Lurker > TsunamiXXVIII

The Cold Science of Supremacy
Flotage (Stage 3-B)
New World Order

First match was pretty weak. CSoS isn't very good, but Sky of Twilight is NOISE NOISE NOISE.

Flotage is pretty amazing. Desert's not bad either, but it didn't stand a chance here.

I was ready to write NWO off at first, but then I hit the 2:30 mark and had to control my laughter; I was like "I have to vote for this." And then I remembered that this is a ToC match! How the hell did this sneak past the voters long enough to retire?! Luckily Amusement Park was just okay.

Flotage > New World Order > Desert > Amusement Park > Cold Science > Sky of Twilight

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs. Mass Effect 3 - ctes
Stardew Valley vs. Super Mario Galaxy 2 -
Fallout: New Vegas vs. Dark Souls III - ZeldaTPLink
Nioh vs. God of War - TsunamiXXVIII

Persona 5 vs. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - Sniperdog117
Sonic Mania vs. Super Meat Boy - paulg
Portal 2 vs. Kingdom Hearts III - pjbasis
Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs. Red Dead Redemption 2 - Nintendogs

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Also known as Cyberchao X.

Not doing detailed write-ups today because I'm multitasking, listening to the songs while doing other things. This first match is tough though! They're both so good.

This second match, however, isn't difficult at all. Hinagiku is pretty awful!

Metal Beat took an annoyingly long time to get moving, but once it did, it was pretty good, too.

RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against-
Beyond the Darkness
Metal Beat

RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against- > IDOLA The Strange Fruits > Beyond the Darkness > Metal Beat > steelchambers2 >>>>>>>> Hinagiku

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The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions

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Fair. And there's certainly a match where people would want to weigh in and pile on--this board loves Zelda and hates Halo.

But man, I hope it stays this close. To have a match like this two days in a row after taking all of Round 1 to get one?

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with 75%
Marvel's Spider-Man with 61.34%
Shovel Knight with 53.25%
Super Mario Odyssey with 67.78%

Grand Theft Auto V with 59.1%
Persona 4 Golden with 54.5%
Xenoblade Chronicles with 70.22%
Fire Emblem: Three Houses with 68.4%

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Well, Gen 6 gets to benefit from having the amazing Gen 3 remake. I mean honestly, if you want to go by starting pair of games alone, it's arguably 5 > 6 > 7 > 4 > 3 > 2 > 1 (and I'm not going to make my judgement about 8), though I might still put 6 ahead of 5. It's close. Gen 5 is really, really good. Gen 4 pulls ahead of Gen 5 solely on the strength of Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver, and that statement should tell you a lot about where my opinion is coming from because I doubt there are many people who would make that big a differentiation between Diamond/Pearl and Platinum.

Which also means there's still plenty of time for Gen 8 to save itself, since we're all expecting Sinnoh remakes soon. I'd say Sinnoh's probably my favorite region, but Hoenn's a close enough second that ORAS still gets to be my favorite pair of games. The Soaring mechanic? Really cool imo, and I especially love that all of the legendaries not native to Hoenn got their themes in the original soundfonts, down to the Legendary Beasts using a GBC chiptune (even though Raikou and Entei didn't actually use their variations on Suicune's Crystal battle theme until HGSS).

Also, Mega Evolution. Mega Evolution adds a whole new layer of strategy and also made old Pokmon viable again. It helped mitigate the effects of team preview, because a team with a Salamence and a Mega Metagross plays very differently than a team with a Metagross and a Mega Salamence, to use a couple of examples of Pokmon that could still see occasional play without their Megas. They tried to recapture that in Gen 7 with Z-Moves, but for the most part players were content to just use the attacking Z-Moves to nuke things instead of playing around with some of the cool effects of Z-Status moves. (Z-Mirror Move gives you a Swords Dance effect and still calls the Z version of whatever move it's copying. This would be even more broken if Mirror Move functioned like Copycat, which can call a move used by a Pokmon on your side of the field (like the gimmick with Prankster Focus Sash Riolu using Copycat to repeatedly call its own Reversal with priority), because then you could just pair Gale Wings Talonflame with an Extremespeed user and get a +2 priority Breakneck Blitz on Turn 1, but eh, still a fun play.)

But again, I want to reiterate: 6 isn't ahead of 4 and 5 by much.

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No? Nothing else? I'm half tempted to let this sit until morning but fuck it, I want to go on my rant.

