Northwest Division: Round 2 - Match 48 – (3) Dante/Vergil vs. (2) Sora/Riku
Moltar’s Analysis
Dante/Vergil
Round 1 - 82.59% vs. Sol/Ky
poor Guilty Gear
Sora/Riku
Round 1 - 60.21% vs. B.J./Adolf
poor...Hitler?
48 matches, 0 upsets, is that going to change today?
Dante/Sora would be a debated match 1v1, so it’s no surprise to see this match get a lot of talk. Sora has looked stronger than Dante for a while, but 2010 was a bad year for KH. Sora lost to Bowser in a night match, and Riku lost to Falcon. Dante didn’t look too good either, losing in a close match with Ryu. Still, it seems that KH characters might have fallen hard enough to make Dante a real threat to win.
I think fans of both series respect these rivalries, so I’m not seeing any real advantage to either side there. Sora/Riku looks to be the stronger pair, as most would agree that Riku is stronger than Vergil. Dante/Vergil looked great in Round 1, but Sol/Ky is bottom of the barrel fodder, so you can’t take too much from it about the strength of the sons of Sparda. Sora/Riku...yeah, they faced a joke entrant and underperformed. Without the rally, they would have done as expected, so I don’t think that’s too big of a black spot for them. Basically R1 didn’t really tell us that much about how this match goes down.
I think Sora/Riku win here for the same reason Cloud/Seph killed Kratos the other day. These are both primarily Sony franchises, and GameFAQs cares far more about KH than DMC (just look at how their games performed in the games contest). I expect this to transfer over to the characters and their rivalries. Plus Sora/Riku also has some extra appeal outside of that with their Nintendo handheld games.
So yeah Dante is gonna choke again.
Moltar’s Bracket: Sora/Riku
Moltar’s Prediction: Sora/Riku - 52%
Lopen’s Analysis
As many of you know, hell, as many of you probably knew before brackets were finalized, I've obviously got THE SONS OF SPARDA!? Here. What many of you might not know is why I've got them, besides the obvious answer of how much cooler they are. I'll go down what each side has in its favor, step by step.
Dante vs Vergil:
- Dante's stronger than Sora.
- Dante's (and to a much lesser extent, Vergil) had relevant releases this year-- not so with Sora. More reason to boost.
- The rivalry is better. At first I thought this mattered, but now I'm not so sure. However:
- Dante vs Vergil is a more “traditional” rivalry in that it's main character vs main villain. This I do think matters because I think the typical voter is as dumb as Bacon when it comes to realizing what a rivalry actually is.
- Dante vs Vergil looked better in r1. Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that the GG duo has the potential to be the weakest in the bracket, but 83% can't be denied. Meanwhile 60% on a fodder entrant (in a day match no less) isn't impressive, even if it does have joke appeal-- I think Hitler's joke power is a bit overstated as I'm sure find it offensive or at the very least unfunny.
Sora vs Riku:
- Riku > Vergil
- Dante chokes close matches against tough competition.
- More games for the rivalry...? This kinda hinges on either people not knowing who Nelo Angelo is (doubtful) or Chain of Memories being relevant (also doubtful)
Throw in that I personally think that Dante's choking has been due to a DMC2 pic most of the time which he doesn't (and can't) have here, and that I think Vergil's contest strength is underrated, and you've got a prime “upset” waiting to happen. Now, granted, some of these factors weren't evident during bracket
lockdown, but I personally don't think this match will be all that close now that we've seen round 1.