Monster post but worth the read:
Sakura is not a character good players are drawn to in general for some reason.
She’s a character designed to appeal to a certain crowd, not a character designed to be strong.
Sakura’s appeal is more towards the fan-crowd than the hardcore players.
Good players in general are more drawn towards the better characters, since they want to win ofc.
So a character like Sakura who is perceived as low tier by most will not get a lot of attention from top players. Even if she does get attention she is still a very difficult character to learn correctly due to high execution barrier and low abuse-factor. Sakura is indeed strong when you have “mastered” her basics like her sho fadc combo, what resets to use, how to pressure, how to poke, shunpu loop etc. etc. But even then she’s not as strong as say Rufus who is both easier to learn and do well with, so unless you’re drawn to the character to begin with you don’t have a reason to put more time in for less payoff.
I speak for myself when I say that I definitely consider myself to be a hardcore player rather than a hardcore fan/casual player. I have always liked Sakura as a character, she looks good and she has a nice personality, her unrefined fighting appeals to me aswell. Out of all the charcters in SFIV she’s definitely the one character that has always shown the most appeal to me, but in vanilla she was simply not good enough. So instead I opted for Chun in that game, who I also enjoy both gameplay and design-wise, when super came out I really thought that Sakura’s changes had made her a good character though there were others who thought diffrently (Saber for example, I think Destin too).
Sakura’s gameplay is the most fun to me out of all the characters, you can be very free-flowing and express yourself easily when you play her. You can mix your offensive up in many different ways so you’re not locked down in how you have to approach a situation.
Her high execution barrier and her combos both look nice and deal a ton of damage, that’s something I enjoy in a character as well. She doesn’t even have to be played offensively in plenty of matchups (though I’m very drawn to playing offense), but the option is there to turtle it out if you feel like it
Her poking game is very nice too since you can do many different things with it, zone with st.hk, os with st.lk, confirm with c.mk, fish counterhits with c.mp, stuff with st.hp, trick them with c.hk etc. When it comes to jumping she’s got plenty of good options there as well, j.mp beats pretty much everything air-to-air, j.hp has a great hitbox to beat anti-airs, j.hk has long range so you can hit them if they’re delaying their anti-air expecting you to use j.hp, on top of that she has her air shunpu which changes her angle heavily, has a great hitbox (even better than j.hp), does chip damage and gives a ton of blockstun AND knocks down on hit.
Her specials also have many different uses, the only special that isn’t used much is regular otoshi, all of her other specials have different uses for each strength of the special:
lk shunpu - used as a meaty attack, used for block pressure, combo starter, builds meter, anti crouch tech, okizeme crossups and shenanigans
mk shunpu - jumps fireballs, -3 but range safe, chip pressure, potential to catch jumpers
hk shunpu - jumps fireballs, only -2 on block, +1 on hit and combos on ch/break, easy chip pressure, high potential to catch jumpers
ex shunpu - combos into u1/u2, +4 on block and leads to combos/resets on hit, leads to untechable knockdowns, good move for pressure
lp sho - anti air, fireball trap, whiff punisher, combo ender into u2, builds meter, okizeme shenanigans
mp sho - anti air, fireball trap, punishes certain moves on block such as Akuma c.hk, combo ender for great okizeme, fadc combo
hp sho - anti air (good against people straight jumping your fireballs or backjumping), punishes certain moves on block, combo ender for good okizeme and damage, fadc combo, combos into u2
ex sho - has invul through the startup, used to stop pressure, ume-shoryu, fadc combo, combos into u2, combo ender for easy damage
lv1 hado - it’s a fireball, can be used to fireball trap with her shoryus, goes one screen length, c.mk x hado on max range = pressure and chipdamage, good for corner pressure
lv2 hado - c.mk x lv2 hado can be used as a shenanigan tactic to apply more pressure than you’re actually allowed to do against defensive opponents, good for meatys
lv3 hado - excellent as a meaty after two otoshi hits, deals 30 chip damage, gives huge frame advantage when done meaty, completely safe as a meaty
EX hado - never dissipates, does good chip damage, great as a fireball trap, forces the opponent to act, good frame adv on block, covers a lot of space
Otoshi - combo ender, can be used as a sheningan block string extender, untechable knockdown, low jumping over fireballs
EX Otoshi - punishes fireballs when guessed, covers lots of space and can be + on block, good as a quick get-in against certain characters (Dhalsim and Guile for example)
Air Shunpu - LK/MK/HK are used to mess up anti-air timings what strength to used depends on distance, straight jump hk shunpu is oood shoryu bait and can hit xup in the corner, can it xup when spaced right, corner escape, after ex shunpu this has the most wall carry I think
Air EX Shunpu - Only used as a corner escape, recovers faster than regular air shunpu
f+mk - it’s an overhead, has lots of range and a good hitbox, can counterpoke lows, combos on counterhit, makes the oppoenent react in certain ways (jump, special, poke etc.)
So what I want to say is that I concider myself as a pretty good player, and my opinion is that Sakura is a strong character that is heavily underestimated. When I play Chun for example in Super I don’t feel that she is a stronger character than Sakura, nor a weaker one, in my eyes they are equally good. Chun is by most lists concidered B-tier and I can agree with that, so I would put Sakura in B-tier as well. The reason she’s not put there on tierlists is because nobody who is known has put the time necessary into her and shown results for everyone to see. If someone like Justin/Sanford/Marn etc. would put down the time needed to really learn Sakura and then play her in tournaments there is no doubt in my mind that they would do very well with her. Not only because they are great players, but because they are great players and Sakura is a great character, though difficult. Until someone like that steps forwards be it in Japan or in the staes, people will think that Sakura is low tier, but she is far from it in reality.