That bit about being conflicted about where to rank 7? That's taking all mainline games vs. the 3DS games alone. That's right...in honor of HGSS in today's poll, this is a ranking of Pokmon generations.

And let's be honest, 4-6 are really close. I could easily put 5 ahead of 4, because one of the main reasons that even without LGPE, 7's well below 6 is that it took out some of 5's innovations, like triple battles.

Because the reason 7 falls so low is because of the Let's Go games, and the reason 8 is at the bottom is that they kept that mechanic and I think also dumbed down the rest of the 1P? I'm not completely sure. I really probably shouldn't have included 8 at all until I played it for myself. But seriously, the Pokmon Go-ification of the mainline series...yes, it's even worse than the glitchy, unbalanced mess that is Gen I. (Or in the case of Yellow, not quite as glitchy but still unbalanced. Seriously, there are way too few moves and way too many Pokmon that learn both Leer and Tail Whip, two moves with identical effects.)

Gen II? It's actually perfectly fine. Still not the most stable, but a lot of that is because it can interface with Gen I (and break it harder). The immediate nerfing of the Psychic type, and more importantly the Special Attack/Special Defense split, make Gen II perfectly viable, if a bit bare bones compared to later gens due to the lack of Abilities.

But back to Pokmon Go. It's a blight on the fandom. I can deal with actual Genwunners; their opinion is wrong, but they're entitled to their nostalgia goggles, and besides, there is a certain charm to a game that basically serves as its own Game Shark, allowing you to do all sorts of weird stuff if you know what you're doing. Call it Video Game Programming 101. But when Go first came out (which, I know, was still during Gen VI, but they hadn't started interfacing it with the main games yet) and it only had the Gen I Pokmon available, we were suddenly inundated with fake genwunners. People who didn't care aboutPokmon at all for the previous 20 years suddenly cared about the original 151. It was disgusting, and I stopped watching a lot of PokTubers when they started covering Go more than the actual games. So Game Freak deciding to integrate the catch mechanics from Go into the most recent main games? Inexcusable. This isn't Pokmon anymore.

So, that's what this is. I feel like most people either think each succeeding generation is better or each succeeding generation is worse, so I guess I'm not surprised that a ranking with the middle four generations in the top four spots tripped people up. And like I said, 4 and 5 were really close. Switch those two around, and you can see that I am, generally speaking, in the camp of the "keeps getting better", right up until the point that they sold out and made it into a glorified mobile game.

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I'm pretty sure they're not up to 8 of those yet. Well, not in numbered sequels, anyway.
Drakeryn posted...

5 and 3 too low (I know 5 is divisive but it's my favorite so)

also what darkx said about 8 not counting and 2 being weirdly high

Pretty sure we're not talking about the same thing, though I can't think of what you'd be talking about.

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MZero11 posted...

Haven't seen Star Wars IX yet, huh?

Actually, I haven't, but this is a video game topic!

Though I actually haven't played 8 in this, either. I'm just not happy with what they did with the series during 7.

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Goddamnit I need to just ignore the Spread Betting thing. My original pick for Skyrim was absolutely perfect, but when I picked Skyrim to cover without a second thought, I realized I needed to raise my prediction because I didn't have Skyrim covering.

Turns out, the line was way off base, and most people didn't have Skyrim covering it in their Oracles. Fucking hell.

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Underleveled posted...

6 is awful and 8 doesn't even really count, but yeah it's last if you do count it.

2 is also unusually high.

'You clearly don't have the right thing, but I agree that 8 probably shouldn't even really count; that's why I have it even below 1!

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Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream
Partizans
Luna Ascension EX

Wow, this is nice. Never did get the original PMD, though I loved the second one. It always goes this way, doesn't it? I'm one of the few advocates of Touhou music on this board and half the time it ends up with a first-round opponent that even I'd have trouble voting for it against. Though why does this song have to be 7:11? I really feel like it's been repeating for quite some time and I've still got about 3 minutes left. I know the convention for Touhou song uploads is also to loop them twice, but this feels like it's looped even more than that!

Oh, for the love of... @azuarc STOP THE TOPIC, RIGHT NOW! I probably should've double-checked when I was supporting it, but...this isn't a legal entrant. I mean, come on, does that sound like something the PC-98 is capable of producing?

https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Akyu's_Untouched_Score

Every track included is enhanced - the music on the album uses an additional, sixth sound channel previously dedicated to sound effects in the games, which makes it sound more full and impactful compared to the originals.

