actually it looks more like kohaku - hisui combo from mb than a carl esque character to me, and no, those kind of chars arent equally in terms of gameplay, imo
with chars like zato and carl, you have to position your partner deliberately and think and play for 2 chars at the same time, for chars like kohaku and hisui, and from what this one seems to be, its more like a char with an assist that only take actions when you do the commands, otherwise its folllowing you automatically around the screen, so you only basically use the partner as a combo extender, and maybe for certain setups, not as complicated like managing 2 chars at the same time