Honestly if you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals in this game, and you’re good at it, then i’m pretty sure you’ll be good at most of the cast.
Other than that, I chose Gen mainly because of him being the only character to have two stances, other reasons would be because of the hands combos, he’s not commonly used (I like to discover things that people haven’t discovered yet) and because he’s not commonly used, I was able to build my own playstyle with him.
honestly I play gen for one reason “YOU ARE A BIG FOOL” the quote was just too sweet, sad its not in the game lol!
Gen is fun. I don’t care if he’s top tier or bottom tier; if he was god tier and Daigo and whatnot started playing him, I wouldn’t drop him cause i’m not a snob that way. The way I see it, for any character, there were players of them before and there will be after us. So what if people bandwagon him, just prove you’re the best. While i’m not at that level for Gen yet, one of my favorite things is to do mirrors with Ken/Bison. There’s no excuses or ‘bad matchup’ stories afterwards, the better player wins.
Cool story me.
I play Gen because he’s an amalgamation of quirkiness, unlimited possibilities and technical frustration. There’s no fixed playstyle that works better than others, it almost entirely depends on the player. Since 2012 I’ve noticed the execution bar has gone up due to things like roll FADC and kara U2. Regardless I try to play clean & simple, since it’s very easy to get caught up in a flashy combo and make that one fatal mistake.
Hm, I think he’s the least frustrating character for me. Before I played Sagat and the Abel. Both feel so extremely slow to me and Abel’s even worse. When I played Abel I felt like a tank, powerful but hard to steer because to me it always seemed like his moves must precise or you’ll be wide open.
Then this became a mix of frustration and boredom because these characters are so limited in moves compared to Gen. I had a similar experience with Fei-Long. I like his style, quick and efficient but in the end also boring to me.
And someday, somehow I picked up Gen. He was almost as fast as Fei but like a treasure chest full of moves that could be combined between each other.
With playing him more and more also old memories from my childhood resurfaced again, like playing him on Alpha with friends and copying offical artworks. Probably memories from Kung Fu-movies with similar mysterious old master characters connected, too.
You see, it’s complicated. 
Back when I was still a newb, I tried out several characters looking for a main, Gen being one of them. Lurking around wiki showed me that Gen may be one of the most challenging characters to learn or play well. Since nobody picks Gen anyway, I took up the challenge.
I remember how I cringed at his slow and weird looking normals in crane style, and that crappy hands-mash that pales in comparison with E.Honda’s slaps… not to mention the bicycle kicks that outright loses to Ryu/Ken’s SRK. Aside from not being able to get the timing down on those bicycle kicks, I felt like I was playing with 12 buttons instead of 6. Real challenge it was, I thought I was never going to touch this character again.
Then came the day I got bodied by a Gen player, all dressed in his glorious alt costume with the colour changing mask (coincidentally the first ever post/thread I made after registering here was about this particular alt costume… if anyone remembers). Dude knows what he’s doing, and even taunted in mid battle. Normally I’d be rather salty if anyone taunts me just because I’m new at that time (Balrog, Ryu, Ken, etc… pfft), but this Gen just made me go “wow” and I didn’t even feel salty after that. I was utterly taken by surprise at how smooth and efficient he was in using those “crappy” moves, cross ups and stuff. Super > ultra was the icing on the cake. I stopped the game right there and made up my mind… I GOT to main this character. Whoever was behind that Gen, I never saw him again, but if I ever do I’m going to thank him for the beating lol.
Spent countless hours in training mode, watching pro Gen videos, mastering those bicycle kicks, making stance change a second nature, remember to use the right normals in the right stance, etc. Imo, it was all worth the effort. When I play other characters now, they all feel terribly boring.
I think I have come a pretty long way since then. Watching my friend try out Gen was like looking at a mirror of myself when I first tried him out. He even said the same thing lol, “I’m never going to use this character”.
A friend of mine was watching me play Gen, and he was like “Wow this character is so cool, he’s looks like Pai Mei”. Then he was checking Gen’s specials and was frustrated by Gekiro timing, then he was like “fuck that shit” and he never played Gen again after that.
I do get the feeling that most Gen players have gone through that phase at one point before realising his true potential.
Yep, had that, too, when I thougt: “Man, that’s just to hard for me to learn.”. And then I discovered Super to Ultra and Cross Up into Gekiro. This worked and motivated me.
I started playing fighters with SF4 but didn’t pick up Gen until super, and at the time, I played pad… fuerte.
I had a real problem timing things and felt much more effective utilizing footsies and setups than combos. So my foundation for fighters and playstyle is that spacing and poking that are highlighted in those simple moves.
Until I met a skill ceiling by playing at a major, I believed I could stop amy offense with the right normal attack in Gens skillset.
(Think how a characters ultra animations feature a specific move that makes them great. Think about Gens ultra 1, think, crouching fierce!)
His “true” potential stays in about mid tier. Even when you play a clean game, you still have to keep in mind a lot of characters have a few knockdown setups that boggle your mind, while they can get away for (almost) free. We’re confined to blocking, punishing and poking properly against people who know how to play their character. A defensively solid Gen has a lot of potential, but still will have less chances than most opponents to get some damage in. From Gen’s side, the damage, wake-up setups, option selects (at least for minimizing damage) and frame traps are pretty solid. I feel patience is an essential factor for playing him in a solid way.
No matter against which opponents I play, international tournaments or not, I get comments and rants about match-up knowledge. But beware of the opponents who actually have that knowledge.
Why do I play Gen? Because he’s so versatile it’s insane. And the way he plays depends entirely on the player. I LOVE that sense of freedom