I mean, I guess I applaud the effort, but I only resolved to nominate more of the PC-98 stuff because other genuine PC-98 songs were doing well last year. This board loves its nostalgia, even if it's not anything they've actually played.

Proper link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV-G_p8ALvM

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Also known as Cyberchao X.

Been awhile since I've seen one of these around here.

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Among those that are already confirmed to be wrong? That'd be having a Bravely Default > Ni No Kuni in R2.

But I just happened to be looking over my bracket and I found something far more embarrassing. Somehow I've got Arkham City taking down TLoU and Dark Souls.

I mean, I can kind of understand why I would've taken it over Dark Souls in my bracket, though I'd have regretted it as soon as I saw the wins by Sekiro and DMC5 and Nioh and even Bloodborne (which I actually had in my bracket). In other words, long before Arkham City's embarrassing performance yesterday. Except, that's the Round 4 matchup. What I should be doing right now is worrying about whether my TLoU > Dark Souls pick is a good one! (I still think it is.)

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Kenri posted...

FE6 started as a remake of FE1 I believe so that would explain that.

I'm fairly certain FE7 was not planned in advance; I don't have any real evidence to support this except that it just really seems like it wasn't. I think Hector and Eliwood would have bigger roles (and Lyn would exist) in FE6 if it was.

Yeah I thought I'd heard that somewhere but I wasn't sure so I didn't say anything.

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Leonhart4 posted...

I think the point is that those values are your best guess (based on a lot of work, but nevertheless), not necessarily something to be taken as gospel.

Plus, CT went from losing to Mario 64 outright in 2009 to looking strong enough to beat OoT in 2015! A lot changes in 5 years!

Precisely. Melee and SM64 literally both faced Undertale directly and Melee got the better percentage.

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xp1337 posted...

I think that was semi-true way back in the day, it isn't now. However, Golden Sun v GTA:SA was literally the day that Dark Dawn was released so not only would the "series saved!" hype be at full power... no one had time to digest Dark Dawn and be disappointed yet. >_>

Ah, tell me about it. Lost Age ended on a sequel hook and we had to wait for over seven years, so we were all hungry. Then Dark Dawn had more loose ends than it did answers! Not to mention a distinct inability to backtrack to stuff you might have missed, which put it at odds with the first two games.

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Miracle Matter
Cloak of Darkness
Battle!!

Oh wait I saw the name and thought Ar Tonelico, not Ar Nosurge. I guess that makes it official that I'll be voting for the A4 wild card in Round 3 and hopefully Round 4! I mean, this isn't great--wouldn't put it in the category of "better than literally everything in A3" category...but it's better than anything remaining up there! And not too long, either--under five minutes. But still over three, which is good because I find that songs that are under three minutes often leave me wanting more.

Miracle Matter! When I first saw this nominated, I threw it a support, but then I drew it back because the lock period hadn't passed yet and while I certainly enjoy it enough to see it in the contest, I don't love it enough to tie up one of my own nominations on it. As the final boss theme, it tends to get overshadowed by the far superior true final boss theme, but that's retired anyway so it's no use complaining about that. Actually, this is really good; I suspect I'd enjoy it a lot more if it were from a more recent game, because it's a little too young to have that sweet nostalgic sound that Genesis/SNES tunes have, but too old to have truly high-quality sound.

Oops! I forgot that I actually have no prior knowledge of either of the two songs in the last R1 match of bracket A. They could be horrible for all I know! But this one isn't. It's not great, though; I went to stop it to go to the next song and then I saw that it's barely over two minutes. And it actually does get better!

But not good enough. Damn, this is a solid day. Nothing amazing yet, but all solid. Of course if my memory serves me correctly that's about to change in both directions!

Well, part one down. Battle!! is every bit as amazing as I remember it, if not more so.

But Slag Dance is...not as bad as I remember! Still worst of the six songs today, but it's...uh...okay, I still can't find anything nice to say about it. It's not my thing. But it's tolerable! ...Wait, no, it's not the worst of the six! Except, wait, EXPAJA wasn't my #5!

