Early on Bison is going to dominate this game because most people aren’t studying frame data. Once you learn to stop pressing buttons he’s going to fall off. He’s got great loopable pressure but can’t follow up throws well as you just get the tip of a meaty Axe. He’ll fall off once people start remembering how to footsie and just walk him into the corner.
I’ve mainly been thinking about character archetypes for this game. There are several distinct categories
Big Button Grappler: This is how we tend to think of the classic true grappler. They have long, slowish buttons to use in the neutral, and then once they’ve convinced you to stop hitting buttons they dash in and grab you. Zangief is the big man here, although Birdie is very much an evolution of the archetype who trades the long ranged command grab for better defense, setups, and movement speed in Vtrigger.
Strike Grappler: A bit of a chance from the previous versions, this is a character who leans fairly heavily on their command throws but also has good up close frametraps to catch people trying to escape the grabs. Their footsies tend to be really poor (which is the big change from the previous versions), but they get a diverse array of movement options to try and get in once they notice an error. Laura and R.Mika fit in here. They’re also heavily reliant on resets rather than knockdowns for looping pressure.
Face or Ankle Rushdown: These characters have two zones they want to be at, either in your face or at the edge of their ankle. Ken and Necalli are the two guys here, who either like being directly on top of you for somewhat oppressive pressure or to hang out right at the edge of their st.hk or equivalent range. They have a bit of a deadzone between the two (Necalli less so due to his EX Grab), but can force throw/DP mixups in addition to the standard strike/throw or try and stuff your buttons for great damage at the edge of footsie range. Ken’s pressure is more loopable but his deadzone is bigger and he lacks a command grab. Nash also fits in here; great far away buttons, great up close buttons, bit of a deadzone between the two. He gets the Sonic Boom as well which is the best fireball in the game to compliment his approach
Foooooootsiesssss: Somewhat self explanatory, they badger you with great buttons to slowly chip away at your health until you make a mistake and they come in for strike/throws. Karin, Cammy, Chun, Ryu, and Vega all fit here. They basically don’t have the same sort of deadzone that the above characters have and can often contest the Ankle range of footsies but often aren’t as scary up close (such as Karin’s throws suck despite her combo damage or that Vega doesn’t do much damage in Claw stance, most have small throw ranges albeit good walk speed). Vega’s a bit of a wildcard here as he can change to a more rushdown character in Barehanded Stance which widens his deadzone, removes his great long range pokes, but ups his confirm damage immensely and gives him a command throw for mixups. Basically he’s got weaker rushdown in footsie mode than other footsie characters and weaker footsies in rushdown mode than the other footsie characters. Probably some of the best footsies around in Claw Stance though. Birdie is basically a hybrid of this and the Big Button Grappler
Shenangians: As it said, these characters are weird enough that I don’t really have a read on them yet. This is mainly Dhalsim and Rashid. Lots of gimmicks and weird stuff so they’re fairly unique and I have no clue how they’ll end up being played
Zoners: FANG mainly; he’s a slight change on the archetype, what with his VSkill and arcing fireballs but the core concept is the same. You have long range buttons to tap people trying to get in, poison forces them to come at you, but your fireball constraints their ability to jump while your long buttons stop grounded pressure. Ryu is a more footsies oriented take on the concept. Dhalsim is technically a zoner I suppose but he might end up as more of a tricky setup rushdown character, I have no clue.
Hybrids and New Types: All the above are recognizable archetypes or a bin for stuff I don’t understand in the case of shenanigans. The new understandable archetypes and hybrids are Birdie, M.Bison, and Vega.
Birdie is a similar thought to the Big Body Grappler who instead wants to force the opponent to come to him rather than making them scared so he can get in, call it a Defensive Big Body. This is accomplished by still having the Big Body Grappler buttons but also by making his anti-air impeccable and giving him setups that are scary if you let him get them out. You don’t want to deal with a Birdie on a lifelead with a Banana down or a Birdie bearing down on you while a can rolls along the ground. These take a lot of time to setup, but if you’ve conditioned the opponent not to come at you then you can often toss them down. This is for the classic grappler characters who liked it when their opponents were afraid to come at them thanks to the 2f SPDs; you might not be able to blow through blockstrings but you can punish reckless offense easily.
Ryu is of course somewhat of a hybrid of the zoner and the footsie character. Good fireball, solid footsies, can keep out but has decent up close game.
M.Bison is what I like to call Tank Footsies. Bison has no safe mobility options at all. The dash can get jabbed, his SKs are minus on block and you have terrible defensive options, HS has no tracking and DR has a hurtbox a mile wide. His walkspeed is almost non-existent. His up close pressure is laughable compared to the Face or Ankle Rushdown characters. But goddamn his buttons are good and if someone tries to mash at all there is no character that will take care of them more easily. Bison is an experiment to see if a character who has little way of threatening to open you up nor a great footsie game due to his walkspeed can be good if you just make his buttons really good to compensate. He’s going to absolutely dominate early on but we’ll see if this falls off.
Vega I discussed above in Footsies but I think it’s apt to bring him up again. He gets to swap between a super strong footsie character with weak rushdown and a good rushdown character with good footsies. If you put footsies and rushdown as adding to 10 he goes between something like 7-3 and 5-5. A Face or Ankle Rushdown character is more like 4-6 or 3-7 while a footsie character is often 6-4. It gives him a lot of versatility.
So to sum up
Big Body Grapplers: Zangief
Strike Grapplers: Laura, R.Mika
Face or Ankle Rushdown: Ken, Necalli, Nash
Footsies: Cammy, Chun, Karin, Ryu
Zoners: Fang
Shenanigans: Rashid, Dhalsim
Defensive Big Body: Birdie
Tank Footsies: M.Bison
Rushdown or Footsies: Vega
This is somewhat thought out, somewhat stream of consciousness. Opinions?
