If I know my lore right, the strongest characters are:
Ingrid/Gill
Akuma
Oro
Dictator at 100% power (Kills him afterwards)
Gouken
Everyone Else.
Charlie beat ingrid
When? As far as I remember, all of Ingrid’s interactions with the Sf cast are non-canon because she does some magic time warp thing and resets history when she gets done with whatever her goal was.
[details=Spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR9m5iBGnqw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgSm6dc6Wk[/details]
I thought it was a given that rufus’s lore was obviously the deepest. All his interactions with the other characters are deeply symbolic of the struggle with inner demons that we all inexorably face. He is actually the voice of reason, beckoning the characters to confront their fears, while the dismissive nature of all the other characters towards him conveys the sad truth that we rarely look introspectively to push our lives forward. This helps to convey street fighters most important message, that to acquire a healthy state of being mindful thought and looking inward must be constant.
Here is the tier list from the Plot Guide. Bear in mind that this is one of the more speculative sections of the guide, so take it with a spoon of salt and assume a possible margin of error of about two tiers (imho) for a given character (for example, Juri might actually belong in tier 2, Oni is probably tier 1, characters like Guile or Chun Li might easily be at least tier 3…)
Tier 1
Gouki, Gill, Oro, SFZ3 Final Vega, Ingrid - the strongest out of the SFer’s. This group’s in the godly range and outclasses everyone (in some cases like Ingrid, literally).
Tier 2
SF2 Vega, Sagat, Ryu, SnH Ryu, Q(hinted), SF4 Gouken
Tier 3
Ken, Gen (and SFZ Gouki), Rose, Nash, Urien, Guy, Seth, Oni
Tier 4
Guile, Chun-Li, Hugo, Balrog, Twelve (hinted), Maki, Abel, C. Viper, Sodom, Rolento, Cody, Sakura, Juri
Tier 5
Adon, Bison, Cammy, Zangief, Dhalsim, T. Hawk, Alex, Eagle, Birdie (Saiki places Cody and Guy here, but Tiamat thinks they should go much higher for Streetwise reasons, Vasili’s compromising stand given above)
Tier 6
Everyone else but Tier 7 (things get really sloppy here, due to how most characters below tier 5 do not have enough storyline info to tier on noncircumstantial evidence). A pretty good guess I think, would be this (consider the rest of the characters in this tier and below to just be
hinted)
Tier 6
the twelve girls, Karin, Necro, Dudley, Lee, Mike, Geki, Retsu, Joe, Hakan (Saiki places Rolento and Sodom here, but Tiamat thinks they should go much higher, again Vasili’s compromise presented up above)
Tier 7
Blanka, Fei-Long, E. Honda, El Fuerte, Dee Jay, Ibuki, Makoto, Yun, Yang
Tier 8
Elena, Remy, R. Mika
Tier 9
Dan, Rufus
Tier 10
Sean
I presume Vega/Bison/Stuff in that ↑ list are the Japanese names?
@mikros Yeah I’ve read that tier list and I’ve always questioned it.
Notable reasons for my questioning:
Balrog(Claw)/Cody/Sakura/Hugo/Juri all in the same tier doesn’t make sense to me
Sagat 3 tiers lower than Adon (who beat Sagat previously) seems wrong. Yeah, Sagat IS stronger after having trained post SF1 but Adon isn’t that much lower.
Ryu and SNH Ryu on same tier level.
It’s also strongly hinted that Gouken’s true “Power of nothingness” is on par with SNH Gouki.
Dhalsim should be tier 4 (he is training Sagat after all.)
Oni should be tier 2.
Cody should be tier 2 as well (or at the very least tier 3), storyline shows that he regularly won sparring matches between himself and Guy post Final Fight 1 (Since FF1 was the first time they met, the “friendship” before that was created by Capcom USA and didn’t exist in the original version.) and Cody was able to take on and beat the entire Andore family which would put him significantly stronger than Hugo.
