I Think SFxT Sakura is Possibly the Worst Version of Sakura

Holy crap... this character is so wack. I'm not even trying to compare her to the derpy Godsend of her SF4 counterpart (Maybe Super and beyond, I honestly have to go back and look at Vanilla). But SFxT Sakura is pretty lackluster, imo. It's funny cause I, along with many other people apparently, just assumed a lot of things that are flat out wrong about Sakura. Let's talk.

Where do I start, though...

Well, let's start with her normals. Unlike SF4... or really ANY other game, Sakura only has ONE normal that's + on block, and it surprisingly isn't s.jab. It's c.jab. Sure, her lights are still chainable, but the fact that she has to stop and throw her shortest light to gain ANY momentum takes away a huge chunk of her close range game. She also lost her cs.mk -> lk shunpuu cancel (like, you can still do it, but it doesn't combo anymore. It never jailed in SF4, nobody ever tries to DP it or anything, lol). The plus to all this is she still has the same startup for her normals, but that doesn't mean much when you consider what happened to her specials.

I'll start with the small problem, her shoo'oh ken. Shoo' only has one change, but that change is a drastic one. That is, opponents fly far as hell when you hit them. Far enough that you can't crossup if they tech. In fact, if she jumps "correctly" on an immediate tech, she lands a decent ways in front of them (still in attack range, but more j.mk_lk range rather than j.hp.) That makes it to where she can kinda maintain pressure after a KD, but she can't she can't flat out attack somebody's wakeup.

"Well, why don't you just use Shunpuu? That used to work and it KDs now." Oh... let me tell you about Shunpuu. Here's the worst part of it light kick shunpuu is -4 on block. Yes, lk shunpuu is minus friggin 4 on block. What that means is that going for high damage CH setups is a risk, a pretty big risk considering how you can convert in this game. (Sidebar: if this was the only thing they changed, or they compensated for this in some what, it would be perfectly fair. Spoiler alert, they didn't). Beyond that, her MK Shunpuu is now the safe one (-2, I think?) and HK is -3. I'm ok with them flipping that because HK can now go over standing Ryu. I don't know the exact threshold of how tall a character has to be to block it, but watching Sakura sail over standing characters is hilarious. EX Shunpuu is still + on block (probably still +4, I didn't care at this point), but having to dump a third of your meter for safe pressure is kinda huge in this game. It might be supagood if it flat out has projectile invincibility (which I don't know and would be amazed if they did, seeing as she still has ex otoshi)

So she she can't pressure people like crazy, and she can't frame trap them for 10 years, there couldn't possibly be more? Right? Um, you kinda forgot about what game you're playing.

See, the thing about SFxT is that rolling exists. Sakura's fundamentally designed to attack wakeups with jumps (which is why j.mk is usually so good.... not so much in Super SF4 and beyond (I have to say that because, if you forgot, she didn't HAVE j.MK crossup in Vanilla SF4, lol )). Now imagine her oki. It's one thing that she can't really cross them up if they, but if they don't tech, she has to guess where they're going to be at; she doesn't get a guaranteed shot at them. Again, it's fair by itself, I'm just talking about the summation of everything. Staying with her oki, you can't forget that throws are (currently) pretty slow, so a grounded throw game isn't really scary, either.

Other than that, there's nothing that I know that they've flat out taken away from her. And again, it's not like it's unfair for these things to happen on their own. AE Sakura is pretty frickin' dumb (and messing around with this game made me realize she's dumber than I gave her credit for), but to take ALL of these things leaves her looking fairly mediocre. There are some things they could have done for her, such as making Flower Kick chain-able, making cs.hp a command normal, or a few other lessor things.

She still has some things going for her, I guess. Roundhouse is still relatively fast, and is now 0 on block. (Heck, cl.HK is 0 on block too... too bad stun doesn't exist in the game). And she still has her fuzzies that she can switch cancel from. Oh, and she does still hit like a truck.... She just doesn't have any (ridiculously) good ways to make somebody stop blocking or block incorrectly.

Oh well. I'll still mess around with her, I guess.

............. or something.

:(