hello i forgot all about this thread, gotta study up for mystery tournaments!!!
also i see someone brought up world heroes perfect a long while back. just gonna say that i’d arrange the tiers a bit differently now:
S:
Hanzou - double jump, free roman cancel for a possible infinite and tons of pressure, fireball/dp. no bad matchups period.
A+:
Ryoko - after seeing some of the more recent japanese vids i’m more sold on her than i used to be. didn’t think the dashing low MP infinite would be practical but welp. besides the infinite she has other good pressure normals and cool kara command grabs. not sure how she would handle someone like j.carn or ryofu though, which is why i’m not going to put her at the top yet.
Capt. Kidd - infinite is kinda wonky, you have to see whether the opponent’s crouching or standing and adjust it after the first hit. he has mad problems with j.carn for reasons i don’t remember exactly…i think torpedo and hopkick gave him a real hard time and carn outpoked him
J.Carn - iirc his invincible AA special was safe on block or hard to punish anyway. but the main things with him are great normals, constant pressure with hopkick (no pushback on block!), and the completely safe and nigh-unbeatable torpedo.
Fuuma - yes, even as pathetic as his combos are, the double jump is such a huge advantage in a game like this.
A:
Ryofu - everyone thinks he’s god when they start playing, and he’s definitely strong. ranged normals that beat lots of things and do huge damage, and the ceiling-cling ability that lets him use air normals as pokes and run ambiguous crossups. that said, his lack of AA that hits directly above him means he gets rocked by the ninjas, and carn’s torpedo makes him a problem too. heck, even brocken might beat him thanks to limbs! and with what kidd & ryoko can do off of one hit, i would say he doesn’t beat anyone above him.
Jack - extremely basic and i find him boring as hell. he’s all about neutral/dashing roundhouse, which is fast + has good range + works as AA. also it’s 2 hits and you can cancel either one, so it’s a brain-dead hitconfirm to drill.
Dragon - all pressure all the time, extremely fast and advantaged normals all around, dragon kick is also real good for no charge and his jump arc is nice.
Rasputin - doesn’t hit as hard as erick but his zoning is stronger overall (projectile frametraps!) and he has better AA and “get off me” options, so he doesn’t get counterpicked as hard.
Mudman - takes great execution to make him work, as you can infinite with his knee dive but it has almost no hit/block stun. has good projectile game, forget what else. keits played him way more than i did!
B:
Erick - a pretty good zoner with ranged normals that hurt a lot, as well as huge combos involving his freeze moves which you will never land in a real match. he has virtually no AA and his normals are slow, so he struggles against characters who can consistently close the gap. erick-hanzou is hands down worst matchup in the game, and erick-fuuma is probably second worst.
J.Max - fierce DP can be hard or impossible to punish if the opponent blocks it right next to you. huge damage bnb’s, especially since you can jump cancel his LK tackle and juggle with a quick j.rh. also has unreactable high/low that leads to LK tackle or super either way, though you can’t really force it outside the corner thanks to backdashes all being ridiculous in this game. his pokes are terrible iirc and he hates being zoned (tho i think he has projectile reflect which helps some).
Muscle Power - much like j.max, a big slow dude who has a major element that gets screwed by backdashes (360 grabs obv). his pokes are worlds better though, and LK dropkick is safe. can do some neat combos involving his LK clothesline and linking other stuff after it, but not the easiest thing to set up since the clothesline is a charge move. has obvious problems with zoning and i forget how good his AA is. oh yeah, his j.MP elbow has the highest priority of any normal in the game - i’ve seen it beat DPs quite often, though unfortunately it knocks down on hit.
Brocken - don’t get why japan seems to love him so much, but he’s better than i originally believed. his air torpedo thing is safe if you cancel it immediately on block, which is much harder than it sounds; the game seems to drop inputs on impact sometimes. that move is especially good considering that he has jump-cancelable normals which can combo into it. his missile drop from the torpedo is also a pretty solid move with ambiguous crossup potential. oh yeah and his super is invincible and unblockable, so he gets guaranteed setups w/ it in the corner (they can backdash away otherwise). combine those with all the limbs and he can certainly hang!
Son Gokuu - he was never bottom tier why does the srk list say that!!! ok so he lacks range aside from d,u+P, his normals are bad overall, and his damage isn’t particularly great on most things. his rock drop special is his one really damaging thing, it hits overhead, and it’s completely invincible; that said, it’s also extremely unsafe to the point that you should rarely use it. his main strengths are d,u+P (crazy distance, combos from some normals, totally safe) and the cloud. the cloud singlehandedly allows him to run away from some characters forever (he destroys rasputin, for example), and it also allows for an interesting crossup game: you can jump off of the cloud so that gokuu is offscreen then do the rock drop. the rock drop has a slow stationary startup that normally makes it extremely easy to block, but that’s no longer the case when that startup can’t be seen and the drop itself is fast. the main question with this guy: how many characters can reliably chase him off the cloud? some like the ninjas are obvious, but i don’t really know the answer.
C:
Janne - perfectly average in almost every sense and very boring. as i recall her best tools were slides and dashing jabs. those aren’t going to win you a lot of matches on their own.
Shura - i’ve always thought he was the worst, though apparently he’s had success in japan. normals are trash aside from an ok sweep, dash punches are decent i guess and he has that cool command overhead (and even that’s a bit hard to set up). you can attack in the air after a blocked tiger knee, but the vast majority of the cast has some good AA move that works as a guaranteed punish. i guess he might do ok vs. anyone who can’t punish tiger knee but i have no idea how many of those characters exist…