Having finished the single-player game in Street Fighter 4 with both Sagat and Sakura on the same day a couple weeks ago, it really dawned on me how much stronger certain characters in the game are compared to others. I’m not talking about characters like Dhalsim and El Fuerte – I think they’re both pretty much fine. I’m talking about overpowered characters like Sagat and Balrog, and underpowered characters like Vega and Gen.

Overall, the characters in Street Fighter are balanced. If you’re having trouble beating a specific character, it’s likely either because you’re not familiar enough with that character’s moves and capabilities, or else because the other player is too good. Conversely, if you’re having trouble winning when playing a specific character, it’s likely because you’re not good enough with that character, or once again because the opponent you’re currently playing is too good. That being said, there are definitely characters in the game who are overpowered, and other characters who are underpowered.

After the original Starcraft was released, Blizzard released a number of required updates – without them, you were unable to play on Battle.net, which is the only way to play online. These patches made minor tweaks to the abilities of the various races in the game, eliminating loopholes in the game’s tactics so that all three races were balanced. I think that Street Fighter 4 needs a similar patch.

Sagat is the character who first comes to mind. Sagat combines normal attacks that have range second only to Dhalsim with quickness and high damage output. His two different fireballs, his very fast Tiger Knee, and that killer Tiger Uppercut make for one badass mofo. It’s very easy for sagat players to sit in the corner and spam fireballs. They come off quickly enough that it’s very hard to jump in over them without catching a Tiger Uppercut. Back in Street Fighter 2 days, Sagat was a poor man’s Ryu/Ken. Now, he’s better than either of them. Capcom needs to slow down his recovery after Tiger Shot fireballs just a bit and perhaps lessen the priority on his Tiger Uppercut. He’d still be badass, but not quite as ridiculous as he is now.

Zangief is difficult to gauge. Overpowered? Maybe. From my current perspective, his game is all about setting up throws. From my arcade experience with Street Fighter 2, this wasn’t always the case. But now that I’ve gone through the Zangief training and completed the game with him, I’ve decided that I no longer like to play Zangief as much as I used to in Street Fighter 2. At first, I’d have added Abel to the “overpowered” list along with Zangief, but after having played as Abel, I understand the character better. Most of my complaints have more to do with the computer’s nanosecond timing than anything else. His roll-throw pattern seemed nearly invincible until I realized that Abel can be thrown while rolling. And his Sky Fall air grab is very cool – grabbing a foe out of the air while Abel’s on the ground. Abel needs no changes.

Balrog, on the other hand, needs to be fixed. I’ve never been a good Balrog player, but even I can tell that Balrog is overpowered. When a good player unleashes a Balrog barrage, it sometimes seems like the entire game is one big long combo. He seriously needs some recovery time added to a few of his moves so that they become somewhat punishable if blocked.

Gen is another mixed bag. Hard to analyze. He’s the only two-in-one character in the game. He’s got two complete sets of moves in his crane style/mantis style. He’s even got two super combos and two ultra combos. For such a difficult character to play, I’d like to have seen him a bit higher in the character rankings. His slow crane attacks should do more damage, and his mantis attacks should have a bit higher priority. I wouldn’t want to see Gen be stronger than Ryu or even Guile, but seeing such a difficult-to-play character at the bottom of the rankings just feels wrong.

Vega should be a force to be reckoned with. He’s super-fast, and he’s got a great reach. The problem is that he can’t take a hit, and when he loses his mask, he takes even more damage. He does a bit more damage when his mask is off, but he also takes 25% more damage. The special move that makes him drop his claw is just stupid, as there is absolutely no benefit to dropping it, as he loses both range and damage. If they wanted to handicap Vega by making him lose his mask or claw after having taken some hits, he shouldn’t be so weak to start with. His claw should do more damage. Getting his claw off him and keeping him away from it should become a priority for his foes.

Lastly, Dan. Dan is the weakest character, and I’m okay with that. Dan is intended to be a joke. He’s an intentionally handicapped character, and he is hilarious. His animation for a throw has him stumbling, and his ex-Haduken attack has him screaming with exaggerated effort as his fireball travels less than halfway across the screen. Dan needs no adjustment, despite being obviously underpowered.

I have no expectations of a balance-adjusting update from Capcom, but I can always dream.