I still think my initial ranking:
Top: Ukyo
Middle: everyone else
Bottom: Nicotine, Nakoruru
…is probably the best. It’s really hard to distinguish between A-C class characters, because a lot of them have counter matches with each other. People’s opinions will always differ ranking anyone not Ukyo or Nakoruru.
For instance, a lot of people rank Charlotte high because on paper, she does very well. Very high priority pokes/kicks, great anti-air game. But in a real match, I could be playing her very well, get a Haoh, Genjuro, or Kyoshiro down to eat 5 AB slashes a round, they get raged… they get one raged AB into dizzy, and a full life Charlotte goes down. Her comeback factor is low, and that might be a valid reason for someone to rank her B instead of A.
Other people might not think so highly of the Genjuro’s high risk-high reward playing style and comeback factor and would rate him lower. Valid too.
On Cham Cham, her slide at max range can’t be punished. If Ukyo can’t cr.B to punish it after it’s blocked, I call that safe. Obviously if she does the slide at point blank range or too close, she’ll be vulnerable. But if you hit with just the tip of her extended foot, she’ll always recover in time. Genjuro and Haoh can AB her blocked C Jumping Slash, which is why she loses bad to them. Ukyo’s cr.AB is slow enough that she’ll be able to block in time and counter slide leading to her mixup if she did the Jumping Scratch at the max distance. Her boomerangs go through his Swallow Swipes and can get him out of the air. Her boomerang throws (horizontal + verical), plus her Jumping Scratch takes his entire Swallow Swipe game out. Slide beats out After Image too, so as long as Cham can effectively distance her slides, she weakens Ukyo’s dominating ground game too. Her disadvantage (vs. everyone) is that she dizzies fast, dies in fewer hits, and does less damage overall than others because she’s a girl (all SS2 girl characters have these traits). But compared to how bad the rest of the cast faces vs. Ukyo, I think Cham does remarkedly well.
Sieger’s mostly chipping with Vulcan Cannon from a safe distance, and that move is pretty unpunishable if he combos it off of a cr.C. I don’t think he’s that high either, but not bottom, because his hit confirms off of a standing or crouching C into his 3-hit Back Breaker combo does like 50%. The key to beating him is just to learn how to anti-air him and what beats his air-to-air. Because if you can get the lead, his only way in is to jump in (he can’t Body Splash because it’s so slow). But since he has some jump moves that beat a lot of character’s “standard” AAs (like if a regular Charlotte just tries to standing AB his jump ins rather than do standing C, which is more reliable vs. Sieger), he’ll be able to get in, score the C, and hitconfirm into death, then turtle/chip the round to win.
This game defined my mid-90s… 1994, 1995, 1996 were good times. And it seemed everyone was good at this game back then. Used to play on Kaillera, but that scene died. The good ones were Vietcong, legend, another guy I can’t remember at the moment. Online lets you get away with run-up throws more than you really should though, and 50/50s are even more dangerous online since you have lag to deal with your reaction time. I hope SS2 gets picked for ggpo public release rather than beta.