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Continuing our Super Street Fighter 4 Profiles series from a while back, today, we dive into Ibuki, who's returning from Street Fighter 3. In case you haven't read these before, we leave the pros and cons of playing her to the insider: Seth Killian, Capcom's special advisor to Street Fighter 4 and Super Street Fighter 4 (yup, that's his title). See what the expert likes about the sprightly young ninja — and what troubles she might face in SSF4, due out April 27 for the 360 and PS3.
On what he likes about Ibuki:
Seth Killian: She has one of the widest movesets in the game. She's most dangerous up close. She has a ton of tricks where she can dash from one side of the opponent to the other. So she's sort of dashing around, she's doing uppercuts — she's got a lot of guessing games up close.
But Ibuki's also got a great distance game. She has an air fireball. She's still got her kunais — which are ninja throwing knives — and she can throw those from far away. I will say that the recovery on those is longer, though, so don't plan on playing runaway with Ibuki for the whole match.
You'll be able to annoy people from a distance for a little bit, and you'll be able to set things up, but that's really the best use for the kunai knives. So throw one and then follow it in to begin some combo shenanigans or some mix-ups on the ground. To really do any damage, you'll need to be close up. You won't be able to do a lot of damage from across the screen with the knives.
She is one of the chain-combo queens. She's got a ton of chain combos, and they're great to use against Focus attacks. So if someone is trying to do a Focus attack — and those absorb one hit — and if you hit them a second time while they're in Focus state, they'll get knocked out of it. So Ibuki doesn't have to worry too much about characters using Focus attacks, because she can very easily chain combo and knock them out of that.
On the troubles Ibuki might face:
SK: Her problem is she doesn't do a huge amount of damage, and she does take quite a bit of damage. Some of the smaller, lighter characters in the game take more damage, and Ibuki is definitely one of them. She gets beat up pretty quickly, so she's going to need to stay on the offense. If you're on the defense too much with her, you're going to lose.
Her rising-kick uppercut is OK — it's decent, but it's not a perfect defense. So you're going to need to stay on the offense where you're much, much stronger.
Characters that can hit you once for a lot of damage will give Ibuki trouble. Characters with uppercuts…if you can Focus Cancel an uppercut into an Ultra Combo — a pretty common technique in the original Street Fighter 4 — [that'd be good] for Ibuki.
She has to place a lot of small bets with throwing out a lot of little attacks, but if she gets one of her feet ripped off by an uppercut, you could be looking at 30 or 40 percent or more damage. So you really have to stay on the offensive and be careful not to get hit with that one big hit. That's probably her number-one trouble spot.
Also see: T. Hawk, DeeJay, Juri, Cody, Guy, Adon, Ibuki, Makoto, Dudley, Hakan
Note: Killian's comments are based on Super Street Fighter 4 as it stands today in its development cycle. Keep in mind the game may go through balancing tweaks leading up to its April 27, 2010 release, so his opinions are subject to change.