The best fighting games on PC in 2022 (2023)

What are the best fighting games on PC? When the fighting game boom first took hold in the 90s, the genre was largely the domain of arcades. Since then, fighting games have mostly been on console, but now – finally – we’re able to play most of the best fighting games on the planet on our home computers.

Fighting games have a reputation for being tough to learn, but with the rise of video tutorials and guides on all the basics, there’s never been a better time to get into this highly competitive genre. Even if you’re a long way from competing at Evo, there are plenty of ways to enjoy these titles – from online Street Fighter matches to the robust single-player content of games like Injustice and Soulcalibur.

We’ve focused on many of the most competitive games with the most active communities here, but you’ll also find a few classics and curveballs in the mix. Get your fight stick, practice those fireballs, and get ready for the very best PC fighting games.

Best fighting games on PC

In no particular order, here are the best fighting games on PC:

• The King of Fighters XV
• Guilty Gear Strive
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Dragon Ball FighterZ
• Street Fighter V: Championship Edition
• Tekken 7
• Injustice 2
• Samurai Shodown
• BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle
• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
• Soulcalibur 6
• Thems Fighting Herds

The King of Fighters XV

The King of Fighters XV is the best KoF game in quite some time. King of Fighters has experimented with various drastically different mechanics ever since the original game in 1994, and the same is true in the newest instalment of the long-running 3v3 fighting series.

KoF XV introduces the Shatter Strike defensive option that counters any attack at the cost of a power gauge. In addition, returning mechanics from previous games have been tweaked to make them more usable for newer players. For example, Max Mode now has two versions: one for increasing your fighter’s attack and guard crush strength, and one that immediately cancels any attack you land into a new combo that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

Its online offerings are impressive, with multiple options for playing against others, including an online training mode where you can connect with other players to learn from them. Improvements to the netcode, particularly with the PC version, means that fights against other players online feel as close to being in an arcade as possible. There’s a fair bit of legacy skill involved, so KoF veterans will likely stomp all over newcomers, but that’s something you can always work on with practice.

Guilty Gear Strive

Arc Systemworks may be well known for Dragonball FighterZ, or the myriad of other anime-style fighters, but the flagship game has always been Guilty Gear. The Xrd generation introduced us to the gorgeous 3D models on a 2D plane. Guilty Gear Strive is more refined with its combat, presentation, and fully voiced stage music for every character – some of them are genuinely decent on their own, but all work nicely as stage music.

It has two robust tutorials and training modes, an arcade mode that ends with a two-on-one boss encounter with a friendly AI (or a one-on-one ultra-hard boss battle if you’re good enough), and a story mode that is a decent offering for fans of the series. Unfortunately, however, it’s just a movie with no actual gameplay. In addition, new characters are now appearing in the game, giving players even more fighting styles to master.

But what makes Guilty Gear Strive stand out is its online mode. Confusing and convoluted lobbies aside, it’s one of the most stable fighting games to play online today thanks to its bespoke rollback netcode, helping online tournaments thrive throughout the pandemic and into the foreseeable future. We even managed to maintain a stable connection while battling players on the west coast of America from the UK.

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Mortal Kombat 11

NetherRealm sets itself a high standard for gore and crunchy combat in its long-standing Mortal Kombat series. It’s pleasing to say, then, that Mortal Kombat 11 smashes those expectations harder than Scorpion piledriving Sub-Zero with one of the countless MK11 fatalities.

The moment-to-moment combat is hard-hitting but methodical – meaning that fighting feels considered and landing a blow feels sweet. Tossing projectiles at foes in the name of zoning is prevalent as ever. Still, it makes those moments you get up close and personal all the better to savour.

However it’s not all just throwing hands, as The Krypt makes a sparkling return. Here you’ll find plenty of puzzles to solve and items that unlock new areas. It’s a bit of a grind, and a lot of it does involve going out of the Krypt, but that’s okay – as we have a handy Mortal Kombat 11 The Krypt walkthrough to aid with that part.

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Dragon Ball FighterZ

Dragon Ball FighterZ may not be the first good Dragon Ball game, but it’s certainly the first great one. Arc System Works has leveraged its experience in some of the most technically complex fighting games on the market to build a sumptuous title that keeps the depth of the best brawlers while staying accessible. And the studio did it with one of the most beloved series in anime, showing plenty of love and care to every character in the Dragon Ball FighterZ roster.

