LogFAQs > #915092568

Match 47: Shulk vs. Sub-Zero

Shulk 11517
Sub-Zero 19251

Xenoblade Chronicles was originally meant to be Japan-only, but the rest of the world made a stink and the developers caved. It was hugely acclaimed and beloved, and...as a result, it was hard to get a copy at all. From what I can tell it really was interesting, but the battle mechanics were so awful that I eventually gave up on it. Even with the character you're directly controlling, your basic attacks are automatic, so it boils down to "dart in, hope that you actually get an attack off, dart away to avoid enemy attacks. Then somehow manage to build up your special meter because the bosses aren't actually vulnerable to anything other than the specials that are really hard to pull off." Xenoblade is the one entry in the Xeno series that has yet to do anything in contests, with Xenogears having once managed to beat a Pokmon game in a Games Contest (seriously, huh?) and KOS-MOS being something resembling a reliable midcarder. The game itself was a 3-seed in 2015 and got upset by Donkey Kong Country 2, which was by no means the only reason that I was the only one to get all eight Round 1 matches in Division 6 correct (three of them had Guru prediction percentages inside of 60-40, with the slight favorites only going 2-1), but was definitely the biggest deterrent.

Sub-Zero has a history of pulling seeding upsets, so this was a pretty easy pick. The casuals weren't terribly fooled, either, with Subby coming just shy of a 2-1 advantage in brackets.

Match 48: Ren "Joker" Amamiya vs. Claire Redfield

Joker 14278
Claire 16480

This was our second accreditation controversy, and the one that actually meant something. The name "Ren Amamiya" comes from the anime, not the game itself; like Yu Narukami when Persona 4 first came out and all of the SMT protagonists before him, the P5 protagonist was not initially given a "canon name". (Yu's canon name was eventually established by spinoffs.) As such, failing to credit him as Joker--especially in combination with an unmasked match pic--was tantamount to sabotage. I picked Joker in my bracket, but had Claire in my Oracle when it was initially believed that the single-word accreditation in the match would be "Ren". Turns out, I shouldn't have wavered on that when Allen changed it to what it should have been all along. So was this a case of old > new, or merely DAF? (Oh, come on, you know full well you're not looking at what she's got going on in the front. The picsmiths certainly weren't in 2013.)

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/board8/images/f/f4/5204.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170323064512

At any rate, this represents Claire's first contest win, which is all kinds of hilarious because the 2002 X-Stats say she could have reached Round 3 if she hadn't been horribly screwed by bracket placement. She finished 13th, breaking 30%, in the Raw X-Stats, following a fairly close (at least by 2002 standards) loss to Tidus of all people. Then she disappeared until the Female Bracket in 2006, where she lost to Kairi. And after that she didn't return until that 2013 match that I linked the match pic from, where she literally has to deal with booty SFF.

Joker was later announced as a DLC character for Smash Ultimate, making everyone wonder if he'd have won the match had that happened earlier. He might have, but I feel like Claire could've still gotten by.
---

Also known as Cyberchao X.