Battle!! >>>> Cloak of Darkness > Miracle Matter > Slag Dance > Class::EXPAJA > Eulogia

I may need to add some extra punctuation on both sides of Cloak of Darkness, because even though it's not that far ahead of the other songs, it might as well be the Grand Canyon compared to how close everything else is! I'm actually glad that Slag Dance managed to wedge its way in where it did, because I was having serious doubts that I was truly voting for the songs and not the games in the first match. It was very close.

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Panthera posted...

Zephiel annoys the crap out of me in both story and gameplay, personally. In gameplay he's just yet another Binding Blade boss that sits there with infinity avoid while you repeat your actions over and over again until the game lets you make progress. In story he's just a generic "something bad happened to me NOW I WANNA MURDER MWAHAHA" cliche whose behavior isn't even consistent with his actions (notably, he justifies his hatred of humanity to Roy by saying that Roy has surely seen people being evil on his journey, which is true...because Zephiel put them all up to it, so his logic is basically "I'm evil, I'm human, therefore me being evil means everyone else deserves it anyway" and yet the game seems to think we're supposed to think this guy has a point or something)

I love this.

And then they have him appear in the prequel and he's super idealistic, and I guess it's meant to try to justify it even more? Honestly, the Elibe duology is just plain weird, because I'm fairly certain they didn't plan it out in its entirety in advance. It would really surprise me to find out that, yes, they'd already planned out both games when they released Binding Blade and just made the decision to release the chronologically later game first. But the future canon really boxed Blazing Blade's writers in.

Well, there's also the fact that it takes about a third of the game just for Binding Blade to materially differentiate itself from Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light. Seriously, look at how similar the early parties are.

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Not sure if doing something other than the exact title will mess it up, plus I'm making another change, so...

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with 86.67%
Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn with 60.4%

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Also known as Cyberchao X.

MAX on Skyrim/MK8

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Oof. Another one where I have two bad upset picks in the same day.

Though I think if the opponents were switched, I'd still stand by Crypt of the Necrodancer! Just having the crossover with Zelda gives it enough name recognition that I think it would beat Journey.

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CHANGES

Journey with 54.1%
Final Fantasy XIV with 60.4%


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Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask
Kirby: Planet Robobot


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Also known as Cyberchao X.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs. Halo: Reach -
Final Fantasy XV vs. Hollow Knight - MetalmindStats
Monster Hunter: World vs. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - TsunamiXXVIII
Bastion vs. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age -

Mass Effect 2 vs. Fallout 4 -
Borderlands 2 vs. Horizon Zero Dawn - Kotetsu534
Resident Evil 2 vs. DOOM - Sniperdog117
Fire Emblem: Awakening vs. Bloodborne -

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds -
Marvel's Spider-Man vs. Minecraft - SuperNiceDog
Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight - SwiftyDC
Devil May Cry 5 vs. Super Mario Odyssey -

Grand Theft Auto V vs. Cuphead - Luster Soldier
Persona 4 Golden vs. Red Dead Redemption - DoomTheGyarados
Xenoblade Chronicles vs. Overwatch - BT
Ori and the Blind Forest vs. Fire Emblem: Three Houses -

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It initially wouldn't even let me post that message because I had held the > key for too long. I deleted them one at a time until it let me post. Luckily I only needed to get rid of two.

Seriously, fuck A3.

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*looks at choices for A3 wild card* I'm halfway tempted to advance vote for A4 Wild Card for Rounds 3 and 4 right now. Seriously, Flightless was about the only halfway decent thing in all of A3, and I think I can comfortably say that almost any potential loser in A4 would indeed get my vote for being more deserving of retirement than that steaming pile of shit. But, we do have EXPAJA tomorrow. If that ends up as the A4 wild card, well, then I start voting for the song I like least so I'll only have to deal with it one more time in ToC4.

Megaraph Fleet is what I'd call "generically epic." It is meant to convey a feeling of "hell yeah, the good guys are about to kick some ass" and it does that well. Note that I have never even heard of Spark the Electric Jester and have no idea if that is actually the context that this song plays in. It doesn't matter. This is a generic "heroes kick ass" song and that is a good thing.

I supported In Circles due to liking it in years past, and I still like it. This is right up my alley and I still think this is a very close match. Megaraph Fleet is damn good. If either song had fewer vocals, it could have flipped it, because those voice grunts in Megaraph are a negative for me while this song wouldn't be nearly as high if it were a pure instrumental. Normally I listen past the vocals to pay attention to the music, even when listening to music on the radio, which is why a lot of songs that are often mocked for their awful lyrics I actually find to be just fine!

