I actually completely forgot he ever had that. I don’t know anyone that uses Seth and I didn’t play against him enough online so I never really noticed by the end of the games life 😆
as soon as i saw that jumping attack animation at that speed i curled up in a damn ball and started crying..... but to be fair the sagat DP FADC combo didn't help either.
"i wonder how they balanced the yoga thing" *they removed the move entirely* You know something is broke when the balance change to fix it is to just get rid of it lmao.
A couple things you didn't mention about Vanilla Seth. One, his divekick had much faster startup, almost as oppressive as 2I Akuma. Two, his stomp was active for the whole jump and had a wider hitbox, which made corner stomps after Lightning Kick much easier to connect.
Does anyone else think this game still looks good? I always remember this game being ugly but whenever I come back and I see it in motion it looks great. Really stylized and artistic
I think this game looks better than SFV. Even though SFIV models are *probably* less polygons than SFV models, the art direction of IV compensates by emphasizing shadows, hence the iconic shaded look. Everything in V looked kinda... raw and flat. On the bright side, I think VI has much better art direction than V.
@@innoc4063 also in SFIV you could change the art style with an ink, watercolor or poster color look. SFIV is a game that's aged fantastically. The only thing I dislike are the silly flame effects on the Ultra gauge when it's full, and the warmer white balance that leaves a yellowish tint on everything.
These were the days when capcom was still publicly stating that some characters were supposed to just straight up be better than others. So glad things moved to a more competitive balance.
I love Seth's design so much, some moves he outright steals (e.g. Dhalsim fierce, sonic boom etc) and some moves he has his own twist on e.g. quarter circle back kicks is an improved Chun li kicks, SPD is improved gief pile driver, his shoryuken having to be mashed 3x (I always thought this was because it was combining Ryu/Ken/Akuma). Move clone characters can often feel really generic but I think they did an amazing job with Seth. There is the common "broken" vanilla SF4 stuff (Rufus snake strike, Sagat, vega overhead not working etc) but I think Cammy is really interesting. Usually placed bottom 3 in tier lists, but she has TKCS which is super broken for her, we just didn't realise it at the time.
To be fair, that's Seth's low HP as much as his high power. He has something like half the health most characters have, not that it helps when they can't hit him.
So I had no idea about the tyranny of Seth because our local Seth player couldn't figure out El Fuerte's 50/50 run game. .... And guess who always matched up with them in locals?
Akuma, Seth and Sagat were the trinity of Vanilla SF4. All of them were absolute menaces and we didn't even discover their true potential before Super came out
@@kickasscowell5654 Gief was really good. Especially because EX green hand knocked down. But he got mauled by Sagat, Akuma, Seth and to some extent, Ryu. So it was hard for him to do well in tournament because of those horrendous matchups
@@MuiltiLightRider Ah makes sense. I remember hearing he was really solid ina vacuum, but yeah having 2 zoners being super strong. I wonder what changed between super, AE and ultra for Gief
As a Gief main, you opened the video giving my PTSD with both Seth and Sagat. Those MUs were SO BAD in vanilla SF4 - they were like friggin 9-1, all I could do with Gief was hope to land a jumping M headbutt twice for dizzy.
You forgot the detail that his teleportation had 0 frame time recovery. You can use it very quick in sequence, like the final boss version does in the history mode
I somehow never realized through the entire life of this game that, after vanilla, Seth can’t ultra at all with a fireball on screen. It was actually shocking seeing all the situations where fireball+Ultra just wins.
His jumping heavy kick and jumping light kick both can cross up and were both extremely ambiguous. Some characters you could tell which side pretty easily but not with Seth. Also, you could toe tap someone in the corner and still wall jump to escape if blocked so he had even more mixups than covered in the video. Jumping medium punch was a great air to air that allowed a juggle combo too. I guess this is about SF4 Seth specifically but even with all the nerfs up to AE the addition of Ultra 2 gave even more anti-air/fireball and chip options.
Being able to OS the FADC was nuts. You could do jab, short, or any chain into delay uppercut to catch people teching, cr. teching,....doing anything. And it was safe.
Seth in sf4 is maybe my all time favorite fighting game character. He was extremely fun to watch (poongko) and just by picking him you could feel the fear of your opponent. I never got the hate for the characters design either. Love the glitchy jank animations he has - the unnatural, robotic looking ex dp and the invisible lightning legs are so cool. Not to mention the fact he is a giant naked buff man for comedic relief.
