I just got into street fighter about 2 weeks now and i picked it up because i saw an ibuki on stream and it just looked so awesome. I’ve been playing only with ibuki for since then and I absolutely love play as her its so much fun. But when my friends start picking on me for the way i play they say you don’t really know how to play the game since you’ve never learned the Shoto characters. So i sat down to try them all and i just absolutely hate playing them it made me want to get rid of the game. I don’t understnad why learning them is so important especially if i hate their playstyle. Ive heard from so many people that i need to learn them but i don’t see why if i can just main as ibuki since i like it. will it hurt my game in the long run not learning them?
You can learn anyone you want, don’t worry about what they are saying.
The reason they are worried about your pick of first character is multi-fold, and somewhat warranted however.
Note, all this assumes you are literally 2-weeks new to Street Fighter and fighting games in general.
1. It doesn’t matter what you pick, you suck right now.
Right now you are new to fighting games, and knowing when and when not to jump is going to be a hassle. Do not worry! This is normal, and part of the learning process. You have to learn a lot of ways before you can find out what exactly they are doing that makes you lose. Anyone you pick at this point will be hard to use, and nothing you do will feel really great - this is why it’s better to just pick a character and learn some information before worrying about “who to pick” to start.
2. Ibuki’s “hard combos” way outclass Ryu/shoto’s "hard combos"
This one may not come into play right now, but once you learn all of her moves (and can pull them off without question 100/100 times in a row) you will then run into the situation where you need to start doing damage. One of Ibuki’s biggest problems is that she doesn’t do a whole ton of damage. She’s got a fun vortex* (if you don’t know what this means, then this is why you’re playing a wrong character) and can throw an almost-fireball from mid-air which really helps - but outside of that you really need to have your links down. While playing as Ibuki you need to get in on a character, knock them down, and then pester them for another 5 or so wakeups. If you’re going up against someone with a great reversal (like a shoto), then this is going to be an uphill battle.
For a quick comparison just look at the Trials under Challenges. These are not combos that you will be using in every day matches, but they give a good insight on how complicated a character can get. Where Ryu’s harder combos involve a FADC to Ultra, or some 2 frame link, Ibuki’s hardest combos come with super jump canceling (another thing you need to know for C.Viper/Ibuki) into Ultras, and other shenanigans. At this point in your “career” these moves will be completely impossible to pull off, and even if you can get them off - they will leave you feeling pretty unfulfilled.
3. Hard to stop pressure
Ibuki, like a good majority of the fight streeters, doesn’t have a great go-to reversal move, by which I mean her fastest reversal is a EX dragonkick, and even that starts up in 5 frames. This means anything faster (shoto uppercuts) will beat it clean every time. Under pressure all Ibuki can really do is wait and hope you’re blocking correctly, while she excels at putting on her own air/vortex pressure, the little girl will quickly snap in half once you hit her with a counter-hit or two. Add in to this that Ibuki is a female in a capcom fighting game, which means you have less than average health and stun. Going up against anyone who knows their shit, while you’re still learning, isn’t going to give you any great options to hold them off.
4. Mindgames and meta-games you aren’t aware of
*Vortex (n) - A situation and/or combo that leads to a hard knockdown of an opponent, and leaves the attacker in a position to do the same setup once again. Usually involves a hard to read jumping attack on their wakeup, leaving them unsure of which way to block.
As Ibuki not only you will need to get these situations memorized (each character wakes up different speeds), but you will also need to know how to get in and out of bad situations. This involves a lot of knowing how to read your opponent, knowing when they will wakeup with a SRK, when they will block back, when you can hit them with an overhead, etc. If you’ve just started 2 weeks ago then it’s going to be really hard to ever tell someone when to do what, a lot about learning fighting games comes down to finding out how best to use a character that works with you. Not everyone is good with the character they wish to be good with. Not to say practice won’t trump all.
But most importantly, ask questions and have fun (fuck I hate saying that, so lame, but important). If you don’t know why you got hit, or why that didn’t work - ask. Ask ask ask ask, do what you’re doing now, ask questions and get actual answers. If you don’t ask if there is any way to combo into her command throw, then you might never figure that one out on your own. In the short term though - practice. It really doesn’t matter what character you pick in the beginning, just as long as you understand that they want you to play a shoto to save yourself some frustration. Trying to learn how to protect yourself from air attacks as Hakan is going to be a rough couple of first months; trust me.
Seeing as I just picked the most visually appealing character to me, Ibuki, then reading this…Thank you. That’s going to save me a lot of trouble if I put her away until i learn my ground in SF. Did not know Ibuki was so much more technical. Thank you runs off to play Ryu~
lol then dont learn shotos. You can learn fundamentals with any characters
This is very important, you can learn fundamentals with EVERY CHARACTER.
Sometimes however the lessons you learn are hard. Such as the case with Hakan/Abel, learning the lesson of “how do I stop their air attacks” is really only going to leave you with the option of “block”, because they don’t have many options.
But you can learn with shoto characters easier cause they have a little bit of everything?
like a shoryuken for anti-air, right?