Okay I already know this is going to lose. For some reason, Nippon Ichi has never gotten the same love as Gust in these contests. This is at least from the only one of their games that has so much as gotten a song to Round 2...once. It's a shame!

Oh hi early 00s butt-rock. What are you doing in a game released in...uh...wait, I'm googling this and I'm not even sure if it's a game, or something that has been officially released for that matter. Well whatever.

Okay, see, now here this style of music makes sense. This is a 2005 remake of a 1992 game. I can believe this as both a 2005 VGM straight-up and as a remaster of a 1992 VGM.

I feel like this isn't really the best version of Big Blue? Not that it matters. It's Big Blue. But seriously, why the saxophone? It just seems weird.

Votes:
In Circles
Dance with Me
Big Blue

Rankings:

In Circles > Megaraph Fleet > Big Blue > Dance with Me >>> Battle with Saruin >> L L ~Infinite Beating ver~ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Anything from fucking A3

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with 79.59%
Hollow Knight with 52%
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with 54.1%
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age with 78.9%

Mass Effect 2 with 61%
Borderlands 2 with 60%
Resident Evil 2 with 61.3%
Fire Emblem: Awakening with 53.1%

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Also known as Cyberchao X.

I mean, if he tried to rally, it didn't work. The vote total for today's matches is more or less the same as yesterday's were at the same point in the match, actually slightly less.

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Disgusting. Yesterday had two good songs, one boring song, one bad song, and two downright offensive songs. About the best result yesterday was that the boring song was able to beat one of the downright offensive songs. Still, I can assure you right now that all three of today's losers will be better than any of yesterday's winners for the simple fact that all six songs qualify. By a mile. Like, five of them are better than the two I actually liked yesterday.

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-[Deoxyribose]-
Snake Eater
Servants of the Scourge

-[Deoxyribose]- is, uh, something. A lot of things, actually. All of them good! This is a masterpiece. And the fact that it keeps doing new things has me refusing to cut corners and move on to the next song even once I've got a clear and concrete opinion formed. Well, that and the fact that I'm loving it.

I knew this song title sounded familiar! We've got a returner here. And a vocal track, so probably better than I expected from seeing the game name...oh, hold on, I started writing this before even heading onwards to that one and -[Deoxyribose]- has managed to dramatically shift again. I mean, there's really no need for me to listen to this to decide my vote, right? Just to determine where it sits within the six? Oh here we go, another five minutes. Have to wait 45 seconds just to get any vocals at all...I hate typing on my phone. This swipe thing never works properly; it just tried to write "asthmatics" when I swiped "seconds", yet it knew exactly the correct word to recommend as an alternative. Though more often than not it just gives me things that aren't words, especially when the words areshort. It somehow managed to completely spontaneously switch me back into italics, possibly because it sensed I was about to complain about how every time I switch into or out of them, it registers it as the start of a new sentence. Also it tends to forget the space after the first word outside of italics. The 5 minutes passed really quickly while I was ranting; I didn't even finish it when the music stopped.

Yeah no need to talk about this one. It's Snake Eater. It's deliciously cheesy and sounds like a parody of a Bond theme. I downloaded the demo of the 3DS version and have never played it because I want to one-shot it.

What is this? It's silly. I like it more than I expected to.

Ah, Hidra Heteromycin. I think this was the song that changed my opinion on EXA_PICO as a whole. Though come to think of it, I guess all the EXA_PICO songs I've actually liked have been from the Surge Concerto duology!

And then here comes Servants of the Scourge! Man this day is such a treat after yesterday's disaster. The weakest song today would beat at least four of yesterday's sextet. The second weakest would beat all six of them! I'm just glad that they're broken down the way they are; a lot of other pairings would be tough to decide.

Servants of the Scourge > Snake Eater > -[Deoxyribose]- >>> Hidra Heteromycin > Shop 'til You Drop >>> Fear Not This Night

Couldn't go crazy on the greater thans; even the worst song is pretty good.

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Change

Dragon Ball FighterZ with 54%
Yakuza 0 with 63.25%

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Oh, is that a no-show?

Tsunami's Emergency Guest Analysis

After all these other quality showings by action games, including a later game in this very series, seeing Dark Souls itself should be a treat. Expect lopsidedness.

Guest pick: Dark Souls with 80%

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MAX on DBZ/Yakuza 0

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SuperNiceDog posted...

