LogFAQs > #940316921

Round 3 Division 4 Day 28
Xenoblade Chronicles 59.64%
Fire Emblem: Three Houses 40.36%

Prediction Percentage 16.7%

Only the people insisting on sticking to their bracket, or the people having a lot of faith in a specific type of Nintendo hierarchy thought Fire Emblem: Three Houses still stood a chance in this match. The board 8 favorite to make top 8 lost big time today and mass eliminated gurus. Despite Xenoblade Chronicles looking vastly superior for two straight rounds, oracles still thought it would win by significantly less. Xenoblade went from just being praised and given a chance to go far to people now supporting the idea of it actually being a top 8 game here and not just being fortunate to get there because of being in an easy division. That claim is also helped by Xenoblade being a board 8 darling, but this really did seem like a performance of that caliber.

Its hard to judge. This match could very easily have some SFF influencing the result, but while we have a lot of data on how some of the biggest Nintendo series, Zelda, Mario, Smash and Metroid, affect each other, we have nothing when it comes to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Pokemon seemingly not being hurt by Nintendo SFF as much proves that its not necessarily a hierarchy question. The easiest way to compare these two is exactly what made Three Houses the overwhelming board favorite to begin with. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening shared an opponent in 2015 and lost by basically the same amount. Three Houses was expected to be a good bit stronger than Awakening as it was the bigger release and the console game.

Im having my doubts about that though. Awakening was a long-awaited breakthrough for the franchise and saved it certain death and it came out in what was arguably the biggest year of the 3DS. Three Houses however did not have that savoir role. Instead it got a villains role by providing a character as the final character of the first Smash Ultimate fighters pass which otherwise consisted of only third-party stuff. A blue haired swordsman on top of it. I dont really think theres much of a difference in strength between Awakening and Three Houses, and Im not even sure Three Houses is the stronger one. If you think it is, its definitely not a belief you should think is certain.

Theres simply a limit of how much I think Xenoblade can have boosted as well. It had its Smash exposure and the definite edition was still on the horizon. Time and a bit more exposure could definitely help the game, I absolutely think its stronger and I really love that it is, but there has to be a limit. I believe it had some good opponents in the first three rounds to look good against. It would go to the division finals as the major favorite.

Three Houses was probably SFFd a bit, but most of all we just overestimated it a lot this contest. Its popular opinion that Fire Emblem is the turd of the contest, but they lost to two of the games that boosted the absolute most between contests and when we look at the end of the contest, Awakening doesnt look particularly worse and Three Houses just isnt as much stronger than it as we thought it would be.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.