Ryu is a powerful zoning character, one of the best of his type. His projectiles are damaging with fast recovery while being a threat at any range. Nearly every move of Ryu has some great utility behind them especially his powerful normals. Designed from the ground up as a jack-of-all-trades character he is one of the most difficult characters to master while being the most popular.
Ryu's troubles come when characters can easily shut down his fireball and low-based game. Ryu's optimal gameplan works when he can keep opponents at bay with his low attacks and anti-air properly, meaning that characters that can easily bypass or surpass his fireball and low game tend to give him some real trouble.
• Strengths •
+ High meterless damage options.
+ Exceptional normals that all serve a unique purpose.
+ Very high-rated fireball game.
+ Can easily and frequently combo into his Ultras.
+ Combos into hard knockdown easily.
+ Extremely strong anti-air game with both specials and normals.
+ Good kara throw and throw tech option select techniques.
• Weaknesses •
- Backdash has short range and is slow.
- The most popular character, so the most studied.
- Poor long range punish options.
- Relies very heavily on his fireball game to succeed.
- Reversal has bad horizontal range.