For Dragon Ball fans, FighterZ is a slick tribute to the series, from its gorgeous anime aesthetic to the matchup-specific intro and finish cutscenes – Yamcha’s death pose is absolutely perfect, for example. But all that care and craft is evident even if you don’t know your Goku from your Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Goku.

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If the base roster isn’t enough, there’s a whole host of DLC characters, including film villains like Cooler and Broly, and characters from Dragon Ball Super. The last characters for season three were revealed to be Super Baby and Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta.

While DBFZ has the aerial combo-driven freneticism of Marvel vs. Capcom, it’s much more accessible for newcomers. Simple, universal combos let you make effective basic attacks across every character in the roster. In addition, the system is flexible enough to let you quickly start working in tags and specials for your attacks – which means you’ll be driving foes through mountains with Kamehamehas in no time. A recent patch makes the game somewhat imbalanced, but it also makes it even more fun. That’s what counts.

Street Fighter V: Championship Edition

Street Fighter V did not have a great launch. The fundamentals were there from the start with a great core fighting system, but a dearth of content and characters meant that it felt like an incomplete game – a criticism series producer Yoshinori Ono has copped to. But while it took too long to get there, 2018’s Arcade Edition release saw the game finally achieve its full potential.

That said, this is still Street Fighter and Street Fighter is still the standard all other fighting games are measured against. So if you want to understand fireballs, combos, and specials – never mind footsies and frame data – you start with Street Fighter, and V continues the traditions we’ve been building since the World Warrior hit arcades all those years ago.

Street Fighter V on PC also has cross-play with PlayStation 4, which means you’re able to compete against everyone else who’s playing online. That’s a big advantage over many fighters on this list, since the vast majority of players tend to compete on consoles.

Dan, Rose, Oro, Akira (from Rival Schools), and Luke are now all playable in the game, and they are the final characterscoming Street Fighter V, as Capcom gear up for the next game in the series.

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Tekken 7

Tekken 7 is billed as the end of the saga, and the cinematic flourishes of its big – and ridiculous – story mode seep into the actual fights, too. Slow-motion close-ups punctuate each battle’s tensest moments, and the series’ stony-faced cast of fighters are just as grimly determined to throw each other into volcanoes as ever.

But it’s not just about the bombast. Tekken remains the most competitive 3D fighter out there, with robust tactical battles that reward strong technical play with impressive combos and insane damage. It’s that beautiful combination of high-drama visuals and deep, complex mechanics that makes Tekken one of the most exhilarating fighting games on the planet.

It’s also secretly one of the biggest crossover games out there, with Akuma from Street Fighter, Geese from Fatal Fury, Noctis from Final Fantasy XV, and bizarrely Negan from The Walking Dead. In addition, season four givesplayers Kunimitsu anda new character: Lidia, so there’splenty of stuff to return to if you’ve missed it.

Injustice 2

It might be better to read this entry as ‘whatever the most recent NetherRealm game is.’ The studio has ping-ponged between Mortal Kombat and the DC superhero universe for the past decade, and though there are certainly differences exclusive to MK and Injustice, they’re certainly building on the same formula, but it’s getting closer to perfection with each iteration. As a result, this isn’t just one of the best fighting games on PC; it’s one of the best superhero games, too.

Injustice 2 is a grim take on the DC universe that rebalances the sides of good and evil – which is really just a fancy way of saying Superman and Batman are going to fight each other. The broad roster includes superpowered favourites and some delightfully obscure picks, all of whom offer authentic powers in richly strategic matches filled with combat options and spectacular destruction.

NetherRealm games truly shine in their content offerings, and Injustice 2 is no exception. There’s a best-in-class cinematic story mode, a Multiverse full of gameplay challenges and unlockables, and a whole gear system full of ways to customise your fighter’s stats and appearance. Even if Mortal Kombat 11has supplanted Injustice 2, this is still one of the most complete fighting game packages you can get, particularly if you prefer Batman to Iron Man.

Samurai Shodown

SNK has a long history of making fighting games, but we think its best effort was the soft reboot of Samurai Shodown. So many fighting games rely on flashy combos with massive hit counters to generate excitement. Samurai Shodown is almost the opposite.

This is because the cult classic fighting game from the arcades is a weapon-based fighter where every hit taken has the potential to lop off huge chunks of your health. It’s great if you’re looking for a fighting game with more emphasis on ‘footsies’ (basically using movement and knowledge of hitboxes to sneak in hits, but it’s way more complicated than that) than flashy moves.It’s more old-school in its feature set than most fighting games.

