Looking back at each season of Street Fighter 5 it’s fairly easy to point to a character or two that were clearly a full head and shoulders over their fellow roster mates in terms of balance, but none have as big a head or shoulders as Abigail. As such, we’re taking a look at an in-depth argument for his reign at the top during Season 3 being the most egregious example of an overpowered SF5 character (and that’s really saying something).
Taking us on this journey is Big Yellow as he highlights why the big bodied autophile was perhaps actually more of a menace than any of the crazy top tiers of Season 1, Rashid in Season 2, or even Luke in the game’s final season.
Originally hailing from Final Fight, Abigail was introduced about half way through Season 2 as a DLC character. He’s physically larger than any character before him, dwarfing even the likes of Hugo and T. Hawk, and was so obviously so in his trailer that many of us wondered if he’d have special properties (whether or not regular characters could throw him was a big one at the time).
He did have larger hurtboxes and yes, even smaller fighters like Cammy could flip him over their shoulder or across the screen, but he did have offense unlike anyone else on the character select screen.
One can debate (we often do at EventHubs) whether or not it’s more proper to classify Abigail a grappler or a brawler. He does indeed have a command grab, but like the more recent Marisa in Street Fighter 6, he tends to base his plan more around heavy/unblockable hits than trying to threaten with scoops.
With his massive limbs and huge frame, Abigail had a naturally far reach with attacks like his crouching light punch or his crouching heavy kick (in which he’d roll forward for a sweep that literally covered half the screen).
His abilities and movements were relatively slow, but when combined with Street Fighter 5’s infamous V-Trigger comeback mechanic, things started to get a little bonkers. One of the most conspicuous reasons for this was the fact that Abigail could charge his heavy punch up to cause it to break opponents’ guards, thus leading to scaled but still extremely painful combos.
When the character received one (more like five) too many buffs in the Season 3 update, players quickly found ways of putting opponents into 50/50 situations that threatened massive chunks of health bars with little to no thought.
One quick but prominent example was the use of his rolling sweep, which was normally balanced due to the fact that it was massively unsafe on block, paired with V-Trigger cancellation that would make it not only safe but advantageous on block.
If you blocked the sweep, Abigail would cancel into his enhanced VT1 state and immediately start charging his unblockable, armored punch. Hold your block for too long and he may crumple you, but try to jump out early and he may let the punch go early and clip you… either way, you’re eating half health damage and maybe more if he had Critical Art stocked.
This was just one of the many parts of the equation that added up to arguably the most unreasonable character in all of Street Fighter 5’s many years of utter unreasonableness. Let Big Yellow tell you all about it in the full video below and share your memories of the nightmare that was Season 3 Abigail in the comments below.