@TsunamiXXVIII I'm up to 34th now I'm fighting back! Minecraft saved me

Hey, you should be worried about me dragging you down! I mean, go and look at the Match 40 results; I'm literally over 10 points behind the second-worst prediction and that's not even the result of actually taking an upset.

(of course then I immediately followed that up with a first place in Match 41 and another Top 5 in Match 43, because "frequently awful with occasional strokes of genius" is my MO, not "consistently awful".)

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Battle!! (XBC:T) isn't in the main bracket you silly! It's in the ToC.

Also holy crap when did Pokmon start doing this?! I've always been a fan of its major boss themes, but this is just the regular old Battle Tower theme, right? Not a special Tower Boss theme? ...Oh, Toby Fox made it. That explains everything. Also, holy crap Toby Fox is legitimately working with Nintendo now. It's all coming full circle for the man who first made his name on an Earthbound romhack. Mother 4 when?

...That's Final Destination 64? Doesn't sound familiar to me at all. Bah.

Oh ouch my ears. Can I turn this down? Nope, damnit, have to turn it back up again once the lyrics come in, even though the music is still too loud. Yeah, this is "get the fuck out of my contest" tier.

Which is unfortunate because Endless Desert is "yawn" tier. It's...inoffensive, I suppose. But it's just so blah; not the type of thing I'd vote for if I liked its opponent even a little bit. Lucky for it I absolutely loathe its opponent!

Oh, speaking of "get the fuck out of my contest". Okay, I'm still going to try to give this a chance. It becomes tolerable around the 1:10 mark. And then intolerable again at 2:53, at which point I decided to stop because it had already secured fifth place.

Which means two minutes of sheer unfiltered energy ends up in my #1 spot on the day? ...Eh, not quite. But close. This day was pretty weak, though; Battle Tower wouldn't have come close to #1 on any other day, yet here it is.

Votes:
Battle Tower
An Endless Desert
Chloe

Battle Tower > Chloe >>>>>>>>>>>>> An Endless Desert > Final Destination >>>>>>>>>>>>>> goldenslaughterer >>>>>>>>>>>>> Wings of Terror Phase 2

It's always a bad sign when a song I describe as "dull and lifeless" makes the top half. This day was just rancid.

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Wildspark posted...

It just seems like people talk about 999 and Virtue's Last Reward more often than they mention Ghost Trick

Yeah. It really surprised me that VLR and ZTD both made it and 999 didn't.

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Super Mario 3D Land
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked


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Eh, these look nasty. No parlay for today.

MAX on RDR2

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Ai[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

What the heck did I just listen to? When I saw that it was only 2:22, I decided I'd listen to the whole thing even though I hated it immediately. I couldn't do it.

But ugh! I almost ended up listening to as much of Blooming Villain just in the short time it took ro write that up. Then I went back and finished up Ai[UE]OON, because why not at this point?

Oh good, there's actually something good in here so I can properly express my disgust for the first match. My phone is under the mistaken belief that "express" is a word that always needs to be capitalized. It does that with "male", too. It's also started doing that with "top", but that might be because of how frequently I do capitalize it (in discussions on sports boards).

And we've got another low-key good song. Maybe? It's a little frenetic, right after I called it "low-key". Also, there's a lot more of it so I have something to listen to if I need more time.

But I won't, because we've got Innocence and Emptiness to listen to! I forgot how long this song took to really get started. Or was I confusing it with something else from the same game? Nope, there it goes. Awful song for someone like me who often doesn't have the patience to let songs play out, but holy crap is the payout worth it! ...Wait, I think this is the song I was actually thinking about when trying to remember my opinions of TIGAR from last year. That's not even the same game! But it definitely feels like an "all phase mix" with the way it keeps doing new things. The only question is if this is going to be another 1-3-5 day or if Strike the Earth can get down into third or even fourth place. (It won't get up to first or down to fifth, I can assure you of that.)

Well, uh...that definitely didn't challenge to get second. I was right about it not being able to get below Ai[UE]OON...but that gave me doubts about if I was making the right choice, because I had to go back and listen to Blooming Villain again to make sure that I liked that less than this! I did. But it looks like it's a 1/2/5 day, except the gap between 3 and 4 is gigantic.

