Daigo: 'I switched from Ryu to Evil Ryu because of Yun'; Ken, Akuma, Sagat are mid-tier but viable
Earlier this week, we posted a summarised excerpt from MCZ|Daigo's column in the latest issue of Arcadia magazine in Japan.
The exerpt itself was centered around Daigo's thoughts on the character tiers in Ultra Street Fighter 4. But as it turns out, the column itself was quite a bit longer, and contained a few more nuggets of info from The Beast himself.
For instance, MCZ|Daigo said that Yun was actually the main reason why he switched from Ryu to Evil Ryu. He also expressed his thoughts on where Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Sagat stand in the tiers.
Arcadia magazine's Morikawa: Everyone's probably been wondering about this, but can you please share with us your thoughts on character tiers in Ultra Street Fighter 4? Which characters are strong?
MCZ|Daigo: The strongest would definitely be Yun.
Arcadia: How strong would you say he is, compared to in AE?
MCZ|Daigo: In AE, ultimately there were three characters in the highest tier: Yun, Yang and Fei Long. And even in vanilla SF4, although you could say that Sagat was definitely the strongest character in the game, Akuma and Rufus were also up there.
Compared to those versions, this time Yun is so strong that you could say he is practically in his own tier. Although Yun does have a hard time against all of the new characters, across the board.
Arcadia: So you mean, overall, there are a lot of characters who have a hard time winning against Yun?
MCZ|Daigo: Yes, I believe so. In fact, it's the reason why I switched to Evil Ryu as my main. When fighting against Yun as Ryu, I thought "yikes, this is a pretty tough match-up".
And when I began to think about what I needed to overcome this match-up, well, to begin with I'd definitely need more attack power. Because I need to be able to punish command grabs with a painful counter-attack.
For those reasons, I decided to go with Evil Ryu. There were other concerns I had, of course, but it just so happened that picking Evil Ryu worked out with all of those concerns, and on top of that, E.Ryu could take on the top class character Yun.
Arcadia: So you're saying, Evil Ryu is a counter for Yun?
MCZ|Daigo: No, that's not what I mean. Although Evil Ryu can go toe-to-toe against Yun, in terms of character tiers, Evil Ryu himself is quite a bit lower. Although I'd say Evil Ryu is within the upper echelons of the tier, he's definitely not anywhere near Yun's tier.
Daigo goes on to list the top 10 characters, after Yun, which you can see in our previous story here.
To clarify further, this is what Daigo's tier list for the top 11 characters looks like:
- Yun
- Cammy, Fei Long
- Dudley, Evil Ryu, Makoto, Ibuki, C. Viper, Juri, Adon, Rufus
Daigo also clarifies that this list is based purely on characters who stood out, based on what he's seen. He also says that Ryu and Ken are right in the middle of the tiers.
Arcadia: What about Sagat? Looks like he has unfortunately not made the upper tiers this time.
MCZ|Daigo: Yep, he doesn't make it there. Well, if you look at it that way, apart from the top tier, the rest is unexpectedly quite normal. Like a normal tier list, really. Even the characters who have not made it into the higher echelons this time are quite viable. For instance, Akuma and... ah, Rose is pretty strong this time, too.