SFV has higher damage compared to other SF games in the mainline while retaining it's balance and putting in less effort is what I mean, save 2. Sure, there are setups for a bunch of characters in CvS2 and 3S, but not across the board for every character. A handful of hits from Gief and it's over compared to his other incarnations where you'd have to put in a lot more work to get that, and that's similar for a lot of characters.
ST is kind of where this game takes much of the DNA from, though not as bad.
I don't think many of those games can give you half a bar of life off a target combo into a few specials for anime games. KI has the breaker system (which from what I understand means more about reading your opponent than execution anyway!). And KOF and Marvel are team based games so per captia the damage between individuals is higher, but not when a full 3v3 match is taking place from a few normals.
The point that I'm making is those games all have systems in place to work with the amount of damage dished out, not including Alpha's dumb bullshit or CvS2's One-Grove-Is-Best. KI has the breakers, Marvel has a similar system (and 3v3, and pushblock), and so on. Actually, 13's execution is easier than before, and 14 had a big problem with that.
Maybe it depends on the commentators or your game knowledge, but Flash and Nemo are ridiculously different with their Vegas. Flash is clean, almost too clean, while Nemo plays Vega like Rolento. I think he exclusively goes clawless? It's been a while since I've seen him play.
For Bonchan, that dude is straight up aggressive which is why he's a better Nash than Infl IMO. Instead of standing back and jabbing and going for the CA all day, he's going in far more often, he throws out more booms, he uses more MK scythes, etc. Dude spends his meter a lot more but gets too risky for my taste. Infl tries to lame it out too much these days and people caught on.
On a lower tier of things, Urien players are all over the board. I've played against people who turtle with Urien all day, and people (like me) who are aggressive and just go ham. Some dudes rely on AR setups and getting to that point with his V Skill. Some don't even use it.
SFV doesn't even have higher normal damage than SFV or 3S or whatever. Fierces / Mediums / Lights all do similar stray hit damage across the board. I'm just a little confused by the rest of your post to be honest -
-ST / SFIV Gief are both way, WAY scarier than SFV Gief once he gets in
-Marvel doesn't have breakers & incoming characters are just meat for the grinder, so losing one is way worse than losing 1/3 of your health bar in SF
-CvS2 had multiple tournament-worthy grooves (A, C, N, K)
-KOF doesn't have rounds, so losing a character is roughly equivalent to losing a round outright
-I don't disagree that Nemo / Flash play very differently - one is good, the other is Flash
Sorry if this comes across as curt or condescending; definitely not my intent. It's just hard to keep a cap on things when multiple points need to get addressed without spiraling out into a quote war.
I think you're trying to make a point about how damage is more easily accessible in SFV - I agree, it is, at a lower level of play. The optimized damage character do is roughly similar, it's just that the optimized damage is always the easy damage in SFV with few exceptions. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but the flavor of the game at a high level isn't fundamentally different than say SFIV - except! - because the input buffer exists, the game is really clockwork. There's no slop in the breakpoints where you're at -2f and you can sooooometimes press a button because your opponent his hit jab a frame early or late. It's always going to be the same outcome - minus 2, press the 3f button. Beat their thing, or they block it, the end.
Combo execution is an element of that, of course, but not all 'execution' is just not dropping a juggle. Reversals are unmissable at every level of play, for instance, and that changes the game - for better or worse is going to be a matter of opinion, but I hope my point has been made that very real potential at all levels of play for missing a [link, combo, reversal, juggle, confirm] under pressure can make a game exciting. It's that looseness of play that allows for characters to grow and new, exciting developments to happen years down the line.
Capcom, as usual, is to blame. They tackled the problem of accessibility from the wrong end; by changing the system rather then providing better instruction for the players.
Edit - Some words I fixed up real good.
