Rant time.
Ryu in this game is stupid. Sure he doesn't have the most health or stamina, but come on. Risk/Reward? Near zero. Of the 5-6 "zones" in the game, Ryu controls about 3-4 of them. He does a lot of damage. Most of his combos are super-mashable. Heaven-forbid you play a Ryu with super because you have to watch his unbelievably good cr. hk poke or watch out for an FADC combo that you know is coming. Not only that, but he gets ultra like it's nothing. Should I count the ways? I mean, it's bad enough he has an FADC combo that goes into ultra. In fact, he should have one. Every character should have one. No, the big thing is the trade shoryuken into ultra. How bullshit is that? You waste zero meter. It comes after a move that's "fairly" punishable except for the simple fact that it beats every move in the game (oh wait, EX-Messiah Kick beats it!) both horizontally and vertically. I mean, if you stick out a crouching short (or if you're Dictator doing your combo and you mess up OR Ryu happens to block the first one) then you just eat a free small combo's worth of damage from an invincible move that was apparently so hard to do that it had to gain 10,000 shortcuts. You know what? Screw what I said before. His FADC combo is bullshit also. Shoryuken- high risk, high reward right? Oh wait, Ryu has two meters? How about zero risk, high reward?
As I ranted before about Ryu's normals. C'mon now. Great poke with cr. mk. Not good enough? Let's give him a great anti-air in cr. fierce. Oh wait, he can't do anything about crouching opponents! Let's give him an overhead that hits twice as well as a normal that hits twice! But I don't think he's good enough! Let's let him Tatsu on the ground and in the air (which btw Ex-Tatsu in the corner is another ultra setup and Tatsu goes through fireballs). Let's let the one in the air beat a lot of stuff, but let's also let the ground one have little lag so that you can follow it up with a grab or a shoryuken (-> FADC -> Ultra). Oh yeah! Don't forget about the cute j. strong x 2 that also juggles into ultra. I'm a Bison user that's pretty bitter that Bison and Ryu share this ultra set-up and Ryu STILL gets better priority on his j. strong.
So yeah, you can never jump in on a good Ryu (for multiple reasons, one of which is auto-correct DP). You can't focus attack a good Ryu (for multiple reasons, one of which is option-select DP off of a jump in, the other is normals that hit twice). You have to go through a flurry of fireballs to reach Ryu and once you get in, he ALWAYS has the option of DPing you. Sure you can bait it, but if you're sitting next to Ryu trying to bait a move, who really has control of the match?
Ryu is just too godly imo. I'm not expert and I can't play like the pros do, but I can't see a lot of the disadvantages that Ryu has. To me, it seems like every option in the game has to belong to Ryu and any weakness he has has to be covered in some way. Doesn't he also have a kara-throw? His j. roundhouse isn't so bad either.
Can definitely be overcome though). Do the game mechanics play to his toolset? Sure, but a certain eye-patch wearing bastard and a fatass kungfu master are definitely more of a nuisance than Ryu. 