But if we’re honest, the main takeaway is that we think the incredibly tense fights are worth investing time into. You could be one hit from losing, only to make a spectacular comeback with just a handful of well-timed strikes. Also, new characters are coming to the roster, with the latest being Baiken from the Guilty Gear series. Definitely, one to play with a friend if you can.

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle

We’ve seen all kinds of crossover fighters in the past, but none quite so absurd as Cross Tag Battle, which initially brought together the likes of BlazBlue, Persona, RWBY, and Under Night In-Birth. This was later expanded to include Senran Kagura Estival Versus and Akatsuki Blitzkampf.

If you’re not familiar with any of those franchises, that’s okay – the basic thrust is that it’s a lot of anime, all tied up in a colourful, fast-paced fighter that’s joyous no matter how much of the roster you recognise. One of the new characters in the version two expansion pack is a big ol’ tank with a skull on it, and that should tell you everything you need to know about how ridiculous this game gets.

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The tag system makes your character choices matter with unique sets of assist moves to throw out, but the roster remains accessible thanks to a selection of universal moves and combos. That takes some of the burden of memory off beginners, so you can get right into the action and quickly wrap your head around the flashy combat system.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

This one’s almost unfair to all the others. Collecting multiple decades’ worth of the greatest fighting games of all time (and the original Street Fighter), the 30th Anniversary Collection brings together 12 Capcom classics that chart the series history up through Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. It even includes the original Street Fighter, though the less said about that game, the better.

Yes, you’ll probably only want to spend your time with the best revisions of each game, and that’s perhaps why Capcom only bothered to invest in bringing online play for Hyper Fighting, Super Turbo, Alpha 3, and 3rd Strike.

But the vault of historical content – from all the arcade revisions to the original concepts and pitches – makes this package a must for fighting game aficionados or those looking to catch up on the most important series in the genre.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

The fighting game community at large tends to move on when a new entry in an established series is released, no matter how rough the transition might be. However, that didn’t happen with Marvel vs. Capcom. In part, that’s because the latest title, Infinite, was pretty poorly received – but it’s got more to do with the fact that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is so damn good.

It boasts a robust roster that draws from two of geekdom’s most beloved stables. Then there’s the art that treats all those fan favourites just right. And, most of all, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has a wondrously complex tag-team fighting system as deep and varied as any game in the fighting game community canon.

Its 3v3 battles, rich with tags and assist moves, can get so wild with destructive combos that it’s tough for laymen to follow the action – but that’s what gives UMVC3 its appeal. That cacophony of combos and specials is a rich ballet and one that rewards mastery in a way few other games can match.

Soulcalibur VI

The Soulcalibur series has always struggled to recapture the magic of the original home release on Dreamcast, but after nearly two decades, it seems that Soulcalibur VI is the game to finally do it. The weapon-based fighter is a delight to play at every skill level, whether you’re mashing through your attacks or building the most intricate combos, and there’s a generous helping of content to keep you going even when you’re not competing online.

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That includes the Soulcalibur VI character creator, which has provided some of the most incredible (and terrifying) homespun creations we’ve seen in ages. You can take your custom fighter into a lengthy campaign complete with RPG-style upgrade systems and a nearly limitless supply of side missions, or take on a full story mode with bespoke dialogue and fights for every single character on the roster.

Thems Fighting Herds

Look, we know what you’re thinking. A list of the best fighting games on PC includes the one animated by Lauren Faust –the creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Why? We’ll tell you: it’s really good!

Thems Fighting Herds is a four-button fighting game with silky smooth animations and a fantastic magic system to extend combos. It features a unique cast of characters, including unicorns, dragons, and the most adorable alpaca. It also uses GGPO for online matchmaking,which is still one of the better delay-based net codes out there.

When you’re not fighting against real people, there’s also a neat little story mode with challenges that use the fighting game engine in odd ways, like a platformer or dodge projectiles fired from enemies in the background.

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The best fighting games on PC have already won more than a few rounds, but there’s always more. From upcoming PC games like Mortal Kombat 11 to forgotten old games and obscure indie games, there’s a rich tapestry of fighters to square off against. For now, you can grab one of these picks, load up a combo video, and get into training mode – you’ll find plenty of competition out there.