I think some of you guys are in denial about Cloud. Now, as a disclaimer, there are no "bad" characters in this game, every character can beat at least half the cast. I don't mean to be a buzzkill here, I had some fun playing as Cloud earlier myself. As with any character in the game, if one enjoys playing as them, great! I mean, I play Bowser, Jigglypuff and Mewtwo in that order, so I'm not a tier queen.
But Cloud is quite plainly mid-low tier, and it's a little disappointing to wait, be hyped, and spend money for a character with little potential. Everything that he does well, other characters do better. Besides the limit breaks he doesn't have much going for him. That "____ hits so hard" talk on /r/smashbros means about as much for Cloud as it did for Mewtwo - it's a complete exaggeration. The only attack that hits hard is fsmash. When you hit a mid-weight character with Cloud's bair at 120%+ by the edge of the stage and they survive... then no, his bair doesn't hit hard. Neither does uair, the aerial that kills off the top somewhere after 130%, usually around 140... Frame data is generally lackluster also.
He's authentic to the game he comes from looks-wise, but he doesn't fit into the competitive meta. For casuals this is fine, he has a powerful fsmash and the limit break stuff. But for competitive play I don't see it at all. Sakurai and his team know the importance of a combo throw and yet Cloud doesn't have one. At 0% he can often pull off a dthrow to reverse side b, but it isn't a true combo, in a meta where Ike exists and has true combos. His aerials are generally underwhelming in terms of knockback. True autocanceling only happens if you jump straight into an aerial, one cannot fast fall or time an aerial close to the ground without incurring lag.
His recovery is terrible. Just terrible. The regular version of his up b doesn't sweetspot, making it incredibly exploitable. Does Cloud's opponent have a projectile? Do they have a ranged attack or smash they can charge? Cause Cloud is toast. What do you think it looks like when Cloud's up b meets a Villager's tree? That Cloud arrives with an up b like this in the same patch that fixed Bowser's exploitable reverse up b is puzzling. Edge guard him once and he's done. Half the time charged limit breaks have to be used for recovery because his air jump basically has no vertical movement.
Also, I can't help but notice his aerials have underwhelming sound effects. Nair, uair and bair sound like a gust of wind. Not satisfying on hit.
I know people want to be hyped about Cloud, but I think he'll impact the meta about as much as Mewtwo did. Which is to say, very little. It's nice that his charged down b has the knockback of Jigglypuff's rest, but that doesn't save the character. That Cloud is as bad as he is (relative to the other characters) shakes my confidence a little for the next 2 DLC characters. Bayonetta's theoretical moveset should make her very high tier, but given that Sakurai considered Cloud ready for release in the state he's in, I'm not sure either of the remaining characters will shake up the competitive meta at all. We'll have to wait and see if Bayonetta can combo people up to the blast zone and actually kill them, or if it's all orchestrated flashiness that still requires the Bayonetta player to get an honest kill off one of a couple killing moves out of neutral.
Because that's the thing, good characters in this game aren't honest. They either have ridiculous bread and butter combos/throw combos or a very safe neutral game, or both. And many of them have all sorts of ways to get early kills. Given what we've seen and what was explained of Sakurai's concepts for Bayonetta, he's given her weak frame data to compensate for combo potential... we'll see. Corrin, it's hard to tell. The long range attacks focus there may mean some pretty weak sourspots with Corrin's attacks, leaving him/her struggling against rushdown tactics. We'll have to wait and see on that one. But as someone who mains a character who even after a major buff isn't top 15 I say the last thing Smash 4 needs is another mid to low tier character. We've got enough of those, and given that the patches will likely dry up quickly after the last DLC character comes out, there may not be time to fix whatever problems they arrive with.
I just want to see more competitive characters, that's all.