Street Fighter 6 features the brand-new Drive System. But how do you use it and what is it for? We’ll break it down for you in great detail here!
The new Street Fighter‘s Drive System is the end-all and be-all of its combat. If you want to go anywhere in your Street Fighter career mastering it will be elemental to your success.
That’s why we here at ESTNN have compiled a quick guide on how all the different Drive Systems work, how to use them, and how to counter them.
Quick Run Down on Street Fighter 6’s Drive Gauge and Burnout
Each character starts the round with 6 bars worth of Drive Gauge which will slowly recover after being all used up. All Drive abilities cost a certain amount of Drive Gauge and if you’re out you’ll enter the Burnout state.
Burnout is bad, not only do you lose access to all your Drive abilities all you’re more vulnerable against incoming attacks while you’re own are a bit slower and weaker.
The best way to deal with it is either to wait it out while playing defensively or pressure the enemy while you’re recovering so they don’t get any use out of your Burnout state.
Drive Impact
The Drive Impact is one of the most useful tools in your entire arsenal. Hitting it successfully will either give you a positional advantage or set up the enemy for a devastating combo.
To use it you need to press either Heavy Punch + Heavy Kick with Classic Controls or L1/LB with Modern Controls. By using it you spend 1 Bar of Drive Gauge. It can also be used out of any special cancellable move.
Drive Impacts are best used before you’re attacked. The power armor lasts for two hits of any attack (except grabs) and it counts on hit as a Punish Counter which allows you to set up a combo. Just be aware that this combo deals reduced damage.
Landing a Drive Impact on a defending enemy will simply knock them back to create space, the same thing will happen if you hit your enemy regularly. If you manage to hit your opponent against the corner they’ll wall splat, giving your the opportunity to combo.
There are also several options to defend against a Drive Impact. The easiest is to simply press Drive Impact yourself, you’ll eat some damage as chip damage but you get the Punish Counter as well as an opportunity to combo.
If you’re a faster character, like Cammy, you can quickly hit a series of light attacks or a special (depending on the special). You need 3 hits of any kind in quick succession to knock the enemy out of their Drive Impact.
You can also just grab them out of it. If you can get the timing down and look out for the visual/audio cues this is the easiest way to punish a Drive Impact for a potential sideswap.
Overdrive
If you played other Street Fighter titles before, you probably know the Overdrive as EX-Moves. Which are simply empowered special attacks.
Instead of meter they now cost 2 bars of your Drive Gauge and can be executed by either two of the punch/kick buttons during a motion input on classic controls or R2+△ / RT+Y on modern controls.
This △ so you best look up a character’s special moves and their properties since some have variations and others gain armor to their moves.
You deal with them the same way you deal with any other special move, block/avoid and or punish.
Drive Reversal
The Drive Reversal costs 2 bars of Drive Gauge and is essentially your get-out-of-jail-free card. If you’re holding back to block press forward and use the same input you use for your Drive Impact to initiate a Reversal.
The reversal’s purpose is to reset the neutral space between two players when you’re pressured in a corner or need to create some breathing room. It’s not so great for setting up counterattacks so don’t get greedy after using it.
Drive Parry
Your Drive Parry is a tool essential to either refill your Drive Gauge, defend all kinds of incoming attacks, and potentially set up a punishing combo.
To use it press either Medium Punch + Medium Kick in classic controls or R1/RB in modern controls. Usage slowly drains your Drive Gauge but will also refill it when parrying incoming attacks successfully.
You can generally use it to defend against incoming attacks while also gaining a small positional and frame advantage. Just be careful, it doesn’t make you immune to throws.
Tapping the input once will also initiate a Perfect Parry attempt which will drain half of a Drive Gauge bar. A successful Perfect Parry, which requires a nearly frame-perfect input, slows down time and sets the opponent up for a combo.
Be careful though, landing a Perfect Parry on the first hit of a multi-hit attack will still leave you vulnerable to the follow-up hits.
And a combo you land after a Perfect Parry will only deal reduced damage.
Drive Rush
The Drive Rush is best thought of as a tool to extend combos or to quickly close space between players. To perform a Drive Rush, simply use the input for the Drive Parry and tap forward twice for the cost of 1 bar of Drive Gauge.
Alternatively, you can cancel out of any normal attack by quickly tapping forward twice, this cost of 3 bars of Drive Gauge.
A great way to use it is to quickly close the gap after knocking back your opponent and initiate a quick grab or just a way to do combos you’d usually not be able to hit. Careful though, canceling out of medium attacks might cause you to enter burnout state.
Just make sure you don’t go for your big Drive Gauge burning combos at the start of a round, losing all your resources early on can cost you the match.
Countering Drive Rush however is extremely simple, a grab or attack will do.