I got Kimberly to platinum using underhanded ninja tactics (extremely reckless neutral skips and spamming standing medium kick for hit confirm combos) which felt lore accurate. Now I'm learning Ken to polish my fundamentals and actually play neutral. This is my first fighting game (discounting my couple hours of Strive which I couldn't grasp at all before playing SF6) and it's definitely the most beginner friendly of the genre, even without using modern controls. Highly recommend trying out the World Tour to get a low-stakes introduction to the concepts and controls (you can also unlock the characters' second outfits for free here).