The best fighting games like Streets of Rage 2 are Streets of Rage 4, Golden Axe and Fight'N Rage. Below are 12, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to fighting costs you.
Filtering to fighting means you want a contest with a clear answer — you got it right or you did not. It is the right filter when what you liked was reading an opponent.
What you get: A skill ceiling you can actually see yourself climbing, and the shortest feedback loop in games.
What made Streets of Rage 2 worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the fighting part of that answer, and only the fighting part.
The modern sequel, and it honours the original without imitating it.
Sega's other arcade brawler, fantasy instead of city.
An indie brawler made by people who studied this one closely.
The most fun four-player brawler in years.
The arcade game Streets of Rage was answering.
Four-player fantasy brawling built for a sofa.
Brawling with real RPG depth and the best art in the genre.
Three lanes, branching endings, and an RPG underneath.
Where the whole genre starts.
Modern brawling with RPG progression and a lot of personality.
Same console, same era, and unlike anything before or since.
The genre taken seriously — one against many, made lethal.
A first few hours that can be discouraging alone. Fighting games are far better with someone at your level than against the internet.
The full list is on games like Streets of Rage 2 — 12 picks, no genre filter.
Streets of Rage 4. The modern sequel, and it honours the original without imitating it.
No. Streets of Rage 2 released on the Sega Genesis, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.
Much less than they were. Modern control schemes, rollback netcode and real single-player modes have changed the on-ramp completely in the last few years.
One opponent against one, or one against many. They share ancestry and almost nothing else — the picks below say which each one is.
By hand. Each pick was written for the full Streets of Rage 2 list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is fighting — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.
Or read the fighting guide for where to start in the genre generally.