Free Step Dodge

I wonder if SNK will address these imbalances in a future patch or if they'll just let it rock, only time will tell

Sounds like CvS2. A moderate side of Capcom and a huge chunk of SNK characters were low tier and were dominated by roughly 8-9 characters.

However CvS2 had the greatest OST of fighting games, the groove mechanic idea, and crossover between two companies where it had some really cool intro dialogue vs each other. CvS2 was not superbly balanced either, but man that game was immensely epic.

Despite game balance and terms of game quality, CvS2 is by far my top 5.

Regarding Samsho, I have been watching tournaments for it lately debating if I should pick it up, but waited just in case.

it's super early but Samsho kinda has the same thing going on, in a cast of 16 characters there are probably only 5 worth playing imo, the rest aren't necessarily bad(some are just plain bad though, like Kyoshiro good god man), but they exist in the "why would you pick this character when [Blank] does the same thing but better" category. like why play Ruixiang when you could play Tam Tam, that kind of thing

That said, I still think samsho is fun, just understand that certain character choices are gonna make life unnecessarily difficult, and if your fine with that, go nuts, all the characters i like are bad, and i;ll probably stick with em, until i eat one too many Earthquake jumping Heavy punches then i;ll be like "fuck this noise, im picking Genjuro "

I was going to cop it until I saw the whole, "Stand in the corner to block your opponents' access to their weapon because the camera wants to be mad close because this new era is all about flair vs functionality." That's not old school cheapness, it's a design flaw.