Innocence and Emptiness >>>>>>> Kanata no Rafflesia >>> Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Strike the Earth! > Ai[UE]OON >> Blooming Villain

I wouldn't actually say the gap between Ai[UE]OON and Blooming Villain is twice that of it and Strike the Earth!; I just wanted each gap to have a different spacing. I might say that the gap between the two songs in the second match is triple the Ai[UE]OON-StE gap, though. Still, there's a clear #1 and an even clearer delineation between top 3 and bottom 3. Yech, what a horrible day even with such a great song.

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Hype > Actual Games

Yes, you're right, before it came out, it was absolutely huge. And then it actually came out and people hated it.

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Conquest
DQ7

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MAX on Persona 5/Super Meat Boy

Wow even after making a bracket and presumably having seen it then, I didn't realize Heavy Rain was in this contest. It feels like that came out so long ago.

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CHANGE

Diablo III with 62%

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Dark Souls vs. Hotline Miami -
Rocket League vs. Dragon Ball FighterZ - spooky96
Yakuza 0 vs. The Witness -
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs. Dead Cells -
Batman: Arkham City vs. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - MechanicalWall
BioShock Infinite vs. Terraria -
Diablo III vs. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - TsunamiXXVIII
The Last of Us vs. Crusader Kings II - Kotetsu534

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. Subnautica - Sir Chris
Fate / Grand Order vs. Journey - Luster Soldier
Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs. Crypt of the NecroDancer -
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End vs. Mario Kart 8 - paulg
Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs. Night in the Woods - MetalmindStats
Celeste vs. Rayman Legends - Hbthebattle
Divinity: Original Sin II vs. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft -
NieR: Automata vs. Bayonetta 2 - ctes

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FLIGHTLESS
GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE
Flash Frost

EXEC_Z/. is just kind of...there, being anime as fuck. I feel like it's the type of thing I would have loved when I was a teenager, but it does nothing for me now. Which means it's all on its opponent to decide if I vote for it or not! (Sadly, the fact that I have to go back and put my votes at the top of the post means you'll know by this point if I did.)

What the why is the video for this literally a Nat Geo Jr.? What is this game? This can't possibly actually be from an edutainment game, can it? *looks it up* It is not. It is far too awesome to be in an edutainment game. I don't think any of the edutainment games I played when I was young had soundtracks worthy of nomming for future contests. Which is unfortunate because a couple of the more advanced ones (i.e. for older children) were surprisingly legit as video games in their own right! I'm sad to learn that The Learning Company went defunct in 2018; their games were awesome and I'd recommend them to anyone who has kids. If you can still find Operation Neptune, get it for them: they will learn math, and they will learn video gaming. And for once, I don't mind this being 10 minutes because it allowed me to go off on that tangent.

More capitals! All the capitals! More goofy generic RPG shit! I feel like this would affect me much more if I'd played the game, because it sounds like some sort of limit break type of theme.

Unfortunately, Dreamy Somnom Labyrinth lives up to its name. EXEC_Z/. vs. GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE might've been a tough choice because they're both just so goddamn generic, but because of their opponents, the one that I wouldn't have voted for in that hypothetical match is the only one of the two that actually gets my vote today.

Oh, hey, speaking of generic, it's the most generic RPG series in the world! *laughs* Tales is a fine series, but it doesn't really do much in the way of risk-taking. At least the ones I'm familiar with didn't. Based on what I've heard about the more recent ones, that's probably for the best.

Which means another easy vote! Every time another Atelier song comes up, I wonder why I thought I hated the series's soundtrack so much. But I guess when there are a few songs you don't like, and they keep showing up and make Round 3 every time they do but still take a few tries to outright retire, it colors your view of the series negatively!

FLIGHTLESS > Flash Frost >>>> EXEC_Z/. > Meaning of Birth > GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE >>> Dreamy Somnom Labyrinth

Damnit, I'm going to have to hear YOATI even more in ToC this year. Not looking forward to that.


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LeonhartFour posted...

it's honestly not a bad upset

although Civilization has also never been any good here

Yeah, Civ has never done anything of note. I think the only time anything Civ has finished ahead of anything was in 2009 where the original game finished a mile back of second place but still got third in its opening fourpack. That's just from memory though so I could be wrong.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I'd say generally no but BotW specifically might qualify. It has quite a few of the open-world RPG trappings, though they are pretty streamlined.

Ah, yeah, haven't played BotW yet.

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Kikoman589 posted...

Only Zelda II is; don't know about BotW.

This. Zelda II was an RPG, but the rest of the series isn't.

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