Damn, Alex is huge (!)
Guile -- old fave, oh he with the impossibly long leg sweep.
Yeah he's a big man. I like this fan art with him and Chun-Li, it isn't canon though.
But I still don't get the appeal? I think people were happy to get a new protagonist for SFIII but his character design isn't that cool, really. It's just different.
Guile still has the double leg sweep, which is like impossible to do in real life. Also the upside down reverse kick, which is a fan favorite. Thankfully, he stayed the same and only has two moves, plus his command normals. His only new thing is vskill, which is the sonic saw, and allows you to shoot it then throw a sonic boom after for two fireballs. His trigger makes it so he can throw many in a row.
Remy is another char we haven't seen since S3. He was the Guile replacement and had his moves for some reason, being a frenchman. He had a sonic boom, called light of virtue, and could also throw a low one unlike Guile or Nash. When Juri came along they gave her a low fireball, which are rare in SF. I wonder if they'll add Remy in this one, especially because the aforementioned three are included... There might not be space for another sonic character, let alone adding two with a low fb. But, they might be different dimensions because Juri's travels along the floor like a KoF fb whereas Remy's low sonic was more above ground, kind of middle-ish.
Like in IV you could hurricane kick through hadokens and Guile's sonic but couldn't go through Seth's, since he was so tall.
So I think I've been improving except the game gets repetitive since you're doing the same moves over (SF tends to have a low amount of moves mapped compared to 3D fighters like Tekken; etc) and sometimes the only strategy is to actually do the same move two or three times in a row just to get a decent frame trap. I can't recall much of that ever previously, besides using Bison in which that is basically necessary for the type of char he is, but in this one, everyone does that, even while you're blocking. But, I feel my time with USFIV paid off because I mostly know what I'm doing and don't fall for many cheap tricks, especially during matchups from IV.
Well, a perfect example of this is Bison vs Balrog (dictator vs boxer). Boxer was one of the best characters in IV. Bison was very middle; even though both had no fireballs Balrog seemed to have an advantage which was very difficult to figure out.
They are both charge but Balrog was able to stay boxed in and block everything only to easily mash out a counter.
Bison sucked in there because he was all combat. His ultra sucked and he had no real setups; it was good but just inconvenient to land ever so you had to rely on his other tools. He had a fast walk speed and dash but a floaty jump - you could never jump in to anything unless expertly predicted. The game got crazy once they started adding a bunch of characters and changing things around but it still didn't help much. It's interesting to see how young he is in that one compared to in V. His walk speed is much slower, like Sagat's, but his dash is kind of fast.
In V his roundhouse is reduced to a knee, sacrificing tons of range. Instead of using his body as a projectile via PC he now has PB, psycho blast, which is just a hand orb fireball, actually pretty useful and something to stop Boxer's rush, a tool he didn't have in IV. Now the match seems more even but individual player skill is still a huge part of it.
Another weird move they gave him to make up for no PC is inferno, which has interesting properties but is a kind of lackluster, generic move honestly. Still has headstomp and DR but they're the same move now. DR is different in everygame, terrible in IV, people said it was a ripoff of his CvS2 version which is the fan favorite, but we all know the move was best in Super Turbo. But it will never be like that again because mechanics. Luckily, with v trigger activated it somewhat could resemble it.
So instead of pressing punch twice you just press punch before headstomp ends. A different move but it can surprise. But it's still just as punishable as ever and the timing has to be really right. It also resets so you can hit them after it, just another quick subtle tool that helps increase his damage output.
In fact, the reason I've been having a decent win streak is because his super (ultra) is actually plausible and can be landed at least once around. In IV, every character had good ultra setups besides Bison, incidentally, and you can really feel the change.
Also he has no command teleport but instead, his dash animation is a teleport, how it should be. His warp was good at first in vanilla IV but after all the updates it was rendered unusable for some reason, by adding extra recovery to the end of it and even reducing the range it went! There was no point, but in here you can just dash and it's like a teleport. A neat little thing. It can go through fireballs but the timing is hard.
There are still a couple neat combos I need to get before I can fully be confident such as ex inferno into ex headstomp, but the inferno generally requires a cr. medium punch canceled into blast, which is canceled into the inferno, which takes practice and luck to find yourself in that situation, mess up once and you lost a chance to land a stylish combo! The hardest part about SFIV to me was getting in close to begin a jab sequence because the other player oddly enough just jabs you first. Where does it begin and end?
So every character is good but player skill is the real gap. There are tier lists so basically if one person is copied so as to have two individuals of identical skill level, one clone using the best character and the other clone using the worst, the one using the best will more often than not win. If the best player using the worst char goes against the worst player using the best char, the best player will still probably win.
Rashid is a pretty good character, being one of the newcomers.
His playstyle is something never seen before although he takes the tornado animations from Cody; etc. He has a dash kick that goes across the screen and does lots of damage but if you block it can easily get a punish. Good players just hit you. He's kind of fast and his gimmick seems to be not relenting and giving you a chance to hit him. Of course they'll add a middle eastern guy in today. There weren't really any before besides large gypsy wrestlers or Shaheen from Tekken 7, also recently inducted.
I thought I wouldn't have trouble against him but have played a few good ones. Figuring out the best strategy for this matchup since he's new and it isn't familiar yet like say Ryu vs Bison.
Dhalsim is supposed to be really good in this one as well, and has a beard.
One of my pals used him in SFIV so I thought I had a handle on it but have still played against some good ones. He's pretty much the same but has new float and teleport gimmicks as well as a fire spill, which does damage while you stand in it. I've beaten some really bad as well... The matchup can be fun and can go either way. Bison tends to have the unique ability to get in from faraway using headstomp or scissors. But against Dhalsim, he can easily be stuffed by the limbs or knocked out the air, plus the no hand DR jump in gimmick is gone because it's a part of headstomp now. But usually both chars are jumping over the place, teleporting here and there until one goes down. It's no joke.
