It’s been a tough road for Ryu users in Street Fighter 5. Although Ryu was considered a serious contender in Street Fighter 5 Season 1, the nerfs he suffered in Season 2 led to Street Fighter 5’s Ryu getting the butt. of jokes was now about four years. Looking back, Ryu was mostly just a top tier in Season 1 thanks to the existence of his now-removed werplus, anti-air jab, and his meterless, completely invincible Dragon Punches – tools that no character should have in Street Fighter 5 at this point.
For the longest time, it felt like Ryu was designed differently from the rest of the cast. “Ryu is balanced, but he lives in a broken world,” was in fact the universal analysis of Ryu. It felt like Ryu was suffering from some major design issues that were actively ignored for years. To my surprise, Capcom has seemingly addressed almost every complaint I’ve had about Ryu in Street Fighter 5 with the latest balance update.
My biggest complaint about Ryu in Street Fighter 5 was his inability to hit squatted opponents with certain moves. In previous versions of Street Fighter 5, Ryu’s meterless Hurricane Kick specials and target combo would sniff against a crouching character.
Responding to whether or not the enemy crouch or stand during your combo was a staple of previous Street Fighter submissions, of course, but it seemed that only Ryu was affected by this design philosophy in Street Fighter 5.
Even other “Shoto” characters like Ken and Akuma were now suddenly gifted with Hurricane Kick specials who didn’t care if the opponent was standing or crouching. Ryu was “unique” because he didn’t get this benefit.
While Ryu could instead choose to end his combo with the Joudan Sokutogeri – aka the “Donkey Kick” – the Hurricane Kick was of course better to maintain Okizeme pressure for Ryu.
Players could just bypass this shortcoming and respond easily to the standing or squatting opponent, but the question remained, “Why bother?”
There were many fighters who were simply better than the Street Fighter poster boy who didn’t have to pay extra attention to the enemy’s standing or crouching status when performing their combos.
By allowing Ryu to hit squatting opponents with the Hurricane Kick and using a variation of his target combination that also works against squatting, Ryu not only makes it easier to play, but also allows him to use Okizeme pressure more reliably. – an absolute must for any character to see some kind of competitive-level success in Street Fighter 5.
Another big change for Ryu was the extra block frame advantage for its standing medium punch. It went from +1 in block to +2 in block.
Against certain characters, Ryu wasn’t really able to frame the trap with his standing medium punch, despite having +1 on block. He should use the squat medium punch instead.
At first it might have seemed like a fair trade off as Ryu’s default medium punch required only 5 boot frames, but again this didn’t compare well to characters like Ibuki or Necalli that had 5 frame media buttons that were +2 on block.
The patch also made a significant effort to undo the damage done to Ryu’s Season 2 mid-range game when his squat medium kick and squat heavy kick both got an extra boot frame. Capcom even took it a step further by finally canceling his standing heavy punch specially outside of his V-Trigger 1.
Ryu’s V-Triggers have also seen significant buffs that make them both useful in different ways. V-Trigger 1 gives his punches extra frames of hit stun, while V-Trigger 2 allows him to deal extra damage at the end of specials for the cost of V-Gauge. Before this patch, Ryu’s V-Trigger 1 only gave niche advantages, while V-Trigger 2 was almost useless for competitive play.
The one thing about Ryu that wasn’t addressed in my mind is how he still has one of the worst 3-frame light bumps in the game. Since Ryu doesn’t bother to fully extend his arm, he has terrible reach. Still, with all those other insane buffs, I can’t help but think this little thing might not matter.
It’s still very early on in the new update, but I can’t help but feel very optimistic about Ryu’s potential. Capcom finally gave exactly what the Street Fighter poster boy needed to potentially be a competitive challenger in high-level Street Fighter 5 gameplay. I look forward to (hopefully) seeing players compete with Ryu.