What Happened to Ken? - Why NO ONE Plays Him Anymore | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

when ryu was introduced to super smash bros for the wii u i could only describe my reaction to his arrival as a surprise the fighting game in smash bros communities have been incredibly antagonistic towards each other ever since the days of melee with traditional fighters believing platform fighters to be a mockery of what makes fighting games so engaging so when ryu the iconic protagonist of street fighter arguably the most well-known fighting game series of all time crossed over into smash that was history in the making and likely what gave way to other fgc titles like tekken and vader fury joining the ranks in the next installment of smash alongside the wave of newcomers was ken ryuzeko fighter featuring the canonical similarities and differences like they do in street fighter ryu mains from smash 4 quickly drove out to try ken and thanks to the mirror the bus given to him and his counterpart throughout the early years he's had a very solid albion niche player base and no shortage of competitive success but ever since 2022 the number of can means has been on the decline especially in recent months so for today's episode of winona place i want to go over what happened again in smash ultimate why are people starting to drop him before we continue a word from today's sponsor hellofresh if you're not a fan of cooking like i am you can try it hello fresh it's a meal prep catering service that delivers fresh handmade meals right to your door with easy step-by-step recipes to take 30 minutes or less to make i myself make use of meal preps a lot because i'm lazy as hell and i've used hellofresh a couple times this year each meal provides you a pre-portioned ingredient so you don't waste time preparing the meal or waste food in fact according to a global food waste study on average you waste about 23 less food compared to grocery shopping if you check out their website they offer a new menu every week with a wide variety of assorted dishes each with their listed cooking 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the previous title they both started out much weaker compared to ryu's special iteration even though they're now able to automatically face their opponent just like in their home game regardless they had a slow start it wasn't until the substantial amount of buffs come version 3.1 as well as even more buffs than 7.0 that propelled them from an obscure mid-tier status to firmly and high tier where they stand today however up until that point ryu's weaknesses were still too conspicuous leading many to hypothesize ken being the greater beneficiary of the two shadows that sentiment was further compounded by the differences between the two specials where kenz was seen as more applicable and versatile because of this ryu's representation in the pro scene was almost non-existent while can featured a very healthy amount of screen time during 2020 and 2021 but nowadays we're starting to see more of the main protag in the spotlight with great showings at genesis and the invitational among other events while ken was originally recognized as the stronger the two shots circumstances have not been in his favor further buffs are given to exclusively ryu and the changes to the competitive scene came at his expense with the most noteworthy being the advent of two other fgc characters terry and kazuya and this brings us to the foremost cause of ken's decline in popularity smash ultimate always had a very aerial centric meta game putting fighters who prefer to stay on the ground at a disadvantage in terms of viability anyone with a subpar air game would need to have a ground game so overpowering to balance the scales but that resulted in a doggy dog type environment for said ground fighters it also emphasized how each character was able to deal with their individual flaws of the four ken has bested the test of time the worst by no means am i saying he's a bad character many still consider him a high tier but his representation mostly stemmed from the lack of competition in his department now there is for the sake of argument let's compare the key attributes between him and the other ftc characters starting with ryu the key difference between ryu and ken is how they apply their pressure while ryu is a penchant for powerful single blows and forcing errors out of his opponent ken prefers to go for a more damage wrecking and combo focused playstyle as a result much of his musa was designed with that in mind possessing less kill power to allow him to connect strings of combos and hits together this would give him a stronger advantage state than ryu but it came at the cost of a worse neutral game which is something all fgc characters struggle with due to their almost exclusively short range pressure their normals are more or less the same barring maybe a couple select moves specials are where the two diverge and the one in particular i want to go over is hadouken unlike his friend ken is only able to perform a regular hadouken and is noticeably weaker overall doing far less damage having less maximum and minimum travel speed and being slightly laggier granted a projectile is still a projectile it gives them the option to force approaches and rack of damage from a distance but it does the bare minimum ryusa token can travel a lot faster if using the heavy version and ever so slightly slower if using the light version the format can be used to apply basic pressure while the latter can be used for zone control given that it lasts longer if memory serves you can even get combos off the light version similarly to how samus can set up grabs or dash attacks using mini charge shots ken's projectile is just not threatening enough to most players in the long run it doesn't matter if you get hit by two or three of them since you'd barely take 20 damage all together one shot in that zoo from ryu deals just as much damage as three full power hadron cans from ken i've seen rio players deal 100 off of just shakunetsu ken is only able to output that much damage through his overwhelming combos and to his credit few players out of the entire roster have the same close quarters pressure that he does