Sorry for this little rant post, but I've found Ryu to be straight up OP from day 1. And I still stand by that. And after playing today, I felt I just had to share my own thoughts on him.
I just ask this: What are his cons? He has a projectile, a good projectile, for spacing and approaching. He is crazy powerful (His Fair does 15 damage, and his Bair does 16! Like.....what?!). He can cover lots of options because of his ability to have 2 different tilts and 2 different jabs. I've seen some people saying his recovery is as bad as Little Mac's.... huh? His Up B is for starters a lot higher than Mac's, even though this one too have very little horizontal movement. Still, he has his Side B, and his Focus Punch that he can cancel and get momentum, plus that his Focus Punch gives him a 1-hit super armor that makes it a bit safer to recover, too. He has a Spike. He has a power-version of each Special, except for his Focus Punch, that don't have any downsides compared to the regular specials. They are just straight up more powerful versions, that's it. And I'm looking at you, Shoryuken. That move.... what were they THINKING? For example, I was playing as Ganondorf against Ryu today, and Ganon is one of the heaviest in the game. His power-Shoryuken killed Ganon at UNDER 90%... WHAT? And the thing is, it doesn't have a lot of cooldown or anything, even though it is punishable, sure. It comes out extremely fast, and he flies upwards very fast, so it's not the easiest move to punish. It even doesn't have more cooldown than his regular Up B, which I find stupid. There's really no reason to use his normal Up B if you know how to use the power version of it. His Side B is excellent for punishing rollers or punishing other moves, like Ganon's Wizard's Kick or missed Flame Choke. His Strong Side Tilt is a very, very good Shield Breaker move. He has very little landing lag on areals.
I mean - What the heck are his cons? He is so good in every way, he can basically do everything. There's nothing he lacks.
Then, I come to my final point that really made me just... depressed. Not mad, didn't rage, I just shut down the game and got sad. I'm talking about his infinite Up Tilt. I was using Ganon, and he isn't the biggest in the game (like DK, Bowser etc), even though he is big. But still, if he just landed 1 weak up tilt, I was doomed. He would drag me across the stage with it, lock me, and I couldn't do ANYTHING. I tried DI-ing, Nair-ing, anything. Nothing worked, because I was still in hitstun when he landed the next one, and he could easily just follow me around the stage, so DI-ing was pretty much useless. As we got to the edge, the damage was racked up, and he could easily jump up and land his meteor Down Air. That's when I quit.
Someone, please explain to me what Ryu's deal is. There's nothing he's NOT good at. He's extremly powerful, both air and ground, has a decent enough recovery to be this good, has a good projectile, has a shield break, a disgusting KO move in form of his power-Shoryuken, his Focus Punch, his Up Tilt Lock that's impossible to escape, lagless areals... yeah. Please explain to me.