Ok I lied it's not truly my first time, but it's functionally the first title where I'm taking it seriously and playing actual people online. My fighting game experience up until this point consists of mashing on arcades as a kid against the computer and the story mode of Tekken Dark Resurrection on the PSP. Blocking wasn't a concept and whatever sequence that came out when you spammed both kicks as Lili was the most overpowered thing ever.

High Octane Rock Paper Scissors

The thing that immediately hooked me was how dopamine inducing the actual gameplay was. A lot of multiplayer games I used to play like Overwatch and Apex have a lot of downtime where you're just autopiloting until you get to the good parts. Contrast this to SF6 where one round is 90 seconds and using the full amount is rare unless both players are laming it out. Realistically rounds can be done in half a minute and every moment is packed with stylish combos and hard reads. I don't know any other genre where the time to fun ratio was this high.

The Hard Part

Fighting games are notoriously difficult to get into and I pretty much trudged through all the pitfalls that SF6 offered. The most challenging part is the amount of work you need to put in to even get your character to move like you want them to. Even something as simple as linking a move has a 5 frame (or 0.083 second) window and basic combos like jab chains into Dragon Punch requires practice for anyone new to the genre. This is a big departure from a lot of game design (mostly single player) since difficulty to control your character usually isn't an intended skill check. Most games are interested in the decision making given the assumption that players can fire a move if they want to. Imagine if using your ultimate in Overwatch required two quarter circle inputs and a button instead of just hitting Q.

Another beginner hurdle is how there are so many knowledge checks that are difficult to solve in realtime. For example Ken has a move called Dragon lash which will leaves him at +1 frame advantage (can move 1 frame faster than the defender). This sets up a 50/50 between strike or throw since Ken's jab and grab have 4 and 5 frames of startup respectively. The defender can 4 frame jab to beat a grab but lose to strikes where as blocking will beat jab but lose to grab. (There's like 5 more options that divert off this interaction but this is the simple gist of it). Similarly you can overlap a move on an opponent's getup (meaty) and in this instance a grab will beat both strikes and throws. This is considered an extremely basic concept in Street Fighter yet you can't possibly know getup option interactions unless you specifically look it up on a wiki or test things out in training mode. This one time I okizemed a streamer multiple times using meaty grabs from drive rush. I then watched the VOD to see them experiencing an aneurism. SF6 demands a certain level of patience and problem solving by the player but once you get past this huge obstacle, it offers a very addicting and rewarding gameplay experience.