Who are the easiest characters to use in Street Fighter V?
Street Fighter is known for its intricate and sophisticated gameplay and high-level execution and decision-making. Although there are characters who represent this to its best potential such as Menat or Zeku, there are a few less complex fighters who don’t need you to use much brain power.
For this list, we’re counting down what are the easiest characters to use in SFV, taking into consideration their execution, game plan, and intelligence required to play them.
So we’ll be getting to the easiest of the easiest, the ones with no complicated combos, high damage output, brain-dead neutral, and especially characters that don’t require strategies to get to the win, throughout all ranks of players, from beginner to pro.
5. Ryu
Street Fighter V - Easiest Ryu Combos and Tutorial
Ryu is the original Street Fighter character and the starting point for many fighting game characters for generations. Being a shoto, his moveset is based on a fireball, a forward-moving kick, and an anti-air uppercut, and all other characters in the game have their gameplay design created from his.
Being no expert at any aspect of the game, but not bad at any either, Ryu is a perfectly balanced character who is the perfect one to pick to learn the basic mechanics of the game.
Ryu’s combos are also fairly simple in execution and the motion inputs required to perform them are the roots for all motion inputs in fighting games. Last but not least, his links and cancels are pretty intuitive, and he is decently good at any range, allowing players to focus on other aspects of the match.
What Makes Ryu Great:
- Really good projectile with the Hadoken, especially the heavy version
- Easy combos
- Well-balanced
4. E. Honda
SFV E. Honda Easy Combos
Edmond Honda is an original Street Fighter II character and he has gathered as much hatred as love from the Street Fighter fanbase throughout the years. This polarizing character can be ridiculously tough to deal with and many call him a BS character. This is in part due to how easy it is to play him.
The fact of the matter is that Honda’s game plan is simple: to turtle or to die turtling. Always keeping charge, setting up his Sumo Headbutt or his Butt Slam attacks, blocking, and waiting for an opening to break through and hit the opponent hard. His specials are mostly super safe on block too, making it even more frustrating to deal with Honda.
It is true that are many combos that Honda can perform that require precise charge timing, but the truth is that he does not rely on combos to win, allowing players to essentially just keep charging and waiting for the right opportunity to let Honda strike.
What Makes E. Honda Great:
- Bulky character with a lot of health and stun
- Has arguably the best defense in the entire game
- Charged special moves are mostly safe and cover the entire screen, on the ground or in the air
3. Rashid
What makes Rashid of the turbulent wind great is his excellent, unparalleled mobility. He has an actual run, not just a forward dash, and he can jump off the wall and change his trajectory mid-air with dive kicks. He’s above all a rushdown character, so the game plan here is to get in your opponent’s face and overwhelm them with fluid combos from multiple angles.
Rashid can also exercise immense pressure on the corner. If he’s trapped, he has multiple ways out, including the aforementioned wall jump or his peculiar V-Reversal. If he’s the one cornering the opponent, on the other hand, well… let’s just say you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that, under any circumstance whatsoever. If Rashid has you cornered against the wall, you won’t get out and you can say goodbye to your precious health bar, it will be gone with the wind in the blink of an eye.
He can be a pretty annoying character to deal with, as his mobility is really what this character is all about and even his V-Skills improve this aspect of Rashid’s design. He’s hard to hit and has some really devastating combos and easy hit confirms, and can quickly overwhelm any character in the game.
What Makes Rashid Great:
- Multiple ways to get in quickly
- Attacks can be dished out from all angles
- Savage corner pressure
2. Ed
Ed has a polemic design where no motion inputs are required to perform his moves. Instead, all you have to do is press buttons in certain ways to use his specials, which is certainly something unheard of for Street Fighter. Sure, you always had button mash specials like Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap or Blanka’s Electric Thunder, but Ed’s entire moveset is built upon this concept.
Psycho Shoot can work as a good tool to handle fireball wars and for specific situations, but most of Ed’s game plan is all about getting the opponent close to him. That’s why he is equipped with his V-Skill I and V-Trigger II, which are snatcher moves that can easily grab the distanced opponent and get them close so Ed can start his combos.
He has an interesting playing design in which many of his moves can only be used as follow-ups to others in his arsenal, kind of like a snowball effect. Ed notably lacks any sort of unique attacks, but he has more tools in his shed such as the capability to initiate dangerous set-ups after the opponent is knocked down, especially with his Psycho Cannon.
What Makes Ed Great:
- Easy execution due to the lack of motion inputs
- Many effective anti-air options
- Really good at dealing with zoning tactics
1. Abigail
Abigail is literally the biggest Street Fighter character ever and the truth is that he continues to decimate players of all ranks and expertise, and the complaint remains that you don’t really need to think much to destroy opponents with this character. He’s so gigantic, and his moves have so much reach that you’ll be beating fighters up and right without having them even get near you. And while it’s true that Abigail is slow and can be handled with fast rushdown approaches, we can’t forget that he’s a grappler at the end of the day, and if you get too close, you will suffer.
Besides, getting too close is hard in the first place, due to the length of his reach, and he is equipped with heavy punches that deal a ton of damage and ways to convert checks into combos.
Trying to zone him out is also extremely tough as he has multiple ways of dealing with projectiles, like his Giant Flip or armored moves.
He also can add multiple gimmicks to his overall gameplan of smash and destroy, like summoning truck tires and making his heavy attacks chargeable and armored. But through all of this, the most frightening thing about Abigail remains his mad damage output. Each blow from this big dude will chip out so much life it will easily demoralize any contender trying to take this monster down.
What Makes Abigail Great:
- Gigantic reach
- Devastating damage output
- Lots of armored moves that shut down any reversal attempts
Sometimes you will just want to try a new character out or you’ll just be starting your fighting game journey, and sometimes those times will be the ones when you don’t want to spend too much time in the training room getting your execution right. Sometimes you’ll even just want to play a few sets when you’re tired and you don’t want to be overthinking or trying to make up strategies. Or you’ll just be looking to rank up fast and easy in SFV.
Well, for all these options the best you can do is to pick one of these super easy characters, and you won’t regret it. All of these 5 guys are simple, don’t require much execution or strategies, and have somewhat limited options that allow you to play casually when you most want to. Hopefully, this list helped you get a hold of what are some of the strongest, easiest characters in Street Fighter V, and you’ll confirm it once you started throwing punches using any of these bad boys.
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