I think he looks cool and is fun to watch as well, but the problem is that he is not fun to play against, to be honest. There's very little counter play to him apart from just guessing better. And then some characters really lack the tools to fight him, so they just have to take his bullshit and hope the Seth does a huge mistake.
One thing he didn't mention that HEAVILY skewed the gamble in Seth's favor is Seth's EX DP had much more invincibility than other DPs on block you could FADC after the second blocked hit but on hit you couldn't FADC after the second hit. This led to EX DP option selecting FADC only on block meaning three meters was a 100% free mixup where anything besides block and backdash was EX DP punished and block was FADC'd into huge frame advantage.
Akuma was also a nasty character in vanilla SF4 who could be argued as the best. Dude did so much stun and damage on everything. I think crouching HK even caused a hard knockdown. I don’t remember all the specifics but I know that he was quite deadly. There were also a couple more things to note about Seth’s ultra. The first thing is that less characters in Vanilla had anti fireball ultras. There was only one ultra for each character in vanilla and numerous characters just didn’t have an anti fireball ultra. Because of this, this meant that there were characters who basically had zero good anti fireball options and that made zoning more powerful. Sagat became worse after vanilla not just because they reduced his damage/stun but also because the cast just had better tools to deal with his fireballs. So with all of this in mind, that only made Seth’s incredible anti fireball ultra (and his strong anti fireball tools in general) even more overtuned relative to the cast. Another thing is that in Vanilla SF4, I believe there was an unblockable ultra trap. Basically, you would knock the opponent down and then you would throw a fireball and do an ultra. This would make the ultra unblockable which is as fun as it sounds. This was a mechanic in vanilla multiple characters could take advantage of (if they had a fireball) and you can’t do it in Ultra with edition select. Seth could indeed do this so that was another very nasty ultra trap he had.
Every character with a fireball had access to the glitch. Basically put the fireball hits meaty when the ultra flash happens. for some reason this made the ultra unguardable
This is literally the final boss character unlocked without any nerfs. It's truly terrifying and I have many memories of getting my ass handed to me by Seth as a kid
I'd argue that having half the health of the average character when the boss version matched the highest qualifies as "any nerfs". It's not ENOUGH nerfs, but it's there.
A few notes about Seth. 1. Seth is still very overpowered in Ultra Street Fighter 4. He was better in Vanilla because of Yoga Sniper and U1 out of Sonic Boom, but that is all he lost; everything mentioned in the video he can still do. Even Elena has her bad matchups but not Seth. 2. Ultra 1 is still the best Ultra in the entire game. The damage is higher than most ultras for what it can do, once Seth has U1 you cannot zone AT ALL. Mostly because U1 is full screen and SAFE on block because of pushback, the only practical punish I could find for it is Rolling Thunder (Dudley U1) and Jaguar Revolver (Adon U1). There are probably like 4 more moves that can punish this thing from far mid screen... but it's limited. Some situtations Seth can still move depending on which character he's against because some characters really can't even come close to punishing this Ultra. And even then it can combo off almost anything if you want to use this ultra incorrectly. 3. Seth has an Ultra 2! Is it overpowered? Absolutely not, it is inferior the U1 and is one of the WORST Ultras in the game. It's an anti-air that doesn't work. You can combo into it, but the damage is identical to the U1. Super Street Fighter 4 introduced U2 so that's why it's not in the video. 4. Mr. Crofts, you forgot the main reason Seth was so overpowered with stomps, and still is overpowered. You looked at the corner stomp for one second, but it needs to be addressed more. An average non meter Seth combo in the corner is around 400 damage. That is A LOT, the reason Ultra combos are irrelevant for him is because his basic combos deal more damage. And not only do his stomp combos in the corner deal 400, but he can move after the divekick... he has a cross up that guarantee leads to stun and he literally took the round after a total of 2 combos. 