I’ve never played any home version of this game, only at arcades. Athena, Shin Akuma, Serious Mr. Karate, and Red Armerrer are not playable in the arcade version. There is a bios hack to make them playable from what I hear. But since unlocking them takes exoteric knowledge of the MVS hardware, to me they shouldn’t be tiered.
On to Hugo and Dhalsim.
Noctorunal:
Yes it is true that Hugo can combo into his 360 from d.As, but it is very much distance dependent. Anyone with good poking and pressure can stay just out of the 360 range. This isn’t KOF 98 or ST. Throw range in this game is ass, even for Hugo’s 360.
Truthfully, Hugo has no way to close the distance against anyone. And the only people he maybe can fight are those who are equally bad as him. Overall, no one above bottom tier status should have any problems with Hugo.
You can build meters against Hugo for free, and then GCFS to take care of those random d.As. His d.C is NOT a good overhead. It’s laggy and slow, and very easy to block on reaction. Did I mention that Hugo is at a massive disadvantage on block with this move?
All this about being able to combo his 360 off of a clap is a moot point. The hitbox for the claps are just bad. It not easy to stop projectiles with it or anything. You can try to some mixup trap with the clap, but DPs stop all of it. And anyone can jump out of the mixup as well.
Hugo is garbage in this game, and he has nothing. Maybe if they would have given his moves super armor or invicibility frames, that would have helped a little. But when people can zone and build meter, then GCFS, Hugo becomes unplayable.
Dhalsim:
I believe Dhalsim is mid-tier, but he just isn’t that good in this game. As with any game, YES Dhalsim has some good up close normals. But he can’t follow them up with much of anything, so that within itself doesn’t make Dhalsim good. Dhalsim is only good for building meter and getting a few random pokes here and there (granted he don’t get punished first). However Dhalsim has nothing in Max mode that is good. It would be nice if he had some good combos in Max, but he doesn’t. He has some better some pressure strings like f.D xx fire/f.C xx Fire, but this doesn’t not good. You won’t get their guard crush meters less than 75% before max mode runs out. Dhalsim DOES have a damaging super, which is his tempest. It’s a decent anti air and it doesn’t good damage and is safe. Almost like ST Dhalsim. And you know, it would be great if GCFS didn’t exist in this game.
Overall Dhalsim has no offensive options. You can’t even randomly hit somoene with his exceed as it has poor range. The damage is good, but could be better for being such a lackluster move in the first place.
Oh and on to the Yoga flame. I know it’s meaty and safe, in theory. But it’s the only meaty attack he has on wakeup, and doing it too much will get you ate up. GCFS pretty much kills this mixup. You might as well not even try it on someone with the right meter.
Dhalsim did have a lot of potential in this game, don't get me wrong. But his poor damage, his crappy hit box, compounded by everyones crappy hitbox kills him. He's a solid mid tier because he at least can be used to annoy someone at least. I believe he somewhat counters Goenitz as well (or at least annoy him). But other than that, Dhalsim doesn't really have anything expceptionally good here.
