Bronze league is still full of Kens, I don't understand what draws so many people to him.
It's pretty easy to understand if you put any time in with him. He's the aggressive, over the top shoto. His combos are both intuitive and very easy with two very easy target combos and all-around absurd corner carry thanks to HK Tatsu. This means if he touches you, you're going either deep into the corner or you're like 3/4 of the way there. If you manage to get out of the corner, Ken's back-throw ALSO has equally absurd corner carry, so you're going right back in there from basically half-screen unless Ken just says "Fuck it" and drags you straight into the
other corner because he can just do that.
Take that and add both a V-Skill command dash which is a thousand times more comfortable to execute in SF5 than your normal double-tap dash inputs (and can be canceled into a poke/throw or be held into a step kick that's safe if spaced correctly which low ranks WILL NOT punish consistently) and a V-Trigger that basically forces a player into the HK Tatsu casino where you either eat the hit as it comes out, or you block it and you're forced into a 50/50 Throw/DP mix-up from full screen. It's real easy to see why players gravitate to him early on.
It doesn't STAY that free. By Super Silver you need to start playing him a bit more honest and you may have to drop VT1 for VT2's super easy high damage AA juggles, but he still has a lot of legit tech, hype AF Crush Counter chases, strong movement and crazy moment-to-moment interactions that is all really fucking fun to engage with.
Bright side of all this; SF6's Drive Dash is basically Ken's V-Skill 1, so Ken's not going to get that shit for nearly as free as he does in 5, AND everyone else is going to be able to get in on some of that SFV Ken cheese with that stuff in the early going.