5. It doesn't matter that Seth is a glass canon, he deals more damage than everyone else. At least with Akuma, there are times where he has good damage; but there are lots of situations where you would rather play Ryu than Akuma. Not the case with Seth. He can focus attack out of sonic boom and the damage is off the rails, you've addressed what he can do on block but he has ridiculous scenarios on hit as well. His only real weakness is a lack of a 3 frame poke, which is negated by a 3 frame SPD and his 4 frame poke is actually pretty long. 6. His jump is too fast, he stole Blankas jump (which is apart of his amazing mix up game). Infact, it's so fast if you play Seth online; his divekick will out right beat anti-airs. Obviously online shouldn't count when putting into a characters strengths, but if you're one of the 300 playing this game and want a big PP score fast; pick this guy. Not to mention he has no doubt the best dash in the game, it's not long recovery like Makotos but it reaches the same distance at the same time 7. He wins against everyone, he doesn't have a bad matchup because he has an answer to everything. The only characters that have an average matchup are; M.Bison, C. Viper, El Fuerte, and Dudley. These characters are all designed to annoy characters with reads and have good enough pressure, but don't rely on it. So there is nothing to worry about if Seth leaves. Seth has more 7-3/8-2 matchups than 5-5. 8. Street Fighter 4 is known for being hard with execution, but Seth is actually one of the easiest characters to play. His timing is not strict at all, literally ANYONE can pick up Seth and win. The Seth player has to put nothing into wins while the person going against Seth has to be on their A Game. EDIT Note: You go into detail about his SPD, which isn't even his best move. It is by far Sonic Boom. Sonic Boom is an overpowered move, Guile has the most busted projectile in the game... there is a catch. This and flash kick are his ONLY specials, and he has to hold back to release this projectile; Guile has an overpowered move, but he has to crouch still or move back into the corner to use it, that is how you make a strong move. Seth's sonic boom is a QUARTER CIRCLE, NO CHARGE NEEDED. It's not only faster than sonic boom but it can come out faster, the only drawback is 1 MORE FRAME on startup and 2 MORE RECOVERY FRAMES. That's it, for all of SF5 players, this is why Luke's sand blast was so busted, the flaws were so miniscule for a major buff. Do you know why Dhalsim has Yoga Fire? It's so he can throw his limbs out without worrying about other projectiles, it's designed to clash and nothing else. Yoga Fire is a TERRIBLE projectile, worst one in the game easily; it has more recovery frames than Seths Sonic Boom, Yoga Fire doesn't travel full screen either, and it's REALLY SLOW. Yoga Fire is bad because Dhalsim has stretchy limbs, he needs a projectile; but a bad projectile works for him. If Dhalsim isn't careful, he dies. Not Seth because he can zone just like Guile AND Dhalsim. To make this all worse, his health was buffed since vanilla. : ( it makes me very sad.
@@mgc9965 maybe it was because not everything was discovered with the character, but I don't think that's the reason. Almost everyone was viable so competitive was very diverse. And most players stick to one playstyle and usually main a character that defines how they like to play. So picking an everything character that constantly changed how you play felt pointless and complicated, Seth really does have too many options. Why didn't literally everyone play Evil Ryu? There was a time when his health was very close to what normal Ryu had; You got an overclocked shoto and you really couldn't say he had a flaw. The reason Yun had so much playtime when he came out was mostly because he had exploitable plus frames. Seth usually has to end his strings early with a mix up; most players just like it when they get to pressure. Do you remember what Cammy was like when SFV? 5 medium punches before she has to close back in? I usually don't like the term "scrub" but literally anyone could use Cammy and peak. You had to block and guess correctly for 10 seconds on average. Yun was the same, there was no point in picking anyone else when there was this brain dead atrocity. You couldn't eye pros at the time with less experience because they blended in with any other Yun. Seth is super easy, but he isn't unga bunga braindead like Yun was. Ultra comes along, Yun is in a perfect position.... And a new team comes in and adds 5 characters that were intentionally the best at their trade. 1. Poison - best zoning 2. Hugo - Makes T.Hawk pointless, but it was still hard to get in compared to Zangief so he was forgotten. He is also a tank hybrid 3. Decapre - best mixups, used to be top tier; but people figured out exploits to her 4. Rolento - best rush down 5. Elena - best neutral Note: Elena and Rolento are also amazing with mixups. but Decapre could it anytime. The new 5 characters were meant to highlight one playstyle and do everything else just fine ,why play someone with several changing playstyles and no true playstyle when you could pick a character with an almost overpowered trait that can do everything else decently, Seth is the only better zoner than Poison, Poison had a better projectile than Guile and had better frametraps with her projectile... she could zone and pressure with one move, I am talking about -3 to +7 on block. And yeah, the new Ultra characters are also very easy; there was drama at the time on how overpowered Rolento Roll was. LowTierGod was a high rank player because of this busted move.
