After seeing guest fighters Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui join the expanding roster of Street Fighter 6, the final character for the game’s second fighter pass returns to a familiar Street Fighter franchise character with Elena (Eva La Dare, Charmed). The positively charged fighter is making the rounds, challenging every World Warrior she encounters, seeking to understand the meaning of life and combat.
Bringing a smile and a beat to the competition, Elena’s capoeira fighting brings style and substance to all her matches in Street Fighter 6. Her jovial personality matches the upbeat tempo of her gameplay. La Dare delivers this exuberance with gusto, making the character’s voice complement her on-screen presence and packing an additional layer of fun into mastering her colorful kit.
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The biggest strength in Elena’s bag of tricks is its flexibility. Branching paths in some of her attack sets give the character strong versatility, which can keep opponents guessing. A couple of attack points also feature generous windows during certain moves, allowing you to determine whether to attempt to follow up on an attack. Paying close attention to these moments and opting out of pushing a failed assault can help avoid punishing counterattacks.
Perhaps the single best example of Elena’s versatility comes in her super art, Revival Dance. It’s a powerful attack that costs two energy gauges. The attack can also have its damage lessened during execution to restore some of your health, making it the game’s only life restoration move.
Elena brings a versatile move set to Street Fighter 6.
Another strong aspect of her move set is a strong neutral game. Like most fighters who focus on kicks, she has no fist-based attacks at all. Elena’s great reach can make closing the gap on her a menacing proposition. Combine the reach with a great mix of standard, low, and overhead attacks, and opponents have plenty of reasons to approach the new fighter with ample caution.
In case her intimidating neutral game causes a foe to fall back on range attacks, Elena’s first special move, Lynx Song, lets her close ground quickly and gives her immunity to projectiles. Once in close, one of three different inputs can be entered to bring the pain to your target. Plus, a fourth input can be used during Lynx Song to extend the range of the special, further making things harder for enemies to predict.
Elena’s second special, Rhino Horn, is a multi-hit attack that does a good amount of knockback. Solid all around and great for pushing foes into corners, this attack can do strong damage, but can be punished on block, so don’t overuse it. It can also catch enemies as they are coming down from a jump as well.
While Rhino Horn can snag an unsuspecting foe out of the air, Elena’s third special, Scratch Wheel, is made for the job. A tight angled, upwards kick, Scratch Wheel is invincible against jumping attacks, making it ideal for knocking challengers looking to leap in on her out of the sky.
Elena will require practice with timing and direction to master.
Elena’s fourth special, Spinning Scythe, delivers a powerful set of kicks. While the damage is strong on this move, the coolest element of it is that is can combo into Lynx Song, allowing her to stay close to her opponent and deliver one of the three attacks that can follow up that special, creating a ton of damage potential for skilled fighters to string hit after hit together.
The final special, Moon Glider, has Elena take a step back before unleashing punishing kicks. The distance of the initial step back isn’t huge, so learning when it’ll get you out of trouble is tricky. However, when it functions as intended, it becomes a great way to dodge a hit and return with punishing strength.
Elena’s versatile kit fits into the modern control scheme quite well. The only drawback to her setup in this control option is the omission of Spinning Scythe from her four quick input options. With the ability to string into Lynx from this special, having the one-button press to start the sequence would’ve been a strong boon for the dextrously challenged. The choices for her light/medium/heavy attacks all feel good, leaving no other complaints about how she adapts to the streamlined control scheme.
Elena brings a wealth of fun combat options that look great and offer numerous choices for those seeking to master her in Street Fighter 6. The nuances will take some time to get a handle on, and building up the instinct to know which direction to take an attack sequence requires repetition and experience, but for those willing to master her, it looks like she will deliver a singular style to their gaming experience.
Street Fighter 6 is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Elena is also available now for all platforms as part of the Season 2 fighter pass.
