Hello, just decided to join, probably waited to long, but let me start with a quick intro about myself.
-Been playing SF4 since a week after launch, grew up playing sf2, didnt start plaiyng serious till around 1 1 1/2 years ago
-Was peaking at the start of the summer after i got my adult ADD fixed at the age of 20, i was maining bison and doing ok (4, 5/10)
Took way too long of a break and just feel completely naked in this game
-Loves to do hardcore mix ups/ mind****s, keep people in corner, tick throw, but am not the best with links, and have a bad “lame” or keep away game.
Any ideas on who i should main, went to a fight night and the people told me to pick rose which really surprised me, but if you could all just throw out some characters that don’t have ridiculous 1 frame link to be successful (i think rose does) that would be appreciated, i play on pad. THANKS
Btw i play on pc now
play everybody on trial mode. when you are done you will know who you wanna play. Besides if you wait for someone to recommend a character I dont think fighting games is for you. or just pick RYU
I do not really agree with asking for advice on picking a character being an indicator for what you said, i was just looking for some opinions, i did all of c viper’s trials but still couldn’t get into it, i guess im just gonna have to get my ass whooped until i find someone to main
there must be a character you like for who they are or what they do or their story or something. Or go to yogaflame24 channel and watch different characters and then choose one you like
“Which character should I pick?” kind of threads aren’t looked upon favorably here. Try everybody in the cast, pick out the few characters that you gravitate towards, and put some work into them. If, after all that time, you still don’t have enough data to make a decision all by yourself and need to validate it with strangers on the internet, look to these gems for inspiration:
If you dont like links youre not going to like playing this game at a high level. most characters BnBs require at least 2 frame links…the rushdown characters at least. I would say Rufus cause hes got easy mixups / tick throws, but his main BnB is a 1 frame link. I would also suggest cammy, but shes got a shit ton of character specific stuff and can have trouble getting in if you arent patient. Gief has relatively simple combos and obviously has nasty throw setups, but requires lot of patience and chasing people down.
Pick Ryu. Hes balanced, pretty simple combos for the most part. And he teaches you fundamentals.
I don’t understand why people think Ryu “teaches” fundamentals. I never touched Ryu since SFII (I was a button-mashing kid back then) and I’m doing just fine with Gen, so I don’t think it works like that. If you want to learn TKD, you go to a TKD school and learn TKD fundamentals.
But I agree about the frame links. I hated them before and still do now. Occasionally I miss and eat a SRK -> Ultra or some other shit like Ken’s ex.SRK that take away half my health (jk not so much), but it helps weed out the mashers. Btw, have you considered Zangief or other grab-based characters? Less about links, more about throwing and mix ups.
Ryu doesnt have anything really abuseable and is a balanced character so he helps teach more than one aspect of the game. Yes, you can technically learn fundamentals with any character, but ryu helps to make someone well rounded.
If you’ve been playing SF4 since release, then you must have seen how most characters play, just try out whoever looks the most enjoyable to you, if you liked the character, stick with him/her, if not then try out another.
No point asking who to main at this game. I’ll be honest, back in the SFII days I only picked Ken and beat most of my friends very easily but once SFIV came along that all changed. I couldn’t get used to Ken at all and found him “slow” so went into training and stumbled along Gen and never looked back. Only advice I can give is to either practice in training or do trial mode, trust me you will know when you have found the right character.
I’m not saying that you HAVE to play Ryu to teach fundamentals, but he’s certainly an extremely good example of a character who will force you to understand and learn the basics of fighting games. He has no glaring weaknesses or strengths and he has all the tools he needs to win any matchup. He’s the classic archetype of SF2 design, which ONLY had fundamentals back then. This is in stark contrast with what I call “Marvel” characters, which don’t really rely on fundamentals so much (but is required at a high-level), but are much more mix-up intensive and rely on a strong offense to win their matches. At lower levels of play, it’s FAR more important to understand how to defend yourself and minimize bad risks and solid game play, as opposed to an offensive and aggressive style, which is really only successful at high-levels of play in order to produce consistent wins against a variety of characters and players.
