I can see that there's a level of nuance to the character that might make him remarkably good as a fighter; nearly double the capabilities to account for when in a fight, and having the best combo potential in the entire game. It does make him difficult to read, I will admit this.
The problem lies in that this level of mastery, for a Smash player, comes from an aspect they may have never had to deal with before: Input Commands. While Ryu can be played without them for a newer player, the character's absolute best comes from those input commands. Even then, someone who mains Ryu in Street Fighter who rarely plays Smash still might have issues because they have to play Ryu in a way they have never accounted for before: Ring Outs and only working with two attack buttons, not six.
The character is good, in my opinion. Of all fighting games, I play smash religiously, but I have found the input commands easy enough to adapt to, but my skill doesn't permit me the ability to string them into combos. I can see Ryu's flaws being that his Hadouken, while useful and able to combo to a degree, isn't the best a compared to other ranged attacks like an Aura Sphere. He has an ok grab, with a down throw being combo-able into aerials or a Shoryuken at low percents, but even that isn't grand.
Ryu shines in his combos, his Collar Bone Breaker does amazing damage to shields, but you'll need to have that finish a combo to break them. His Focus punch crumple can set up some decent combos when needed as well as giving you some decent time to input a Shoryuken, but the charge time might permit enemies enough time to dodge or set up their own counter (the Super Armour only lasts for one hit, as well). Hadouken can't truly be spammed, but can interrupt charging enemies and fiery hadouken does multiple hits.
In short? Ryu doesn't require overly advanced play to play him at all, but he does have a higher difficulty curve to master, and just because he has the best combo ability out of all the characters, that doesn't mean that said combos can't be interrupted or countered by other characters.
And that is so quick i didn'T notice at first thats what it was when comparing height from normal Shoryuuken to the SF-input one...