I’m still not convinced that Final Fight: Streetwise is canon. I’ve never seen an official statement on it and the game is considered a “spin-off” of final fight and was developed by an american branch of Capcom productions (which was scheduled the close the studio right after release of the title.) not to mention the lack of any other references to Kyle Travers in any other media AFAIK points to it being non-canon. More than anything I just can’t see Guy going all Yakuza crime boss, it doesn’t fit his character at all. (Not to mention that in the admittedly non-canon SFxT the Pandora’s box find Cody and Guy have nothing but wisdom and selflessness in their hearts and destroys itself. Which AFAIK is the ONLY GOOD ending that has no strings attached in the entire game. Everyone else has some sort of downside to their ending.)
S tier: Gill Oro Akuma Gouken
A tier: Urien Bison Gen Sagat Ryu
B tier: Ken Juri Cody Seth
C tier: Chun Li Cammy Guile Guy Dhalsim Rose
D tier: Everyone not listed
Bottom 5: Ibuki Makoto Elena Dan Sean
D tier hasn’t done anything to single itself out for proper placement
I didn’t think it was possible that someone could be weaker than Dan. I can never look at Sean the same way again now.
double post
Sean was the best character in SI… So weaker than Dan? No…
wasnt the manga movie of SF2 considered canon as far as setting the power levels? Bison requiring both ryu/ken to defeat him when hes serious and Dhal absolutely murdering Honda until Ryu shows up.
Also Bison had Sagat/Boxer/Vega as personal harem in SF2, you gotta give the master of shadowlaw more respect.
Eternal, where the heck are you getting this info? Cody having a Black belt is a new one.
To micros up there, I actually agree with Juri belonging in in tier 2, and that’s not my blatant fanboyism/waifuism talking either.
She has to be above Seth because she killed him, and also above Guile because she gave no fucks about him in that animation Gonzo got commissioned for. Putting her in the same ranking as Ryu sounds about right if you really get into about how her eye lets her forcibly steal energy from surrounding beings. Its really only speculation ATM because she is only in one canon game, but supposedly she should be able to handle Ryu given that her eye is on and doesn’t malfunction. Worst case scenario, she is Tier 3. Same tier as Seth and honestly its silly to have her in the same group as Sakura down at Tier 4
She definitely shouldn’t be in Chun tier. She toys with Chun for laughs. Then she beats up 2 dolls, Guile and Cammy. She is at LEAST tier 3. I’d agree tier 2.
Isnt Karin though the richest and most influential among the cast, judging from the ending in SFA3?
money alone should buff her tier status…
Money means squat in a fight. Akuma/Gouken/Oro and Ryu are poor like bums but are still at the top.
She has a satellite laser on speeddial. That’s a shit ton of money on hand.
Capcom sells Sakura as ridiculously gifted. Ayano just commented on it again a few days ago. Which means that the rest of the cast is not as gifted as she is, I suppose. What a bunch of clumsy fighters!
There are two reasons to put Ryu and E. Ryu together. First of all, it’s Evil Ryu from SF1 which is taken into account as his only canonical event. And by SF3 it is claimed that Ryu has reached that level without resorting to the SnH. Of course, that might be underestimating Evil Ryu’s power. If you ask Akuma he’d probably say that Evil Ryu belongs in tier 1 and normal Ryu is a fool. XD
The thing with Final Fight characters is that they are the main heroes in their own game but they are slapped on Street Fighter without much interaction (Guy didn’t interact with many characters but Zeku in SFA1/SFA2, then he basically took Rose in arms in SFA3… Cody doesn’t do anything…). It’s hard to compare. Going role for role, one would be tempted to put them in Ryu’s or Ken’s level, but on the other hand they have so few showings… You can see that Tiamat and Saiki disagreed on all FF characters and there are no solid arguments one can make for either way.
The Juri anime probably overplayed those fights a bit, we could guess that only the broad strokes of it are canon. Comparing to what we see in the games, there are a few inconsistencies, like Chun apparently not being injured while Cammy is (Chun’s winquote to Cammy). I’d personally say tier 2 for Juri, and tier 3 or 2 for Chun, anyways.
Well cammy did get Sparta kicked out of a plane. She landed in snow, bit still got Sparta kicked out of an airborne plane.
Also what do you think they overplayed? Just out of curiosity. The whole thing is supposed to be her canon entry to the series