LogFAQs > #986040904

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2087-devil-division-round-1-sarah-kerrigan-vs-vincent-valentine

After Starcraft's success in the original Games Contest, the board wanted to get a character into the next Character Battle, and they apparently settled on...carriers. This was such a silly idea that CJayC even made a post about how it obviously wasn't eligible because it's not a character (although I guess maybe Allen would've been fine with it). As such, when the first Nomination Rally Tournament rolled around, Kerrigan got a lot of momentum going and eventually won one of the five slots.

Vincent didn't get one of the five slots, losing out to Tifa for the FFVII spot. However, he still had a great deal of board support and made it in anyway. Opinions on Vincent's strength varied greatly. Some thought he'd be the third most popular FFVII character. Others thought he'd flop because he's optional (for some reason, my mind goes to transience as the main proponent of this theory). The counterargument to that was simple: Vincent was one of the main reasons people came to GameFAQs because they were trying to figure out how to recruit him.

Vincent was the heavy favorite in terms of picks, but the Oracle average was just under 60% for him. He had 72% at the freeze, and we were all willing to chalk it up to Kerrigan just being a huge flop. But then he kept going up, and up, and up, eventually falling just shy of a quadrupling. I even remember someone trying to rally for Kerrigan on battle.net and it backfiring because the people there loved Vincent, too.

To say the board went nuts over this would be an understatement. There were nonstop arguments over how strong Vincent was up until his match with Dante, and that's no exaggeration. Some people thought he was getting proxy strength from Cloud and Seph not being in the field (which was further reinforced by Tifa's performance, which we'll get to soon). Either way, there was no denying that Vincent would be a force to be reckoned with in this division now, even for the presumptive favorite, Magus.

That is, until...