Grappler characters are generally considered to be annoying to fight against in fighting games for everyone who doesn’t play them, but there’s one top pro in particular who’s made hating grapplers, and especially Zangief, tied directly to his personal ethos.
Saishunkan|Nemo recently reacted to the big reveal of Zangief, Lily and Cammy for Street Fighter 6, and thanks to FGC Translated, we can see all of the competitor’s thoughts and worries about the wrestler — plus what he already doesn’t like about his updated moveset.
The first thing that Nemo singles out is Zangief’s standing medium punch and the target combo the grappler seems to get off of it now, and the pro hopes that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to special cancel the move too.
You get to really see the fear kick in, however, when taking a closer look at Gief’s new triple stomp combo that doesn’t knock down the opponent and seemingly leaves him in SPD range.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Nemo as translated by FGC Translated. “And check this out. It’s not a knockdown. I think he’s in the range of SPD! Is this ok?
What if he can go for another mixup with light kick and SPD… It’s going to be really bad.”
One thing that does seem to give Nemo some hope is that Zangief’s Drive Impact looks like it has pretty short range… except that he can combo into SPD if it hits as a counter.
“This means if Zangief reacts to your Drive Impact with his Drive Impact, then he can switch sides, and now you’re in the corner,” said Nemo. “You all be careful.”
The one thing Nemo was probably looking for the most was the range on Gief’s Drive Rush since that is one of the biggest worries with grapplers in Street Fighter 6, but of course, this trailer didn’t show that off at all.
As for the other 2 characters in the reveal, Nemo thinks Lily looks pretty fun and reminds him a bit of The King of Fighters’ Choi Bounge for her short stature but deceptively long reach with some other similarities to Samurai Shodown’s Nakoruru.
Like most everyone else, Nemo seems to be on board with Cammy’s new redesign and feels like she’s probably going to be a very popular character in SF6.
Although Nemo has shown interest in JP recently, we still don’t know who he’s going to be posing up with for the awkward handshakes in SF6 in Zangief, but you can bet they’re probably coming one way or another.