but therein lies the problem more often than not ken has no choice but to approach if he wants to exert his pressure and his slow ground speed and stubby range make it a lot harder for him to tap into what makes him so powerful especially against opponents who are fully aware of this forcing advantageous neutral interactions is one of the most critical elements in competitive smash because it leads into every other element in the game a neutral interaction is what creates an advantage or disadvantage state where characters are able to rack up damage through various combos it leads into edge guard scenarios like trap scenarios tech chase scenarios it leads into everything prevailing wisdom strives to achieve as many successful neutral interactions as possible be it a stray hit or a combo starter that can lead into a potential zero to death it doesn't matter as for achievements and neutral interactions it really boils down to two options approach or be approached for instance samus is a very powerful neutral thanks to her missiles and charge shot which exert enough pressure from a safe distance that the majority of the cast doesn't have an answer to such as a reflector or their own projectiles as such they need to approach her if they want to achieve a favorable neutral interaction the reason i'm making such a big deal out of this is because ever since version 12 and 13 ken struggles the most at approaching and forcing approaches out of the four fgc years we already went over ryu's hadouken as for terry power wave is effectively the same as canceled again it's a bare minimum projectile but what he does have is two fantastic burst movement options crack shoot and power dunk this grants him a ton of mix-up potential for approaches and once he gets access to buster wolf that becomes a third approach option crash shoot does a ton of shield damage while the other two just straight up kill ken doesn't have any burst movement options and the only movement type attack he has is tatsumaki but unlike ryus his is a combo starter not a strong blow admittedly is safer due to the fact that you can cancel it whenever you want to but it comes at the cost of never killing as for kazuya not only does he possess the strongest reflector in the game but he has a mountain of incontestable moves and crouch dash accelerating his ground speed and low profiling him for every duration ken's lack of utility in his otherwise very strong offensive kit makes it really hard for him to safely get in range to exert that offense i would argue that even after all the buffs to ryu ken's advantage state still pulls ahead but the lack of flexibility in neutral can lead to more polarizing outcomes against opponents with equally inflexible neutrals ken is probably the better choice but against everyone else people are noticing ryu offers a bit more stability and consistency and remember when it comes to esports consistency is the ultimate driving metric behind a character's popularity speaking of which in light of recent events many players are starting to believe terry and kazuya can accomplish everything the two shots can do but more consistently and toward to greater payout for ryu thanks to the buster shakunatsuhadoken he now is a more reliable neutral game since it forces most enemies to approach him which is what he wants it's a melee range in essence ken and ryu now embody their respective identities from their game of origin ryu was always the more all-around generalist of the two relying on his fireballs to press the enemies to get within range of him where he can punish accordingly while ken is perceived as more aggressive and proactive he likes to get up in his opponent's face and beat their ass initially ken's assets were valued more favorably on account of ryu's assets being far less pronounced back then and because we were in a very confrontational proactive playstyle meta during the early days of ultimate though in recent years as you're no doubt aware of by now the meta game has shifted from close range rush downplay styles to more mid range with punish and trapper playstyles not to sound like a broken record but fighter's past 2 served as a significant turning point in the pro scene characters like midman and steve are causing many players to re-evaluate the validity of pure offense as recklessly approaching either of them can lead to a massive amount of punishment meanwhile zefroth and aegis have ushered in more fighters to excel at mid-range creating even more difficult matchups for ken and do not forget the most powerful whiff punisher in the game kazuya who straight up by frames his way into breaking into pieces throughout the changes in the meta virtually exclusive melee fighters have had to fight an uphill battle and ken was one of them this may not be the best example but if you compare the recent pgr uv3 with the pgruv2 back in fall 2019 you'll notice a steep drop in rush down melee only fighters and a lot more tactical punished game fighters not just characters but also playstyle top ranking players like ludo and light were able to maintain their placements despite still fielding solo melee but only after heavily adjusting and optimizing their gameplay fortunately fox has access to his incredible speed and leg strapping game while wario has an incentive to camp neither of which are available to ken while it's true that his melee game is the force to be reckoned with he needs to get within striking distance to do so and there are simply way too many characters in top level that make it really hard for him to do so steve sonic kazuya samus game and watch rob snake aegis diddy kong cloud nest these are very common sights at high and top levels of play and i have a feeling it will only continue to get more and more common it's because of this that a number of ken players have migrated over to other fgc characters riddles now co-mains terry and kazuya and has no intention of ever using canyon bracket as of right now andres fn has been playing a lot more terry than ken lately and i believe vendetta has started meaning kasia this is further illustrated by the recent competitive success of icon and asimo who both sold the main ryu in the current meta game now more than ever a strong and flexible