I'm not going to go back and forth on this—we will continue disagreeing in the end—but your conflation of universal movement mechanics and "expression" is flimsy.
It's true: ST doesn't have universal dashes, hops, side steps, or ki charge (not a movement mechanic, but whatever, I'll give it to you). This limitation in universal movement compared to KOF 94 happens to come with the trade of having more basic attacks and special move variations than KOF 94. Those two extra buttons make a difference. Not only because you got more attacks to consider at different positions, but because many of those attacks include...
wait for it...
movement options. Look at basic ass Street Fighter ass boring ass vanilla ass Ryu and Chun:
Ryu has air tatsus and a dash punch.
Chun neck breaker, head stomp, wall jump, up kicks, air spinning bird kick.
Lots of different ways for players to get around the screen and express themselves with agility.
More movement options than KOF 94? No. ST has a stronger focus on spacing than KOF 94 tho. Which is better is a matter of personal taste, but of both those games released in 1994 I don't think there's no arguing which has the more hype scene in 2019.
Lastly, if you truly want honest discussion, you can't be saying wild stuff like:
I mean, come on.
Ryu has dash punch and tatsu, true. But again, this is character specific. Only Ryu has something like that. Chun has her movement speed going for her and so does Cammy. But Cammy has no real reversal option because hers isn't invincible, and the only meter is for Super. She can hooligan but a raw hooligan will get you bopped offline. She has her drill but that's not safe and requires very, very well placed spacing.
My argument is one of universal features. In Guity Gear, pretty much every character has an air dash. GG is a character fighting game as opposed to a system fighting game. But where GG goes above SF is by including universal features such as air dash and roman cancels that give characters more options to make up for their flaws. In SF you can't do this because most SF's lack universal mechanics. In SFV for instance it's dependent on your V-skill and V-trigger and that's character dependent, so you don't have an universal thing like parries, air dash, shit like that to get you out of harms way. No, you have to rely on your character. And depending on how your character is balanced makes or breaks you. Don't get me wrong, every fighting game has tiers. But it feels like in other fighting games you have more options to make up for character flaws/weaknesses due to universal features such as hops, sidesteps, tech rolls.
In my original post I gave GG's Millia an example. She has extremely low HP and no real reversal. Sounds like a shit situation, right? Well, Millia also has some of the best movement in the game. Every character in the game has air dash besides Potemkin but Millia (as well as Dizzy) can air dash TWICE. She can air dash forward then backwards and zip and zap all over the battlefield like a bumblebee on top of having the standard double jump. The game has balanced out her weakness by giving her more universal options. She's now more viable.
This really appeals to me. I just like fighters with more options. I find it hard to want to get better at Street Fighter after a certain point.
For one thing, more options expands upon the mind game. Take parry in 3S. Standard SF is about punishing an opponent that jumps at you from the air. Well some times they might empty jump, wait for you to reversal or anti-air, and parry it. Or maybe you'll get the read expect an empty jump, do nothing, and delay your anti-air timing. Or maybe they'll jump in with an air to air move and instead of anti-airing, you parry it and super as a punish? That one little tweak adds a new dynamic and mind game to the meta.
In the KOF 94 video I posted it shows more mind games and things going on than ST due, specifically, to the universal mechanics.
4 minutes in, we see Infiltration repeatedly avoid the opponents attack with the side step. It results later down the round with a "is he, isn't he going to sidestep?" mind game.
More options = more mind games = more involved meta = more involved game = game I want to learn.
Watch this fight between Nakamura's Millia vs Elphelt.
Millia's movement options take something that's almost universal (air dash) and turn it into fine wine for mind games and mix ups. The way he weaves in and out. The use of the pin as a tool to get in, the dash speed. Air blocking. Then roman cancels added on top. GG takes (nearly) universal mechanics and lets characters open the doors with them.
A really depressing revelation was that I just don't like SF that much.
