Day one hot take: Street Fighter V's Urien won't make me switch mains

Rejoice Urien fans. Your day has finally come in Street Fighter V.

The final DLC character in the first season of Street Fighter V was unleashed late Thursday night, and I’m here with the hottest of hot takes. But before we get down to business, can we watch Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli and Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi fanboy over the reveal trailer shown at CEO 2016 one more time?

I’ve long said I’d switch mains from Ryu with the release of new DLC characters. The first time was before Guile released and the second time was in anticipation of Balrog. I didn’t end up switching either time.

After getting some hands on with Urien, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I’m not switching to him, either.

Like the other DLC characters, Urien’s strengths are based on building V-Gauge and having EX specials at his disposal. The more meter he builds, the more dangerous he becomes with his Aegis Reflector on deck. He also has some pretty good range with his normal attacks, putting him roughly on par with Alex.

But he lacks the tools that makes the top tier characters so good, a huge weakness until players find the dirty stuff that makes him viable. He has no three-frame normals, which are extremely useful for beating out slower normal or special moves. He does not have an invincible reversal, like most of the characters with Dragon Punch-style attacks (though his V-Skill does add armor to his physical special attacks). Lastly, like Balrog, he has no jumping in cross-up attack, either. That makes him a more honest character before accruing meter.

I managed to get a couple games in with someone playing Urien. I assure you, FadedRainbow666 made me look far better than I actually am at the game.

As has been the case with the previous DLC characters, Urien probably won’t be played in many top 8s for the foreseeable future, not when most players have already invested time into their mains and we’re on the back end of the Capcom Pro Tour. But I’d love to see a Urien main in Capcom Cup, so somebody needs to make that happen. Maybe Razer’s Seon-woo “Infiltration” Lee?

I was curious to see what other players were doing on day one with Urien, and Twitter did not disappoint.

LI Joe found Urien’s “secret” costume (hint: hold light punch, medium kick, and hard punch during the character introduction).

Justin Wong thinks Urien is fun.

Speaking of dirty stuff. An “on-the-ground” (OTG) combo off of a throw?

Notable fighting game tech monster Javits Arias wants to know if anyone is breaking the game yet.

Desk might not be, but Hameko…please.

This one is absolutely disgusting.

Expect more in-depth thoughts from the pros (like we did with Juri) next week.

Michael Martin will continue scrubbing out the Bronze and Silver bottom-feeders online. Follow him on Twitter @Bizarro_Mike.