Street Fighter V/Sakura/Introduction

Introduction

About Sakura

A college student who recently graduated and now has a job, Sakura is Ryu's pupil.

Sakura is a quick, aggressive rushdown character with a lot of safe attacks. With a quick walk-speed and dash, she can "shimmy" well and keep up the pressure and chase her fireballs. Many of her moves are safe on block, as well, allowing you to safely force your opponent to block. To add on, her light moves can easily convert into big damage, allowing her to punish mistakes very well. If you like to play quick, aggressive characters who can get a lot of opportunities on hit or on block, then Sakura is for you.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Fast walk speeds: with the fourth fastest forward walk speed in the game and the fastest backward walk speed, Sakura is very good at both walking into her effective ranges vs opponents as well as walking out of opponents attempts to pressure her
Smothering offense: Sakura boasts a very potent strike/throw game, with high reward in the form of strong combos with good oki and corner carry, and strong situation post-throw both midscreen and in the corner
Stand short: with the longest range 4 frame normal in the game that hits both standing and crouching opponents, Sakura is able to punish many things that most characters can't, such as spaced dash straights from Balrog, E. Honda light headbutt, etc.
High damage potential: Sakuras combos are often subject to limited amounts of scaling, allowing her to create high damaging combos

Poor oki from lights: while she has strong oki from many of her bnb confirms, midscreen oki from light normals is very limited for her, as her only meterless ender is medium uppercut which gives limited midscreen oki
Weak v-meter gain: Sakuras v-skills are often times hard to combo into due to their slow startup, leading to her often needing to build v-meter from crush counters or taking damage

Final Patch

Players to Watch

Alex Myers
ISA
Nauman