The range on kara DP caught me so off guard that's just Tiger Teleport

The giant gap from Vanilla Sagat and Vanilla Vega is just super fascinating to me. Imagine making Dan a bad joke character on purpose, shipping the game, and realizing Vega is worse somehow.

Sagat is both "You're dead when I get in" and "You won't get in" at once

I find it interesting that it appeared like there would be some “secret sauce” that made vanilla Sagat as oppressive as he was, but in the end it really is just “he hits harder than everyone else by a lot.” It also speaks well for the balance team in this case, because they zeroed in on what the true problem was and fixed it. None of Super Sagat’s most oppressive tools were removed, they were just made far less rewarding across the board. And it turned out to be exactly enough to reel him in.

Vanilla Sagat feels like a boss character the devs forgot to make unplayable.

I can't believe they brought back my favorite character from SF2, Old Sagat

"Sagat is basically always able to zone and outpace everyone while building meter. He also has tied 3rd highest health and over the top normals on top of the low/high projectiles." "Hmm he isn't as broken as I once thought." You've taken too many tiger knees to the face.

God I needed this today. Bad Balance is a balm to the soul.

The mass exodus of Sagat players from Vanilla to Super will never not be funny to me. All they did was make him fair and it was like Sagat got Stalin'd out of history.

I'd like to see a series dedicated to bad match ups

Whether you're a SFII or SFIV player, the words "Vanilla Sagat" will make you tremble with fear...

You could've gone a little more in-depth about the Tiger Knee, especially the EX version. An armor-breaking move that has great horizontal movement was extremely difficult for the cast to deal with. It simply removed the Focus Attack from the game when fighting the character. If you thought you could Focus absorb and dash through a Shot, you'd eat Knee instead. Good luck in neutral if the Sagat wanted to spam out an EX version at that. The main damage was also on the backend/2nd hit (changed in Super I believe). The armor break and the extremely good hitbox gave the corner pressure insane potential. Many characters could not jump out of the corner due to this, and you simply could not Focus after the standing light kick.

Yeah videos detailing extremely unfair matchups sound like a lot of fun.

Jeez, losing to Ryu must have really motivated Sagat to get stronger!

You don't know how much I Tiger Kneeded this today

I loved the Vanguard Princess OST you had playing in this video! Your taste in music is amazing, I didn't think that many people had even heard of that game, let alone it's OST.

I'd love to see a Bad Balance on Zangief, if for no other reason than it's rare for a slow, big-body grappler to be on that end of poor balance.

You could have mentioned that Sagat also had access to the unblockable Ultra glitch (where the fireball hits during the ultra flash) discovered late in the game. Didn’t affect us much as super came a couple of months later, but I imagine it would have been abused in Japan until AE. Definitely consider the glitch if you do a Seth video as it was mega cheap with him.

Good video, but one suggestion: Maybe when you're making a point about hitboxes / hurtboxes, you can show them by running FrameTrapped 3 for that recording section. It would make for better visual examples with some slow-mo / freeze frames, so the viewers can properly appreciate what you're talking about. I know not every viewer knows how hitboxes work, but for those that do, having brief visual display of your point would help. I ended up booting SF4 with Frametrapped 3 just to see if there was any actual difference between the hitboxes of his Vanilla and USF4. Stand HK is exactly the same hitboxes. However f+HK hitbox got nerfed a little bit since Vanilla. Diagonal jump MP hitbox was also nerfed.

I remember seeing from Error1 years ago that Sagat's super can infinitely loop into itself. Impractical and he's had it in every version of SF4, but still super weird. I think it's the only one.

An analysis on how bad/mediocre characters improved over the years could be good. Like, for example you said that Sakura was pretty bad in Vanilla, but if I recall she was pretty good in later versions. Was it just her Ultra 2, or did other things change? Could be an interesting topic.

over 7 ft tall, super long reach, able to leap in the air extremely high for an uppercut and the absolute best kickboxer in the world The dude is a monster and many don't stand a chance against him!!

Damn, I didn't know that Sagat's EX Shot blended in with his normal Shot lmao

I love that Vanilla Cone Sagan mod.

As a relatively new player of fighting games, I've heard about Vanilla Sagat many times but was never told much beyond his anti-air damage being absurd. This is a great video for us who weren't around to experience this version of the character. Keep up the great work, Baf!

The worst problem with Vanilla Sagat was mainly his high damage and how easy it was for him to land it. Once he has Ultra and enough for a focus cancel, you enter "one combo death" zone as soon as your health goes under 70%. I recall so many competitive matches (Tougeki, Nakano TRF etc) back in the days where every other rounds would end with tigger uppercut FADC high kick ultra and the commentators always saying "it's over" as soon as the tigger uppercut hits.

