I'm new to SF4, are there any good/easy characters I should learn?

I’ve have Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, so I have all the characters available, but I’m just not sure which ones I should learn to play. I’ve seen a few that I think might be interesting, such as Juri, Fei Long, Hakan, Akuma, El Fuerte, Ibuki, Makoto, and Dudley, but I’m not sure if they’re too hard for me to learn.

I was told by someone that I should learn to play at least one character from each class, I believe they were Shoto, Rush Down, Vortex, Charge, and Grappler. So are there any characters from each of those classes that would be good to learn?

Or if he was completely wrong about the classes or how I should start off, are there any characters that I should learn in any particular order or method? Your help is much appreciated. Also, I’m not sure if I posted in the right board, so if I didn’t, could you please direct me to the correct one? Thanks.

Learn footsies and fundamentals before you learn character types. Pick Ryu and practice basic things like anti air DP (shoryuken), which is Medium DP in AE 2012. Practice crouching Medium Kick (or Forward as you’ll see some call it) into fireball over and over. Learn your links and learn things such as crossups, frame traps, pokes, anti air normals and specials, priority linking (or Plinking), etc.

Just have fun with the game at first. Sorry if you already know all of the basics, but you didn’t state what level of knowledge you have with the game :P. Just pick someone you’d like to try for whatever reason after you have the fundamentals down.

Thanks for the reply! My level of knowledge with the game is fairly low, I’ve had the game for about a month, but I only started getting interested in playing it after I saw a tourney this weekend. If it matters, I’m playing on a ps3 controller, but I might be able to get a cheap fightstick in a couple weeks.

Also, on that note, how on earth do I do the movement for guile’s super combo on a ps3 controller? I’ve tried like 50 times, and I couldn’t get it once.

Using the analog stick on a PS3 controller, you hold downback, roll it to downforward, roll back to downback, and go straight to upforward. It’s all rolling motions except for the last part.

Actually you can keep rolling. The last input is “any up”. So easiest to input is [Charge downback - go to downforward - roll it through downback all the way to upback]. But yeah, it’s difficult to execute.

Also I really don’t know why Golden Sun is mentioning plinks and frametraps when talking to someone that has the game for one month.

Who told you that?

The general idea is to main one character (possibly have a secondary, but even that is too much for a starter). Trying out multiple chars and playing around with them to see what they do and whether one likes them (particularly while trying to find a main) is good, but you shouldn’t actually “learn to play” (as in putting serious time in) mutliple characters. That’s a waste of time.

For starters, it’s more important to learn the GAME rather than a CHARACTER in general.