Yeah, the idea is that while Ryu is not an easy character to play (you need to know your spacing with him to do really well), shotos come equipped with a lot of great tools.
He has a 3frame reversal SRK with invincibility, he has an ok dash, he has a pretty good sweep, he has a great cr.mk for poking. They come with fireballs for zoning, most of them have a great cr.HP for anti-airing. Their ultras combo pretty easily and they have ways of avoiding fireballs with their tatsus/etc. While you can find all these features in other characters (Rose for example), the shotos trade in some of their uniqueness for a more rounded approach.
They are the true scrubs for hating on you for not playing shotos. I personally don’t mind shotokan fighters, but honestly, it truly doesn’t matter who you play right now. You are new to the game; focus on learning the mechanics of the game first. Pick a character you have fun with though, choose ibuki if you like her.
One more thing about the shoto recommendation, apart from ease of use and doing a bit of everything so you can get an inkling as to how you like to play the game, is that most (Ryu and Ken especially) are very much characters built on fundamentals and little else. You don’t have much in the way of stupid gimmicks. They force you to learn, and have good tools to translate that learning into success.
If you dislike shotos, but like the idea of learning with a fundamentals based character you might also consider Balrog, Chun, Bison, Guile, Fei Long, Vega. Perhaps Adon, too.
Of course, you can just as well study footsies with Ibuki. She’s a bit harder on that front, but playing something you like is important.
Everyone should learn ryu when playing SF, he’s on the box!
But actually Ryu is the guy that teaches you what street fighter is all about. Street fighter is about controlling horizontal and vertical space. He has a way to control horizontal space (fireball) as well as vertical (shoryuken). Once you have the idea of controlling space down with ryu you can use those ideas and apply them to other characters.
With Ibuki, she has more unorthodox, mobility-esque tools that are more of a offensive style play. This is different than one based on spacing because it is more about putting the opponent under pressure in blockstun and throws instead.
So it isn’t unreasonable to assume that you should start off playing Ryu, because honestly it will help you in the long run.
Hey, the first character I learned to play was Hakan, and i’m still playing him
So whatever floats your boat. I personally hate shotos.
Disagree. Controlling horizontal space is very doable with Ibuki but it is harder than Ryu since her footsies are ok and her walk speed is slow. But, that doesn’t mean you have to play Ryu to do so. Spacing is something that is learned over time anyway. Controlling vertical space is definitely something Ibuki excels at (air throw and fast normal AAs like b.mp and cl.st.hk which can be followed up into more damaging meterless combos and mixup opportunities). So why waste time learning things with a character you don’t like when you can do the same with a character you like?
The point is playing a character a person like will motivate them to do better with the character unlike forcing to play a character he/she don’t like which will most likely make the person hate the game and quit playing it.Besides, the OP paid the game with his/her own money so he/she has the right to choose any character no matter the reason.
I’m not the most experienced player, I’m pretty much still a noob myself, but I’m maybe half a year or so ahead of the above post. Basically I’ve found that any character that has good normals are decently ok to play and I would personally recommend for use for beginners. Just putting emphasis on normal moves I feel helps a lot and if you basically focus on playing footsies with your normals and use ur specials somewhat efficiently (using EX moves at somewhat opportune moments) I feel you are on to a great start. One thing to REALLY avoid is jumping too often. Learn to dash or perform moves which move ur character forward. I am still a scrub like I said, but I can’t tell u how many times I’ve won games against people much more experienced than me just because they keep jumping in randomly on me (it hurts even more since I play Ryu and the uppercut hurts more than just a normal move anti-air).
With the above in mind, I would suggest pretty much any charge character to beginners (maybe chun-li and guile are the best tbh, and characters I myself have considered playing more extensively), even though this sets up a new problem. Learning to use charge I found actually quite hard and unnatural to me at least. Maybe it’s because I started trying once I already knew a bit of Ryu so I wasn’t used to it, but it just felt difficult. But since charge characters usually have really good normals to compensate for the fact that their specials require charge, I still find those characters to be quite good for beginners. Chun-li has some added difficulties in that she requires u to learn how to double tap but tbh this isn’t difficult and if u just learn how to do it (check youtube for plinking and double tapping if u don’t know what it is) I feel her bread and butter combos are really easy and then just using her normals is a great way to learn to play the game imo. Both chun and guile ofc have projectiles which is nice just to be able to deal with fireball spamming shotos imo. Another character I quite like is cody who isn’t charge, but also has great normals and really easy combos. I’ll add just some very basic combos for cody, chun-li and guile if u are interested in trying them out. I’m not a pro or anything, but I’ve dabbled in these 3 a little bit and found these combos pretty easy to do and to use in real fights. But like I said, really focus on normals and specials imo, combos are hard to get used to at start, but I personally enjoy practicing combos when I get tired of getting my face mashed online.
