Street Fighter: 10 Worst Characters EVER (And Why)
3. Kage
Evil twins are a popular trait in video games. Siegfried and Nightmare in Soul Calibur. Dante and Vergil in Devil May Cry. Mario and Wario in Super Mario. Since Ryu is the most recognisable character in Street Fighter, it was only a matter of time before he got his own wicked doppelgänger.
Although Evil Ryu has appeared in the Alpha series, this is just a malevolent version of Ryu. But Street Fighter V introduced a separate entity called Kage who was formed from Ryu's dark energy. Armed with all of Ryu's strengths and none of his humanity, Kage had the potential to be the deadliest street fighter yet.
And, MAN was he a letdown. We've had so many Ryu rip-offs including Ken, Sean, Dan, Sakura, Akuma, Oni, and Gouken. There's no point making another hadouken-churning shoryuken-performing character unless there's something about him that stands out. Sadly, there's nothing special about Kage. Some of his moves are identical to SFIV's Evil Ryu, which begs the question why the developers didn't just stick with Evil Ryu?
He's not the worst character but he might be the laziest and the most anticlimactic antagonist in the franchise.