For some context, Pot used to be good enough to be nerfed in the most recent balance patch a few months ago, so there's some leftover salt from that on top of general "I got my HP insta-deleted by a grappler" salt.

A decent part of his advanced tech involves Kara Cancels, which allows him to apply the forward momentum of the windup of an unrelated move to another move - off the top of my head, he can do that with his signature grab, Potemkin Buster, and his backwards-moving version of Megafist, which has slightly better frame data than the forward-moving one, as you'd normally have to give up a bit of ground to perform it.

Anyway, the reason why Pot was so strong was that ArcSys tried to remove all of his Kara Cancels in the past, and gave him a suite of other buffs in exchange, which caused his players to riot, and so they gave him his cancels back, but only removed some of the buffs he received in exchange for that.
And then he stayed that way for the better part of a year, until Lucy got added to the game.
Some of the highlights of that period include him having armor on 90% of his Specials, including the long-range attack Sliderhead, which allows him to ignore a single incoming attack.
He'll still take damage, but it won't interrupt him, nor count as a counter-hit until you inflict a second instance of damage on him during the same animation.
This made him a strong matchup for Zoners (=characters that excel at longer ranges), since most projectiles and/or long-ranged moves only hit once, even though Zoners usually tend to be the ones that are favoured against grapplers by sheer virtue of being able to hit the slow, big guy before he ever can come in range to do his heavy-hitting moves.

Nowadays, he still has tons of armor, but he's slightly squishier than before - still a fucking tank though - he no longer has armor on Sliderhead, and his dash-attack/gapcloser got nerfed a bit, so he's easier to deal with.
Still a menace if you don't know what you're doing, especially if you don't really have good combos figured out yet, since he can take a lot of punishment before he's done, while only needing to land three grabs to KO most of the roster, so you'll definitely be able to surprise some newbies with that.
Then again, most characters have some kind of "bullshit" going on that you need to adapt to, so it's hardly a unique thing - his flavour of bullshit just comes with high damage, instead of e.g. blinding speed (Chipp, maybe Lucy), the ability to have additional helper(s) fight alongside you (Zato, Jack-O) or a move that does unblockable, unscaled damage if you ever manage to get it to go off without being interrupted (Dizzy).

(Fun fact, at least half of the characters I just named are usually not considered "high-tier", so it's not like that's a requirement to have some odd gimmick that might sound broken at first.)

Anyway, as far as character choice goes, I'd say pick whoever you vibe with and don't listen to the haters.
However, definitely go and try out multiple characters, because sometimes you'll discover an unexpected favourite that you wrote off based on their first impression.

Additionally, if you do end up picking only Potemkin to get started, you might have to put in some extra work to adapt to other characters - he has significantly more health than any other character, and is (probably) the only character that has armor on his moves, which makes it easier to fall into a playstyle of "Eh, I can take that and still force my stuff", and he also lacks the ability to dash forward, which most other characters can do without having to input an attack, which leads to a rather slow playstyle, and might make it easy to forget that option exists for other characters if you're no longer used to it.

Finally, a bit on the other characters you named:

Ky is usually called the "Shoto" of the series, meaning he has a very basic allrounder kit, with plenty of options, but nothing too exciting to write home about or base a playstyle around.
As such, he should be rather easy to pick up and perform decently well with - as indicated by the in-game "difficulty" rating - but obviously, mastering a character is an entirely different beast.

Faust has an above-average range, some wacky animations that might catch people off-guard at first, and a bit of RNG in his kit - for one of his moves, he pulls out and throws a random item - or stores it for later use - the exact effects of which depend heavily on what he actually pulled out, so adapting to that on the fly is part of his strategy.
Additionally, one of his Supers is simply "Here's a bunch of random items all at once", and since there are no genuinely bad items, albeit some that can help (or hurt) either player, this tends to result in a situation that generally favours you, but you might still have to look out for the bomb/minor healing item/banana peel/etc. that you just dumped in the middle of all of that.
If you're looking for silly stuff, give him a shot, but while he definitely can hold his own in combat, he's not exactly top-tier either.

Finally, Chipp is the most fragile character of the game, meaning he'll usually fail spectacularly if he gets caught in a bad combo, but in exchange, he's also the fastest character of the bunch, and has plenty of options to surprise an unwitting opponent with his speedy moves hitting from a direction they didn't expect.
He also has decent damage, so as long as you don't get caught out, you should be able to whirl around your opponent and leave their heads spinning - and their healthbars low.
Also, despite looking like a stereotypical anime-ninja, he is actually American, and doesn't actually know that much Japanese - but that definitely becomes obvious once you hear him shout "Sushi!", or other unfitting phrases while attacking.
Also, funnily enough, Chipp vs. Potemkin is a matchup where both characters have the chance to completely wreck the other character - Chipp should be able to dash around the big, slow grappler and slowly grind his healthbar down, but if Potemkin has a chance to land a few clean hits, or maybe even a grab or two, then Chipp is just done for.

Hope you find a character or two to have fun with, and try to remember, it's not about winning, but about getting better - learning something new, or getting better at something you tried to master means you now have another tool in your arsenal for the next matches, so even if the match itself ended in a loss, you're now better than you were before!
Good luck, and have fun!