Overall, HDR > Classic, all the way.
Ryu: Fake hadouken is his only change, John Choi needed it to keep Jason Cole’s Dhalsim from drilling over his fireballs on reaction. Fine. Ryu doesn’t actually yell “ha” or “hadou” (which would have made the move more dangerous), so it’s not that big a deal.
Ken: Keeps his jab DP spam, so he’s still the no. 1 scrub pick. That’s all that matters.
Chun-Li: Sorry haters, the new SBK is more fun and more useful. 
The old one was good for one thing: dodging specials on wake-up. The new one can’t be reliably used for that, but it’s way better than the old one for dodging projectiles (up + short, thank you very much), plus it’s useful for hitting air fireball happy Akumas, SBK-into-super fakes, forward movement over projectiles, cross-up shenanigans, correcting bad jump timing (oh no I’m gonna land on a special, wait I’ll just toward + short, whew OK all good now, hey why not go ahead and tack on the rest of the super motion while I’m at it), and just demoralizing her opponent in general (parabolic SBK into tenshoukyaku juggle, oh look I did a ton of damage and knocked you to the other side of the screen, AND you are knocked down, time for shenanigans, wheeeee). Plus, you can sometimes get the accidental “breakdance” SBK, and that’s always a BLAST (especially against Fei Long, f*ck your chicken wing and rekka shenanigans).
Honda: Still annihilates non-projectile characters, still gets smoked by anyone who throws sh!t. All his little changes are just there to give nerds something to argue about, he’s still the same. Yes, he needs an ochio whiff. And I still think that strong and fierce hands should block projectiles (i.e. one pixel of damage without stunning Honda) during the brief forward movement part of the attack.
Guile: Even more turtle friendly now. Yay RH flash kick. 
:sleep::sleep::sleep:
Blanka: For those Honda and Boxer players who like being able to perform safe-on-block surprise dash attacks, I give you Sirlin Blanka. Now you can ball to your heart’s content, as long as the other guy doesn’t throw sh!t or possess yomi powers. Also, when you get tired of the hard work of spamming ball attacks, there’s always the trusty jumping kick -> jab -> bite, second only to Ken’s jab DP as the scrub’s favorite move. What’s not to like?
Zangief: As long as I can still beat him with Chun-Li standing roundhouse and kikkokens, I don’t give a f*ck what’s done to him. Seems like the invulnerability on the clothesline is kinda stupid (as in, too good), is that right? Whatever, he’s still a punching bag as long as I don’t get bored (which happens a little too often) or I’m not playing a Japanese player.
Dhalsim: Finally, no overlapping yoga fire and yoga flame. That sh!t was stupid, changing the yoga flame to a backward motion was a no-brainer. Good thing the teleport still sucks, anyone who gets in on Dhalsim deserves to take off big chunks of his KO bar.
Dee Jay: People complain about the fireball-eating MGU being useless. That comes as no surprise, given how incredibly uncreative most players are (especially players who play defensive characters – like Dee Jay). He’s still a scrub-friendly n!gger turtle, but at least his slide isn’t as safe vs. jump-ins anymore, that’s a nice plus. Can’t just have Ken, Guile, and Claw, gotta give the chicken-sh!t players out there some variety, I guess.
Fei Long: If I had to complain about one character, it would be this piece of sh!t. The short chicken wing is just retarded. Re. Tard. Ed. Scrubby garbage. Bad Sirlin, bad Sirlin.
Cammy: Don’t get me started on how much better and more fun she is to play. Where to begin? No more incredibly stupid backfist/hooligan roll overlap, I can do hooligans worry-free (with respect to execution, that is), cannon drill pressure, backfist fireball dodging… options, options, options. Best of all, despite all this, she’s still easily the worst character in the game, so I can still piss all over cheap-ass no-good uncreative chicken-sh!t turtle motherf*cking Sagats, Dee Jays, Guiles, RyuKens, Chun-Lis, etc. by beating them rush-down style with the most rock bottom sh!t character available.
T.Hawk: He’s a contender, now. How can that be anything but awesome?
Claw: No more repeated [media=youtube]P-PmNGOjGTw#t=0m11s[/media], that’s all I care about.
Boxer: F*ck that guy, forever. And that’s as it should be. He’s a cheap-ass rush-down bastard, but he gets the blood flowing and Sirlin hasn’t taken that away from us. Plus he does take skill to play well. Bring the pain.
Sagat: The tiger knee juggles are, of course, blindingly moronic. But hey, even that isn’t enough to nullify that positive effect of toned down tiger spamming.
Dictator: Sirlin’s favorite character (until he fell in love with his new Fei Long), so his being overpowered was a foregone conclusion. For that reason, I forgive Dave for what he did to Dictator. Hey, the guy is only human; if I had been in charge of this game, you’d all be whining about Cammy being top tier, believe me.
Akuma: Who cares? He’s supposed to be broken. Sirlin should have let players throw the CPU double air hadouken, and left his non-dizzy in there, and given him Ryu’s full-screen fireball super from the Marvel games for good measure. That way, his inevitable super-scrubbiness would be unquestionable. As it is, we have some scrubs managing to eke out wins with him and claim that they’re as good at the game as DGV or Jodim. Now I gotta suffer these fools. F that.
I rue the day that I have to go back to classic ST because all the competition in HDR has died. I probably won’t even bother playing Cammy anymore at that point, maybe I’ll pick up Fei Long or some sh!t. Or maybe I’ll just quit ST altogether, and play that crap SF4 (gasp).