Characters with difficult links, especially as part of their bnb combos and setups, can be difficult for newer players to use. Hence, why I also recommend Ryu in this regard, since his basic link combos are fairly easy to do, and you don’t even have to learn them initially if you don’t want to. His cancel combos can get you pretty far along with solid fundamentals and strategy.
Zangief can be played at a basic-level fairly well, but eventually, it becomes important to learn his critical cr.short links into EX green hand. A solid character won’t put themselves in a position where Zangief has his throw and mix-up options, and those options really only teach you the importance of conditioning and reading your opponent. Sticking to a good ground is far more effective as a Zangief player, but for new players, understanding how to combat and avoid the zoning game can be a daunting task, until you obtain the fundamentals skills required to develop a counter-strategy against the fireball.
My English is not good, so I don’t think I can make a long thought-out post like yours. But I’ll share my opinion.
If you learn Ryu now, you’ll be learning Ryu fundamentals. All other universal fundamentals (or aka common sense) can be learned from other characters and through online play. If handabiki picks Juri, then he’ll be un-learning the Ryu fundamentals to learn Juri’s. Ryu was just a waste of time. Similarly in real life, a person trained in an external martial art transitioning to an internal based art will not always do better than the person who started with a clean slate. Plus, handabiki is not a “newer player”. He also mentions that he may be bad at keeping people away and doesn’t like links. To give him a fireball move could be risky, so a grab-based character was my recommendation.
Any one of them will work, but I choose Ryu because he’s very well-balanced in his design, whereas other characters favor one style over another. A good example is learning the fireball game. Ryu’s fireball is quite good, but it has long start-up and recovery, and so you really have to pick and choose when to use it. Once you understand that, then you’ll intuitively understand when and where your opponent will also use fireballs, which makes it much easier to fight against, no matter which character you ultimately decide to stick with. You can also do this with Ken, but I fear that new players will simply learn to use his step kick over-zealously in an attempt to play footsies, which is not an effective way to learn the ground game. You don’t learn the ground game by using a character with a powerful, single poke, like Vega, Ken, Bison. You may get better results with them, but the only thing you learn is how to abuse that one attack.
So for the sake of brevity, I always recommend new players to pick Ryu.
Someone once said, “you won’t gonna learn Honda by playing Ryu”.
What’s the point of investing time in a character that ultimatelly you will dropp for somebody else ?
All this time you wasted on Ryu could be more usefull invested in the character you actually want to play.
Again, you wont gonna learn Zangief by playing Ryu. And there way too many ryus online anyway.
To the OP: You could try Blanka- good mix up character, not many combos as far as I know. Not very difficult. Dee Jay and Cody could both be good choices. Easy, have mixups, not very difficult combos. Guy could also be an alternative, lots of mixups, presure, but he is a little more difficult.
I say, check one of these 4 - and see who you like.
It’s not about investing time into a character, it’s about investing time into yourself. It’s about building a foundation of learning principle skills that will apply to any character in any game, not because you learned specific setups and combos, but because you understood the basics of spacing, defense, pressure, momentum, and strategy.
All the characters you described with good mix-up potential, less reliability on combos, good pressure, guess what? Ryu fits all of these archetypes well. Learning a mix-up character teaches you the concepts of risk v. reward, momentum, and offensive pressure, but if your opponent doesn’t put you in these situations, you’re screwed. I like Ryu because he has the ability to fight all of his matchups, while teaching you something in each match, as opposed to feeling helpless.
