LogFAQs > #910714141

Round 1 Dante vs. Cuphead

Moltars Analysis

Its contest time again, my favorite time of the...year? Or however often we have them these days.

Im pretty excited about this contest, as its been the first Character Battle in 5 years, and the first 1v1 24 hour match Character Battle in even longer. Theres plenty to talk about with all the new things that are being implemented for this contest, but well cross those bridges when we need to in later matches.

Speaking of matches, this bracket is looking very great on paper. There seem to be a good amount of debatable matches, including some Round 1 bouts that could end up being worth a lot of points if you pick the right winner in them. Theres a lot of newcomers, a lot of familiar faces, and not a lot of Noble Niners. Taking them out and putting them in a double elimination tournament at the end really allows for the rest of the field to breathe. This allows for known upper-midcarders and near-elites, like Dante, to show what they got against other strong opponents.

Since this is the first match and new people might be reading this for the first time, Ill explain why this blowout is going to happen. Dante has been a staple in these contests since 2002, and hes proven himself against other strong opponents if you look through past poll results. Cuphead, on the other hand, is new and failed to make a dent in the 2017 Game of the Year poll. If theres one thing about GameFAQs, its that it loves old things and too stubborn to love new things. A lot of the userbase here is the most fond of the 90s and 2000s, so characters from those times are usually going to beat out newer characters. Its very unlikely Cuphead has the strength to beat a proven entity like Dante, especially when crushing weak opponents is kinda his thing.

Moltars Bracket: Dante

Moltars Prediction: Dante 80%

transiences Analysis

Hey everyone! I don't really pay that much attention to gamefaqs these days but I can't miss our first 1v1 character battle in 8 years! (That's as long as it was from the last character battle to the first one in 2002. Feels weird, huh?) The only contest-related topic that I've read is Leonhart's contest analysis and I don't agree with most of that. I'm going in pretty much blind here. Expect some Lopen-tier divergence here since I haven't been exposed to the groupthink and I'm gonna try and keep it that way. Hopefully that makes my analyses more interesting this time around, or at least the numbers will be weird.

Our first character is.. Dante? This used to be reserved for Nintendo godslayers like Mario and Link. When did Dante get announced for Smash? (Does that even matter to these things anymore? I say no.) Cuphead is surprisingly popular for an indie thing that was created after video games died for gamefaqs (aka 2004-ish) and has a visually appealing and instantly recognizable design. It's probably about as strong as that DDLC fad everyone is banking on! But, Dante is also well-known for beating the hell out of low-tier characters before utterly folding to the hands of someone more popular. I don't see any reason for this to change. (And no, Leonhart, he isn't beating Ganondorf. I will troll you via Crew writeups for the next two months.)

transience's prediction: Dante with 78.44%

Leonharts Analysis

While Dante has a reputation as a guy who comes up short in big moments, he always looks good in round 1. Always. Seriously, look at all of his round 1 matches, and its him blowing the doors off of his opponents, whether its 1-on-1, multi-ways, or even the friggin Rivalry Rumble. I dont expect this one to be any different, although I think Cuphead can do pretty well for an indie game character. It did really well in the 2017 GOTY polls (for an indie game, naturally), so this is an unfortunate draw because maybe he couldve done better elsewhere.

Leonharts Vote: Dante

Leonharts Prediction: Dante with 73.50%
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Moltar Status: contest hype
Contest Analysis Crew Archives: http://thecrew.speedrunwiki.com/