SaGot that big damage

I've been down bad for some Bad Balance, so this is a welcome sight before I go to bed

That thumbnail alone deserve a like Baf. And its about time we talk about this beast. When looking at all 6 version of SF4 (vanilla, super, AE, AE 2012, Ultra, and Omega), Vanilla Sagat is def top 10. Mostly because he fireball spams like O sagat, has 1100 health and stun, and hits like a freight train. Also, there is a vid of Bonchan Vanilla Sagat vs AE Kaz Yun. In general, I love edition select and pray more fighting games do this. It gives you so many options to play the game and if you don't like how a balance patch affected your character, you can always go back to the previous version.

Turns out it wasn't Sagat who was too strong(do he still was a bit) It's that everyone around him couldn't deal with him at the time. Like putting a professional muay thai martial artist against some street punks that barely know how to throw a punch.

Would you ever consider doing a bad balance on third strike itself? You've mentioned a lot of times that the game has poor balance, and I think it'd be really interesting to see you talk about the game's balance as a whole, rather than examining specific topics in a vacuum. For example: Universal mechanics benefitting some character more than others, uneven distribution of good supers, and viability being determined by how well you fight Chun Li, Yun, and Ken.

It's extremely interesting to me, especially since you did a Bad Balance video on him, that fucking **Dee Jay** is the highest-ranked SSFIV character out of just the newcomers specifically. It's also really funny that, even though returning veterans appear to benefit a great deal (perhaps vs. just Sagat specifically) from having anti-fireball U2's, the relative benefit they serve for newcomers to Super don't seem to be nearly as high, seeing as all of them are low-mid tiers or worse.

The wait was long but worth it. I'll enjoy every second of this

Great drop, thanks B-Man.

The day of fate has finally come.

You missed the fact that his ex fireball put the opponent in a float state on the second hit. So in a fireball fight, he could easily juggle a second non ex fireball from full screen when the ex fireball cleared an opponent's regular fireball. Other characters did not have this luxury and would need to spend bar to accomplish this while still inflicting less damage than Sagat.

Off the top of my head, some reasons why i hate fighting sagat way back in vanilla sf4. Has the best fireball game, back than guile sonicboom had a longer charge time. Insane damage off tiger uppercut, it having lower invincible frame make it worst as it will trade into ultra. couple with his fireball gameplay this is something most of the cast cant deal with back than. safe knee pressure which deal insane chip damage, and the second hit does more damage making it in his favor if you decide to challenge it. this combine with his tiger uppercut and threat of ultra is really not fun. most characters in vanilla simply cannot deal with his far Hk and knee pressure. Abel, zangief and honda comes to mind. His insane damage make it so that even his worst matchup akuma die in 2 combos. most of the matches ended in you eating 2 tiger uppercuts, 2 knees and a trade uppercut into ultra.

Dig the content and dig the video. These movies are really a form of preservation. There's tons of nuances in SF4 that are in risk of being lost to time somehow, so it's awesome having someone as calm and educated as yourself describing them.

Did anyone ever got around to do version select tournaments? I wonder how vanilla Sagat would fare against buffed characters and new characters, like the twins. My first impression is that AE Yun would be king of that tournament scene and maybe some players would make vanilla Sagat work

Really nice analysis! I've never played SFIV, but I understood everything you said.

I love your Bad Balance series so much. It's really cool to get a breakdown about what made them busted. The fact that other characters lacking tools being a big part of what made him strong was something I didn't know!

This made my day, I was so looking forward to another episode of this series~

Can't wait for this series to come back, I've been playing Seth in SFV lately and I'm interested to hear what their SFIV counterpart was like.

This videos are so good, thank you for all the time that you put into them! Seeing as you mentioned them, I’d love to see match up videos

Awesome stuff man. Always great to watch a video like this.

Thank you for continuing this series.

Thanks for the content, I look forward to every single one of these

Always nice to learn more about games of yore. Hope to see you cover sfv when sf6 comes out.

Ayy been waiting for this one since you mentioned it in the Yun episode

Yoooooo, we've been waiting so long for this one! Thanks Baf.

Insane how broken this game was, even later on all the unavoidable setups, unreactable overheads, etc

Yay, always looking forward to these!

These are my favorite videos and I look forward to watching this 10 times

Great video, thank you for the content

I've been waiting for years for this video

My favorite fighting game videos on yourtube are Bafael's Bad Balance series.