Cody:
f.mp cr.mp xx Criminal Upper
cr.lp cr.lp cr.lk xx Ruffian Kick
Chun-Li:
cr.lp cr.lp st.lp st.hp
cr.lk cr.lk xx EX legs
Guile:
cr.lp cr.lp st.lp st.hp
cr.lp cr.lp cr.mp xx Flash Kick OR Sonic Boom
p.s. I totally forgot but M. Bison or Balrog are also great options imo, but I haven’t played these much myself so I forgot about them!
p.p.s. One thing about all these characters is I believe most of them don’t have as good a reversal as the shotos do. I am not 100% on this but I think Guile’s light kick Flash Kick has ok invincibility and 4 frame start up, chun-li only really has EX Spinning Bird Kick which is really too bad since I otherwise really like chun-li but having bad reversals can be tough, m. bison I believe has quite a few, but I’m unsure of their startup and frame data, balrog has his EX headbut I believe but not too sure, and lastly cody only really has EX Zonk Knuckle but I think that is ok at least, but not really good.
p.p.p.s. ofc the shotos have great normals aswell, that’s the thing with them, they have every good fundamental property and that is why they are prob the best to start with. I’m just saying these characters i find can also be quite good, but they all prob have some thing worse than shotos, but if they are more fun then I would say try them out and see if u enjoy them.
Of course you don’t have to learn them, it won’t hurt your game in the long run. Know how to play against them for sure. You really only like 1 character though? most people have a secondary or tertiary character
Be patient and learn fundamentals with the characters you like. I’m still learning fundamentals with Juri. There’s too many shotos already online!
When you say “I hate using Ryu” I hear “I hate playing Street Fighter.”<br><br>If you don’t play Ryu, at least learn to respect Ryu. A mediocre Ryu is easy to stomp, everyone knows the matchup and so Ryu has to outplay the opponent.
Just don’t start with Seth.<div><br></div><div>You’ll get too far only to realize you trash really bad players and lose to every decent player because you never learned fundamentals so your ground game is ass and you can’t get damage if they keep defending your jump ins.</div>
<blockquote class=“Quote” style=“font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;”>
<div class=“QuoteAuthor”><a href="/profile/69974/M00nTiger">M00nTiger</a> said:</div>
<div class=“QuoteText”>
<blockquote class=“UserQuote”>
<div class=“QuoteAuthor”>snip</div></blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>True. But my point is that OP is obviously new, and as such wants to learn how to play street fighter. And every newbie SHOULD learn to play Ryu to a competent level. Ibuki’s tools are for advanced players who can use her weird-ness to get around her lacking areas (strong pokes and footsies).</span></font><div><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”><br></span></font></div><div><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>If you want to be good at FIGHTING GAMES and not just SF4, learn to play Ryu. He teaches you everything you need to know about spacing, combos, cancels, anti-airs and more. Unless you have a competent Ryu you will get stomped at higher levels of play.</span></font></div>
I think, personally, for newer players learning characters with excellent reversals can breed bad habbits. When I started playing I was told to avoid characters like Ryu, and play characters like Abel; as this would force a better defense out of me. Which is good, if you start off on shoto characters whilst a good reversal is nice to have it can also become a crutch and it’s use, a bad habbit. You might find you’re having it baited out a lot, for large punishes, and it’s possible you won’t quicky learn to use normal anti-airs too. <div><br></div><div>Ultimately every character has different strengths in regards to what they’re liable to teach you. You can learn everything you need to by simply playing Ryu, or Ibuki, definitely, however playing other characters can force a better understanding more rapidly than you would get second hand. </div><div><br></div><div>If we look at Ibuki specifically, given that she has no decent reversal this will force a good defense. However her normals are pretty good so you’ll probably develop a decent understanding of pokes / footsies, and overall a solid mid-game. She’s also pretty execution heavy, so you’re execution on stick / pad will be forced to improve rapidly (either that or you’ll just lose a lot). However she also has some techniques which are non-transferable, so somewhat useless to learn if you ever switch to many other characters such as super-jump cancelling and some of her 50/50 gimmicks. </div><div><br></div><div>Ultimately provided you’re going to stick with Ibuki it doesn’t matter who you play, but if you’re going to switch bear in mind many of her techniques are non-transferable to other characters, so it may feel like learning the game all over again. If you’re okay with that possibility, stick to Ibuki. </div><div><br></div>
<font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>Your friends are idiots.</span></font><div style=“font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;”><br></div><div style=“font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal;”>I’ve never understood this mode of thinking where “you <i style=“font-weight: bold;”>must </i>play the shotos” to learn the fundamentals. I’m right there with you, I can’t stand shoto characters. And believe me, I’ve tried to use them. There’s just something about them that keeps me from being able to understand them, with the sole exception of AE Sakura. And I’ve only picked her up recently and I’m still god-awful with her.</div><div style=“font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal;”><br></div><div><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>When I got into Third Strike my main was and still is Ibuki from the very beggining, despite all of the criticism I received from trying to start with such an advanced character. Sure, it was hard, and I did have a lot of frustrating moments trying to understand her, but you just need to stick with it. To me, shotos are rarely anything besides an easy way out. Find a character who’s uniqueness sticks out to you, and make it you own.</span></font></div>