I hate to break it to you but Ryu doesn’t teach you fundamentals, I know because I played Ryu first didn’t learn jack,fuck my nickname is Ryu_Apprentice hoping to be a top player then, I got bodied like no mans business, I decided out of the blue that I rather go with someone I had affinity for and that was Fei Long, I tried learning on my own but it didn’t work so I decided to TEACH how to play Fei, which forced me to research into the character, learnt his combo, mixup and safe jump, practiced rekkaken day and night and chicken wing combo from zone to zone. After 5 episodes on fei on my channel I decided to learn what footsie is about and I studied it online via maj and watching top players play. Then Gen caught my eye and I switched my tutorials, I teached what I have done in training mode and then I realised that fundamentals is not playing Ryu but playing any character and researching what are their options and how to safely pressure your opponent and creating openings. Sure Ryu has QCF motions but so do others.
Right now I can play Gen, Adon, Honda, Fei, Balrog, Vega, Ryu very well, Fuerte too.
It takes a curious mind and a will to be good at the game to gain fundamentals.
It’s not an automatic given, but Ryu is an effective training tool at a very basic level. Playing Ryu is like working out on an exercise machine, treadmill, hell even doing training drills. You might not understand immediately what you’re doing, but you’ll come across results once you adopt the mentality of being able to analyze yourself. Beyond learning a character, it’s about training yourself to work within the confines of your character, of which Ryu has no overwhelming strengths or weaknesses that operate as a crutch or handicap, and thus is more conducive to learning.
In your experience, there was a turning point in which you decided that you wanted to invest more time into your character. Maybe that time spent Ryu, failing due to high expectations, is the catalyst that wanted you to really dig deep into the meat of the game. It’s time that you spent breaking down the character, understanding his setups, effective pokes, frame traps, and anti-airs. And now that you’ve developed a foundation for how to play Street Fighter, you found the transition MUCH easier when you attempted to play Gen, Adon, Honda, etc etc.
But it’s not really an effective way to TELL a newbie “Hey, go do this, this, this, and this,” because they’ll just sort of go through the motions and hope they gain something. While I wish every new player was this motivated and disciplined, it’s simply not the case, and thus I’ll give them a summarized answer for this process that hopefully leads them down the path of someone who really wants to STUDY the game, and not simply play it casually. Of course, there are different ways to teach newbie players, but imo, this is the most effective way to get the new players started without overwhelming them with having to do homework and research…initially.
All of this, summarized, is why I always say, “Pick Ryu”
To me it sounds like Fei or Yang are characters you should try. They’re both very good at putting the opponent to the corner and they both have great corner pressure. They’re also quite good at mind games having good overheads, command throws and easy ways of cornering the opponent.
Yang is definitely the character choice for you if you like mind-fucking your opponent because of his launcher mix-ups and his corner resets after palms. He has decent footsies complimented by a divekick that’s not spammable but it’s still good, it just takes spacing, and he has an excellent foot-speed but he lacks a solid cross-up. He also has excellent wake-up options in a 5-frame dp, a good backdash and his EX teleport.
Fei on the other hand is the less exciting of the two but he’s just overall a better character. He has better footsies, a better overhead and a legit cross-up. His wake-up is also quite good with U2 and a good dp. Also his focus attack is almost the best in the game and certainly is compared to how good his footsies already are. He’s as solid as it gets really.
It’s true you won’t learn Honda by playing Ryu. But I think this is a very narrow perspective you’ve got. Anyone of the players asking who they should start out with aren’t capable of the basic of the basics. You should realize at this point, the character himself doesn’t matter. They’re not gonna learn Ryu, or Deejay, or anyone. First, they have to start learning the game. Sure, it happens by having to familiarize yourself a bit with some of the moves. But they’re still not learning the character.
The fundamental understanding is what needs to be developed, and this knowledge is translatable. He has to drop quite a few hours into the game to make timings, read, understanding throws/jumps/focus/dashes, etc. instinctive knowledge. I reckon Ryu’s a far better choice than someone like Blanka because Ryu covers more “traditional” areas of the game for you to get used to (special that goes through projectiles, anti-air special and fireball.) And so, once he’s learned some fundamentals with Ryu, he’ll probably already have discovered which characters he’ll lean towards himself.
I mostly also recommend Ryu to learn the game with when people ask me. I do also agree with you that Cody is a good starting character to teach fundamentals.