I'll be honest, I also think people really overstate how "complicated" Ryu is. Everything "complex" about him has been in Smash either since Melee or since the original game on the N64, just in different forms.
The first and less complicated of the two is the tap vs hold system on his normals, where the strength of the move, or the move itself in the case of forward tilt, is different depending on whether you tap the attack button or hold it. Not only is this intuitive and not at all complex, but Samus has literally had a system like this since Melee with her Missile special, having different projectiles depending on if you tapped or smashed the special button. It's used on more moves for Ryu, yes, but that does not inherently make it more complex.
However, the biggest complaint is usually reserved for the motion inputs for his specials. Namely, the Hadoken, Shakunetsu Hadoken, Tatsumaki Senpukyaku, and the Shoryuken. I could go on about how a quarter circle forward, half circle forward, and half circle backward are among the easiest inputs imaginable, or how the Shoryuken input is easy with just a little bit of practice, but fundamentally? The idea of motion inputs giving you a different special has literally existed since Smash 64, and people just seem to ignore this.
PK Thunder literally requires a motion input in order to have you recover, a basic character function that's vital to Ness and Lucas as fighters.
Like, I'll reiterate. You can still use Shoryuken to recover without a special input. It's just a weaker variant. You cannot recover with Ness or Lucas without a motion input special move (well okay, Lucas Specifically also has the Rope Snake tether, but still). So why is it that Ryu gets deemed as "too complex" while Ness doesn't, especially when the motion inputs are arguably more vital for the latter?
Like I'll be real, complaints about characters being too complicated kind of lose some merit in my eyes when the complaints are directed toward the likes of Ryu, Villager, Isabelle, or Min Min. The only characters that are significantly more complicated than average are like...the Ice Climbers (for desynching), Rosalina & Luma (by virtue of being a puppeteer fighter), Shulk (due to stat based stance changing), maybe Bayonetta (with the Bat Within stuff alongside her very specific recovery plan), Inkling (paint application modifiers), Hero (competing at an international event essentially requires knowing all of the spell names in all available languages lmao), Steve (since you basically have to play a whole different game), and Kazuya (easily the most complex of the fighting game character crew and it's not even close, just due to the sheer amount of moves).
That's like, 8/89 characters. Y'all will live lmao.
fogbadge
asked, Villager to me seems rather complex as their moves are so odd. So maybe difficult or complicated aren't the best way to describe how they appear. Unorthodox maybe? I dunno, lol. But it's definitely a me thing. Most people wouldn't think many of these kits are difficult to use successfully. And even so there's exceptions like Kazuya who is very unorthodox and yet I picked him up right away and don't do badly with him.