@@mgc9965 Well, I personally don't think Seth is an easy character to play, contrary to what the essay above says. Execution is not everything that makes a character easy. Seth has every tool one could possibly need apart from a 3 frame jab, but as a player you need to make the correct decisions and make the best use out of those tool, while remaining unpredictable. To make matters worse, Seth doesn't make it easy to learn since he is very much a glass cannon and any single mistake can cost you the round. Seth is very good, but he takes dedication to play, makes for a poor 'pocket' character and it's true that there is no shortage of competitively viable characters in SF4, so I think most players just didn't bother with Seth because they could afford to.
It's so refreshing watching someone talking about this stuff that can actually do it. I watch so much DSP in sf6 for lulz I forget there's people that actually do things instead of get bodied and make excuses.
You sir, just made my day with this video. I play USF EVERY SINGLE DAY and for me, to see, SF4 mentioned on your channel is pure gold. Hats off to you.
You are a man after my own heart💯 SF4 us all I've played since during the entire SF5 era....granted I haven't played in over a year 😅 but still. SF4 is and will always be my $hit🙌🏿💯🔥
He also had an unblockable setup to at least the ultra against almost all chars which was also removed in super. I also remember some other unblockables for some matchups.
Because so few people played Seth perfectly, I had very little problem with Seth's high level play... I've learned a lot since those days of vanilla.. lol
For sure, people were really focused on his long arm keep away because I guess they were afraid to pilot his low HP so you could get one good trade punish on limbs and he kinda shattered. Didn't see too much actual rushdown in vanilla where he was very privileged, was just a bunch of yoga sniper.
Yknow the art of the character on the select screen. The shadow of his hand on his face looks really cool. I think his face is really boring so just putting that as like a hand print scar on his face would make him a 10/10 for me
@@EXFrost yes, i like the art of him staring at his hand or through it, so menacing, so tastefully done. Some would think he is more of an MK or KI charachter, so unStreetfighter
Great video, very entertaining, not that it's a big deal but the height your sit in the chair & your chair logo makes it look like your right ear is goblin like lol
even though it is true seth was high tier in sf4 and has probably the best tools, i think you underestimate his low health. comparing him to zero from mvc3 is really unfair. i mean in that game health isnt such a big issue when you basicly can kill any character if you are able to convert your hits, so even healthy chars can die from a combo. that doesnt happen to seth in sf4. it is true his mix up potential and vortex game is top notch but you need to land multiple stuff. and if he gets hit his life goes away so fast. as you said in sf4 you got dp fadc as a safe option, one correct guess for 2 bars and half your health is gone.
IIRC another thing about Seth was that he was only playable as a console character when the game originally came out in arcades first. Sagat, Akuma, and the other original characters got a lot more development than Seth in SF4 Vanilla's lifespan just because they had more time in the players' hands. Same with Cammy, who was discovered to have insane divekick pressure much later into subsequent versions of SF4, but she always had it since she was released in console vanilla. Meanwhile you can win Evo by playing Ryu and doing fireball traps and DP FADC for half the opponent's life.
He was the final boss of the original game hardly anyone remembers (doesn't hurt that his iconic scar was canonically obtained in the aftermath of that boss fight).
You forgot to mention seth had an original unblockable with his U1. In vanilla if a fireball and U1 connected on the same frame, on hit or block they’d get hit by U1 so seth was able to put you in checkmate situations where no matter what you did you lose cause even if you escaped with a wake up DP, he could just punish the recovery.
I think vanilla Akuma was the best character in the game, at the time people wasn't really aware of his vortex potential and would've ended Sagat dominion if it was discovered earlier
Didn't even watch the video yet, but I have to comment how I just loved watching Poongko play as him, he was so aggressive as Seth, it was beautiful to watch. Usually Seth low health is what made him lose the more difficult matches.
When AE 2012 came out Kazunoko dropped Yun for a moment and picked up Seth. I remember people debated if he was a better Seth player than Poongko for a short period 'cause he wouldn't play rushdown 100% of the time as Poongko used to do until then.
intressting character would be intressting if they put him in 6 would love to see what his moves would look like there (also on your question yes you are crazy but we all are way to many hours in those games)
I still think Sagat has a small slight edge. That raw damage on a character with good tools, pressure, zoning, ability to close distance, and normal health to bully on trades is awesome. I miss using him in the new days when I could get win rates over 75% ...no more... I'm lucky to crack 50% now EDIT: Also yes please to more Ultra and Omega SFIV content.
