Why are villains much harder to defeat than heroes?

[Roogle]

I thought the American localization team rebalanced the game to give all characters a fair chance at victory. Yes, some characters will be at higher tiers than others, but the battle system should give all characters a fair chance.

I play parts of the Street Fighter series and I can tell you that it is nearly impossible to have a perfectly balanced game. There will always be tiers in any fighting game because some characters are simply better than others for various reasons.

I am not sure what changed from the Japanese version of the game to the North American version of the game, but, minus any glitches and bugs, I'm sure they tried to adjust all characters properly. Some get left behind.

If you mean from a storyline perspective, I would say the villains need to be stronger than the individual heroes because they often have to fight the heroes in a party. You rarely fight a villain and his party alone at the same time!