It wasn't really the character designs that started to bother me, more just how the story started getting kinda dumb. It's a thing... the more complicated a character or story gets, the more braindead it gets as well. It happens a lot with manga and comic books. Scott Summers as an over-serious dude who shoots eye lasers is fine. Scott Summers as literally the center of the universe is dumb. Attack on Titan as a survival story regarding kaiju zombies is interesting, now its all this dumb stuff about conspiracies. Slenderman stories when they're just dudes getting chased by a weird paranormal figure are interesting, but then they introduce the proxies and the various "rules" and such, it gets dumb.

That being said I do dislike how anime has gotten so "out there," I prefer more down to earth. I don't mind dudes with oversized swords when they're a one-off or meant to be exceptional even in-universe, but show me a Tetsuya Nomura design and I'll show you a sign saying "no thanks."

But yeah, I liked Ryu more when he was just an eternal traveller and not a guy haunted by some dark power who the universe literally revolves around.