I knew seth was like ogre in stealing all the good moves but dang, also im glad you covering vanilla seth, now i wanna see why vanilla ryu n gief were so strong, hmm
Not sure if it was this game where on release people thought he was the worst character in the game lol, absolutely insane maybe I'm thinking of Vergil in MvC3 but coulda swore people thought vanilla Seth was ass too
It wasn't this game The rated low tiers of console vanilla was Dan, Sakura and Vega Seth was tied for 9th with Bison, which on reflection is arguably too low, but nobody ever thought he was bad
One of my most hated boss fights of all time... Up until that point, Shao Kahn from MK2 & UMK3 were my most hated boss fights. Seth changed that. He was infinitely worse, and harder to cheese 😅
All these bad balanced characters, including the intentionally overpowered sf4ae Yun, are all under the supervision of Yoshinori Ono. Ono had been going for this path a long way till sf5ce, in which he is blasted from Capcom company. Ono's way kind of isn't wrong, its a very effective marketing strategy, just not a good one. He does saved sf franchise during sf4, but overdoing his greedy marketing strategy in sf5.
Low health is such a fake weakness in fighting games. I had kind of a long rant written about this, but if you know ball in fighting games you know that tier lists and competitive play overwhelmingly favor characters with strong offensive options. To boil it to the simplest cliche, at some point the best defense is to have a good offense. I've seen tons of fighting game characters who either punish mistakes with overwhelming damage, the ability to chain together multiple combos using okizeme/resets, or both. I'm not sure I've ever seen a character who was top tier in a fighting game because regardless of how mediocre they were in pushing mixups or damage that if you got them on the ground or in the corner they just got out for free. There probably won't ever be one because of how skill is perceived in fighting games, IE a character that wasn't sufficiently punished for making mistakes would be seen as scrubby even if it was much easier to make mistakes while playing them because of their offensive weaknesses, etc. It is true that oftentimes top tier characters end up having both strong offense and defense, but my counter point to that would be to look at things in terms of literal seconds. As an example of a character I play, Mr. Karate from KoFXIII has some pretty amazing defense because he has both the best light DP in the game and one of the best anti-air/reversal EXDMs, and while that is absolutely one of the reasons he is a top tier character, what has way more to do with him being a top tier character is the fact that his offense controls the flow of a match. The strong defensive options are just the cherry on top. Granted, KoF characters all have the same health so I'm kinda getting off track here, but I think this is also part of the reason they do is because SNK knows that's not actually a good way to balance the characters. Would Karate be a worse character if he had 900HP instead of 1000? Absolutely, in very real terms it would change the number and quality of clean touches you would need to end the round, but in reality that doesn't change the fact that you'd have to actually hit him first for that to matter, and aside from his strong defensive options, the real reason you're not getting those hits **is because he's so busy hitting you.** This is why Akuma has never been bad. They could make his health weakness even more severe and I'd hazard to bet he still wouldn't be bad.
Bro, the fact that I beat that mf in arcade mode at age 8 honestly makes me question wtf went wrong during my development lmao. How could I beat this game then and be this stupid now? Astounding.
On the question of "is Seth better than Sagat?", we have to recognize that in the late SF4 meta Gouki was considered the best character in the game due to his excellent zoning, great rushdown, and the fact that he had the far HK loop that did mad damage to Sagat, baring the big combo damage Seth shares a lot of (arguably better) quallities as a glass canon, don't make a mistake character So yeah I'd argue that Seth is probably the best vanilla SF4 character, and I don't think it's even close.
Composite characters are always a problem. Look at necrid from soul calibur for another example. Its a gargantuan balancing task to take these moves and throw them into a new context, rarely done right.
SF4 was and probably still is the best street fighter game in history, however i always hates Seth design and all his bullshit just made me hate him even more, worst boss ever. Nothing is ever perfect uh.
not sure how i used to do it but i have avoided his ultra many times. Most th times i got hit. I only played against him on arcade though so might be avoidable on arcade. Actually would akuma be able to avoid it with raging demon super
