Tokido’s Akuma First Game Impressions After trying out Street Fighter 6’s next DLC early, unsure if the demon is all-powerful

Instead, he may fall more into the artistic side in his new incarnation

There are some players in the fighting game community who become intrinsically attached to a particular character they find success with, and in cases with a high return like this, people want to know how they feel about it.

Rohto|Tokido Now he’s released a new video detailing his first gameplay impressions after experiencing Akuma at the Street Fighter 6 early preview event taking place in Japan, and he has a lot to say about his favorite demon.

One of the first things he did was take a walking speed test where he found that the Akuma was faster than Chun-Li, likely putting him in the top category of movement in that regard.

As previously expected, the throwing experiments also showed that his total vitality would be around 9,000.

He walked away unsure of Akuma’s strength with his new moves/abilities since the top rival had not learned how to fully incorporate them into his combos and style.

Tokido feels that Akuma’s medium crouching kick is very powerful with the same reach as Ken and is probably around a 7 frame startup like him as well.

His heavy punches are also similar to Kane’s punch and a good cancel button while his forward heavy punch results in a combo with some angle carry.

He noticed that the Light Gohadouken has a slow startup but short recovery while the Heavy is fast but more vulnerable to punishment and is believed to reach all the way across the screen unlike Street Fighter 5.

His red fireball has multiple charge levels and it is believed that Akuma was able to gain extra frames on the block with a two-hit charged projectile.

Tokido believes his new offering of Shakunetsu Messhou will be good around the corner with high damage potential and follow-up attacks perhaps resembling Ryu’s donkey kick. He says he’s looking forward to tinkering with it more.

According to him, Super Art 2 has a short range, so you may make mistakes when trying to use it for penalties.

He’s not sure if Akuma can fuse the Anti-Air Shoryuken in Super Art 3, but points out that it seems to deal a lot of damage.

As others noted in the trial, opponents can’t jump from Raging Demon’s initiation if they’re already in range, and Tokido feels the total damage is still very high at least 4000 or so.

One potentially scary thing Tokido says is that he was able to easily transition from raw Drive Rush to Shun Gokusatsu, so that will be something to watch out for.

Ultimately, Tokido walked away feeling that Akuma might be a technical character who isn’t easily controlled and focuses more on high speed rather than raw power in SF6, but he can’t know that for sure without learning more about his new combo structure. And how his collection is put together.

It looks like the damage can be pretty much there even though Capcom is putting more emphasis on speed with more options to get into than before.

He points out that this was in a pre-beta build, so some of this information may not be accurate about Akuma’s status when it launches later this month.

Justin Wong recently gave an interview to Tokido where he had some interesting things to say about the new vs. old fighting game debate that’s been taking place.

You can watch Tokido’s full video below, which includes English subtitles. These aren’t always the most accurate, so we’ve translated and compiled the most interesting notes in the story here.