of Fighters to a high standard as it takes the middle ground between the slow and methodical gameplay of Street Fighter and the frenetic action of anime fighting games like Guilty Gear, with its healthy balance of defensive and movement options. Its unique 3v3 round structure also creates a new style of meta, as players must manage their stock of characters. Overall, KoF XV is a great fighting game for players who want to shake it up from the traditional formula.
Samurai Shodown 2019
Out of all the fighting games listed here, Samurai Shodown is one of the slower games on this list. Unlike the others, Samurai Shodown makes all moves wind up with long and slow animations, which can be parried or sidestepped to unleash counterattacks. Much like real swordsmanship, this game is unique in that players are required to read their opponents and anticipate attacks while being extra mindful of their space. The game does away with long combo strings and aggressive rush downs in favor of highly damaging basic moves that punish those who play too offensively.
Matches in Samurai Shodown become mind games to see who will slip up and make a mistake first. For players who prefer to outsmart their opponents and slow down their gameplay, Samurai Shodown is the perfect place for them.