Do the tutorial. It covers all of the mechanics and is quite thorough in showing you whats what and making you do the techniques before moving on to the next section. Youll see dash cancelling, rapid cancels, revolver combos, etc. Its not overly long and staggered in parts to pick away at if you dont have all day, but well worth taking a look at if new to this style of fighter.
Next, hit up some of the challenge modes, try out a few characters, watch the demonstrations of the combos and see how each character plays/try the combos yourself to get a feel for each character. Youll see that some are more air oriented (spend most of time in air/approachign from air/comboing in the air/double and triple jumps, etc), some ar emore ground oriented, carl has his doll based gameplay, tager is a grappler, hakumen has more link based (well, 5 frame window with the input window in this game, but they dont revolver like every other character, so a simple 2b, 2a, 5a, 5b combo is a lot stricter for him than a tsubaki 5bb, 2bb, 5cc combo) normals and a different meter resource than others and so on.
If you can get a partner/friend to play with, hit up training and just practice normals and teching and air dashing and all that jazz that isnt in or slightly different in execution in street fighter games. understanding of basics and mechanics goes a long way in any game. learn a bnb from midscreen, how to combo off throws and a basic corner combo (usually just extension of the midscreen bnb with a wallbounce or off the ground in the corner, but many are different). finally, dont learn combos. learn the parts of combos. like for hakumen, his ground combos are basically optional starter move into a dustloop (enma, falling j.2c, land, 2c, j.2a, air dash, j.2a, j.c). you can tack that onto any hits you do with hakumen and it will be a valid combo. so if you hit with 5a, 5b, renka (1 hit), you can then do the dustloop part you know ends all midscreen combos. you wouldnt learn a million variations of these starters into the dustloop.
same applies to everyone in the game. tsubaki you learn [starting moves, like 5a or 2a] 5bb, 2bb, 5cc [ending stuff like 236a xx 214a xx 22a or just a 22c, etc]. youd know her basic air combo is j.c, double jump, j.cc, 236a, 214c, j.d when you get an air combo/juggle (there are more optimal combos, this is just an example).
you can apply this to random hits or situations whenever you feel like if you know the parts - not the strict full combo. just dont get overwhelmed by some huge 2 or 3 line combo and entire page of combos on dustloop. if you examine them, youll see repeating sections and just different ways of reachign that part of the combo (like a counter hit off 3c or if they were crouching or if your near the corner, you might adjust a combo with a dash to fix spacing, etc, but the basics of the combo remain the same). learn a very simple bnb. try to apply it vs a friend or cpu if you have to. dont try to learn some 8000+ dmg 100 meter, 2 gold burst combo first. its a combo based game, but it doesnt do you any good if you cant even land basic combos or block mixups or convert random hits/counter hits into actual combos.