Yes! I've been looking forward to this one! EDIT/UPDATE: So I just now got to watch the whole video. I think that you did an excellent job of breaking down Sagat for not just Vanilla SF4, but for, more or less, the entire SF4 series. Your comments also seem to support what I had always felt: it wasn't so much that Vanilla Sagat was "broken", but that he was a very, very strong character in a game that did not have a lot of other strong characters. I also felt that his biggest problem area was just how screwed up his damage input and output was compared to the rest of the cast. I felt that normalizing his damage input and output would have normalized him, even if all of his other tools stayed relatively the same, I feel that Super Sagat kind of demonstrated that.

Great vid man, Sagat is one of my all time favorite characters and to see his vanilla version explored in depth as to why he was so strong in the original cut of the game made for an entertaining watch during my lunch. I knew his damage was busted but to see everything else brought into perspective is great. Cheers Bafael

Really fun and insightful as always Baf. I think a quick vid talking about the hilarious Hugo v Sagat matchup would be fun. Gief and Thawk have better tools to deal with fireballs than Hugo

Two weeks after SF4 launched, my local GameStop was holding a SF4 tournament. I looked who was the most broken character at the time and already Sagat was labeled S tier so I got to work practicing. Came out 3rd, but it was my first SF game and only got that far due to A) how broken Sagat was B) the other players also didn't play much SF4. The top 2 were ones who definitely played before and swept the floor in their matchups lol.

I've been waiting for this for so long

Ayo, was just rewatching your bad balance series and was wondering about Sagat

IIRC I think SF4 was the game that introduced me to your content (or maybe SoulCalibur) but either way it makes me genuinely happy and nostalgic seeing you still put out quality content for this game all these years later. Something about it just brings me back to a more simpler time, thanks!

Best character breakdown videos on KZfaq without question.

I would be interested in a video about vanilla Seth. Great video!

Hell yeah love these!

these videos are always so interesting to listen through. cheers for making them

Heck yeah, love your videos.

Love your content man

I just realized his character icon in the HUD doesn't have the magic eyepatch™. Nice detail.

HERE IT IS FOLKS, THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! Amazing video btw, I just didnt want to say that before I watched it

This kind of FG content is literal crack, i could listen to breakdowns of extremely strong or weak characters for hours

I love these videos, please keep going! And if you're looking to buff your vids, I think a lil background music would be a really nice addition to help fill out the soundscape, I think it would help viewers to zone into what you're saying by keeping the back of their mind occupied so they're focused on your words. But regardless, I look forward to the next!

I was waiting for this.

love these. want to see more Seth!

new bafael upload 🙏

So glad to see some more bad balance! Continue making awesome content Baf

This was awesome.

Please more SF4 content, the game is just so fun for how varied and strange some of the characters and design ideas were.

WAKE UP NEW BAD BALANCE DROPPED

That thumbnail picture already deserves the like. Awesome video.

SF4 content keeps me going

here at 11:23 pm lets go

The answer is yes. Just watched this with cup of coffee and I went back to 2010. Looking forward to more.

Been always looking forward to this series. Off topic tho, it's really weird now to see non counter light buttons linking to medium, especially the kicks

good! thanks baf!

Bad balance is the best series. Please Keep doing them

I've been waiting on this one

HELL YEAH, NEW BAF UPLOAD!!!!!!

bafael awakens to grant us the greatest episode of the greatest sf series to ever exist

This was an awesome video. I’d love to see a bad balance on some of the top tiers in SFxT, namely Hworang and chun li. I frequently saw them in S tier but haven’t the faintest clue why

FINALLY!!!!! And my boi Seth is getting an episode? Lesssss go!!!!!!

The Gief vs Seth matchup video sounds good, I would watch that

Return of the king

I remember reading in a magazine in 2008 that Sagat was incredibly overpowered. Too strong. And I didn’t understand what it was about, damn, this game was very deep and difficult to master.

Honestly I think the only weakness I can think of Sagat was his slow movement speed and dash, but it's a poor weakness it since he can just throw fireballs. I still remember how OP his fireballs were that I played him as a rushdown character at one point since zoning became so boring.

id love to see a gief video covering grappler matchups would also be super interesting

I'd really love it if you could make ''History of [insert character]'', where you briefly touch on characters and how they performed in different games and versions of games. Emphasis on ''briefly''; you wouldn't go as much in depth, because the video would be like 5-6 hours. TUDG's Mortal Kombat videos on characters is an example, where he touches on characters like Reptile and how they were in different games or different versions of games. An example would be talking about SF2 Sagat (Old and New/Nerfed) and then Alpha Sagat, CvS, so on and so forth. A series of videos like this would be EXTREMELY interesting and fun.

never played sf4 but ive seen all of these bad balance videos. Its a testament to how well you script them to be accessible and informative.

Let’s go I was just wondering abt this