neutral and or approach game is necessary to survive and if you're a close quarter spider you either need incredible physics like fox mario and wolf or you need a big ass sword like roy and the aegis i probably should have mentioned this earlier but i felt like the prior reasons were more important to list first casting aside external circumstances ken has always been a very difficult character to play so his representation even during his prime didn't come anywhere close to the widespread usage of cast members like roy specific button inputs can change his normals and specials around and depending on how you use those inputs you'll get dramatically different outcomes this brings us to another problem with ken's gameplay ironically he doesn't have a whole lot of ways to easily kill you excluding smash attacks ken really has only two easy ways to close out your stock flaming shoryuken and also tomorrow shigeri the spinning roundhouse kick for those of you who don't know those are the only accessible kill moons in his repertoire the others like back here and down here can't be comboed into at least i don't think in his defense ken has never struggled to end stocks if you don't know how to ti it properly his flaming shoujukin can wipe you off the face of the map in under 100 but since that's his most common way of doing so it's very predictable to see coming and opponents can deny the chance that they have the necessary options rio on the other hand has more than just as powerful should you can it may not seem like that big of a difference maker but tatsumaki is a fantastic kill confirmed not only for being an extra kill move that he can use but since he travels horizontally for quite a distance he can chase after people who try to sdi out of his down tilts from personal experience i've actually seen real players use tatsumaki to close out stocks more than his trademark show you can then we have terry the man with a billion different ways to kill you down till buster wolf down till burn knuckle jab jab power dunk jab jab rising tackle falling there into rising air into burn knuckle falling there into down air i'll bear into rising tackle up tilting to power geyser jab jab into buster wolf terry has so many different ways to kill you off the top and decide that it doesn't matter where you are on stage or what you're trying to mash out of he's gonna clap them cheeks and of course mr mishima himself we're not gonna talk about him one final thing is that ken's aerial game is understandably subpar most of the time he excels on the ground utilizing superior frame data and heavy combos to exert most of his pressure in ultimate stereocentric environment more emphasis is placed on a character's air game than ground game if they had the choice they would rather go for someone with stronger aerials than ground attacks rather than the inverse mind you ken's aerials are usable but in a lot of cases he prefers to stay on the ground appropriately so in totality what ken is able to do others can do better or in more ways than one does it detract from his competitive viability no that being said there are more important factors that contribute to a character's popularity or lack thereof than how strong they are ken is still a very strong fighter in his own right and we had a respectable lineup of top level reps for him but through buffs to his rival and the addition of terry and kazuya if you're going for a ground-based brawler type there's just more flexible options out there and even if there wasn't ryu is no longer believed to be significantly outclassed by ken in fact some are debating he might be slightly better solely because of his more reliable neutral game and greater number of kill options it doesn't really help that what made ken special being his overwhelming combo game is no longer unique to just him you would frequently see him doing like 70 to 90 combos on the regular something ryu was never able to do but we have kazuya who can do 120 off a single combo or just kill you from zero in some way much of ken's current situation reminds me of inkling early on in ultimate's lifespan these two had a moment where everyone thought very highly of them but now through buffs to other characters the addition of dlcs and the evolving meta the number of incentives to play ken has been steadily declining once again he's still a very strong character it's not like he got nerfed or anything but the playing field has been leveled a lot ryu and ken are pretty much equal in strength overall it's just that one is more of a range pressure with punisher and the other is about head-on confrontation and i guess to a lot of players what ryu offers is just a bit more valuable than what ken offers as lame as it sounds having the option to camp is a virtue in this day and age especially with the growing prevalence of mid-range fighters like the aforementioned sorties or trappers like rob and steve is there a chance ken will see a resurgence in the meta probably not balance patches according to nintendo have concluded with version 13 so there's no more potential buffs for him and given his move set in overall play style the only people i foresee picking him up are those that have a personal attachment to him if we're speaking in terms of viability and playstyle so far every fgc player has said kazuya ryu and terry are more fun to play so it's going to be tough for ken to find his way back although personally i enjoyed watching terry and kazuya more so i guess that's my opinion if you guys enjoyed today's video i'd appreciate it if you could leave a like and subscribe consider following me on twitter joining my discord server and checking out my other window and plays episodes if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and i look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] you

Channel: Vars III

Views: 202,917

Keywords: smash, super smash bros, smash ultimate, super smash bros ultimate, vars smash bros, vars smash, smash bros ultimate, ssbu, ssbu ken, ssbu ryu, ssbu kazuya, ssbu terry, ssbu fgc characters, ssbu shoto, wnop ken, why no one plays ken, ken street fighter, street fighter, ken ssbu, why no one plays ryu

Id: WyRu7AWBaPs

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022