Question What are some great characters for an absolute fighting game noob?

[Sabrewylf]

I've played fighting games all throughout my youth, but it never got competitive. Had some cousins or buddies over and wack them, that's about as far as it ever went. My proudest fighting game 'achievement' is probably memorizing Kabal's brutality in MK Trilogy when I was about 12.

I'm just not good at anything as it stands. I've been reading up on some of the more in-depth stuff like footsies and cancels and whatnot, and I get it, but it's going to be a long time before I manage to string in a run into a combo.

Characters that appeal me to so far are:
Jax, Mileena, Raiden, Goro, Kano, Johnny Cage, and Sub-Zero. The DLC characters are still up in the air for me but I'll definitely give Predator a good whirl.

Anyway, I think I can definitely scrap Mileena, Raiden, and Johnny off that list for now. They seem too mechanically intensive with very long combo strings.

I have the most games as Jax currently, but I'm not sure if he's a good pick either. Definitely the guy I'm most comfortable on right now.

Goro seems like he's not too hard to learn, but I might be wrong. Kano is all about pecking at enemies with projectiles and punishing them when they come in if I understand it correctly, so I think that's easier to do also. And Sub-Zero mainly interests me because the freezing gives me breathers and time to prepare for a combo, since I have trouble actually pulling those off in fights. My inputs are clean in training mode, but not in an actual fight.

 

[Dog With A Beer]

Goro might be a good pick to try out. I have some similar issues in that I struggle with characters that are super execution heavy (especially run cancels during a combo) which is why I took a break from Sub-Zero. I also like characters that can give me a bit of breathing room/break momentum so I can get my feet under me so I figured Grandmaster SZ would be a good pick but I can't do his B2 run cancel combos which is his main overhead starter... Goro doesn't have the ability to freeze people but his MB armored punchwalk is one hell of a momentum stopper. I think you can do it while they're comboing you and the armor should eat whatever they throw and allow you to wail on them. I think Tigrar is the most balanced but a lot of people like Dragon Fang. The only tricky thing on Goro is the command grab, the DBF movement can be hard to learn but if you practice you'll get it.

That being said Jax is pretty solid. It seems like you want a character with quick combos that put the opponent on their ass. Jacqui is good at that too, lots of simple knockdown combos and good options from most ranges. Kenshi and Takeda are dicks like that too. Is that sort of the play style you're looking for?