Top 5 Street Fighter V: Champion Edition characters for beginners

Five Street Fighter V: Champion Edition characters recommended for beginners (Image via Capcom)

The final season of Street Fighter V has begun, and with the introduction of new characters and mechanics, there is no better time to hop in on the craze and start playing the game.

With that being said, those new to the franchise may inevitably face difficulties with getting a hang of the game and are probably facing a character crisis. It’s vital to start with the characters that are easy to use and go hand in hand with making newbies grasp and apply fundamentals.

This list will go into the easiest to use characters in Street Fighter V. Learning to play these characters will not only help secure precious wins but will also teach newer players understand the fundamentals better.

Five Street Fighter V: Champion Edition Characters Recommended For Beginners

5) Sagat

Sagat is a far more brutal re-imagining of Guile with even greater control over projectiles and more options to punish jump-ins.

Sagat's playstyle mainly involves mixing up high and low projectiles and controlling his opponent's movements and punishing them on reads. He's been balanced by his extremely mediocre normals and cannot compete at close range with the majority of the roster of Street Fighter V.

Playing Sagat refines blocking skills and moves to gain positional advantages as Sagat players will always more often have to deal with extremely offensive opponents.

4) Cammy

The primary objective as a Cammy player isn't to control the screen and punish the opponent for misplays but to break through the opponent's block by actively mixing up moves and taking risks.

Cammy's specials in Street Fighter V have an incredible burst to them, often making them hard to block. Her specials allow her to surprise the opponent from multiple angles, perhaps with a dive kick from a random jump-in, or an extremely fast sweep that can connect from rather far away, catching opponents off guard.

The most important lesson a player can learn from playing Cammy is the importance of plus and minus frames, as he/she is constantly gambling while shuffling between safe and unsafe moves.

3) E. Honda

Players are most equipped to deal with grapplers when they are experienced with playing grapplers themselves. In Street Fighter V, Honda is one of the easiest grapplers to utilize.

The reason he is easy to use is because of his simple command grab input, which is a half-circle input contrary to most other grapplers in Street Fighter V that use full-circle inputs.

His control over the ground with his slap spam, charge headbutt and sumo smash allows players to get away with occasional recklessness and mashing.

Players who use Honda are often the underdogs and must learn to move forward against all odds to read and identify the moves and mistakes of their enemies.

2) Guile

Street Fighter V's go-to zoner character has been dubbed "The Shoto Killer" for possessing specials and normals that seemed to have been designed to counter Ryu and his Shoto buddies.

Guile’s kit revolves around unleashing a barrage of projectiles to overwhelm the opponent while punishing any attempt to move close to him or jump at him with flash kicks and some extremely solid normals.

What puts Guile one position lower is his execution barrier that appears in the form of his charge inputs. For most newcomers, motion inputs are challenging, but charge inputs require far more situational awareness and discipline to pull off in the heat of the battle.

1) Ryu

Ryu has the most stereotypical and simple playstyle in all of Street Fighter V, allowing players to throw fireballs, threaten anti-airs and wakeup attacks and perform simple combos and parries.

His hadoukens are a direct utility of controlling basic screen spacing, his shoryukens are the most direct and basic punish for jump-ins or wake-up pressure, and his tatsu lets him safely move around the screen.

Despite the general contempt in the Street Fighter V community for Ryu and his shoto contemporaries, there is no doubt that his gameplay shaped the fundamentals that form the base of Street Fighter.