I’ve always thought about getting into this series, but the constant reliance on links turned me off.
Now, after spending some time with SFxT (which I enjoy) and learning how to do links, they aren’t so bad.
Given the fact that I don’t do well with high-execution characters, what are some good beginner characters to start off with?
Thanks in advance for your input.
Gen, Viper and Makoto
Have fun !
Pick Dudley.
I will be your guide.
Your tutorial is very well done.
How hard is Dudley to learn, on a scale of 1-10?
Pick Dan.
You horrible horrible person…
Just pick someone like Ryu or Ken so you understand the fundamentals, then you will want to learn other characters. I liked the way Akuma and Adon played so i picked them up after spending a good 20hours with Ryu 
Ryu or Guile - Ryu if you plan on picking up a motion character, Guile if you plan on picking up a charge character
Ryu for command, Balrog for charge imo. Fei long, too.
Whoever you like and will put in the time with. It doesn’t matter who you play, as long as you like how the character looks and moves, you’re good. Keep playing, and eventually you’ll be fine. Pick Ryu, get bored, drop the game - not fine.
Who cares if you play Viper by hitting buttons and not even smelling a fierce feint fierce, or even know what a feint is. Who cares if you’re free to jump ins. You’re not going to be able to do a dp on command at first anyway. Scrub it out and lose your first 100 games as fast as you can, and you’ll learn something along the way, if you want to.
You can learn execution, you can learn tactics, you can’t learn wanting to play. So do whatever you need to want to play.
Balrog is probably the best beginner character, in my opinion. He’s fairly well-rounded offensively and defensively, is more or less all normals and fundamentals, and teaches footsies better than most other characters I can think of. It’s everything you want from a beginning character.
Other characters that work well, mainly because they teach many of the same things, are Guile, Zangief, Ryu, Adon and Fei Long(I probably forgot a couple). You need to learn to use your normals to play all of these characters, and they don’t really require all that much execution to play on a basic level.
That being said, if you don’t like any of these, feel free to pick anyone you want.
Just play around with the cast, eventually you’ll like what you’re doing with em and can go from there. I started with Akuma and Bison and relied on the basics to start, then dropped Akuma and stuck it out with Bison. Learn their basic moves, what beats out what, then start incorporating basic combos, cross-ups, etc…Up to you how you want to go about it. Combos are nice and all, but there’s so many players with amazing execution who couldn’t counter a head stomp to save their life. So start with the basics and slowly incorporate more things to your game.
This, times infinity. And it applies in every game except the SF3 series. Alpha, SF2, SF4… They’re the most solid to learning all of your fundamentals, and they’re two of the most solid footsie characters in all of SF games.
I’d normally recommend Chun as being the best beginner character overall, as she’s got charge, motions, and rapid inputs… But you might find yourself demotivated in SF4 because with Chun, you’re likely to lose a lot. She’s less than reasonably viable in this game.
I’m interested in Dudley, Balrog, and Gouken so far.
I’ve read the consensus on Balrog. How are the other two?
Wouldn’t it be better to learn Shotos since there’s so many of them?
Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Evil Ryu, Sakura etc.
Their basic tactics are relatively the same and they’re quite simple.
Don’t pick a Shoto,fuck shotos pick Abel!
Birdie