LogFAQs > #936973470

Match 41: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 vs. Heavy Rain

Persona 5 19455
Heavy Rain 5395

So of course, as I so frequently do, I immediately followed up my colossal blunder with an outright win. Only went over by 0.02%, and unlike some of my previous wins where I just had the high/low pick on a match we all messed up, there was some tight competition. In fact, the Oracle consensus was only 0.08% off from what actually happened--the top scores were the ones closest to the median!

Also, despite having literally filled out a bracket, it was at the very least when I was making Oracle predictions and possibly even on the match day itself when I went "wait, how is Heavy Rain in this contest? Didn't that game come out in like 2008 or something?" Nope, but I understand my confusion. Exact years for things in the past often elude me, so I probably remembered seeing ads for it on TV in my college dorm room and figured "yeah, that's late 2000s"; it actually came out in February of 2010 for the Playstation 3. It was then ported to the PS4 in 2016...and to Windows in 2019. So, yeah, recent rerelease, makes sense that it somehow managed to squeak out a bid. Got crushed, of course, because Persona is mainstream now even if SMT as a whole still isn't.

Match 42: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag vs. Sid Meier's Civilization V

AC IV 14026
Civ V 10824

We were just two days removed from seeing Assassin's Creed Odyssey get quintupled by Witcher 3, and the original Assassin's Creed had needed the vote-ins just to make the first GotD while Assassin's Creed II was the series' lone representative in 2015 and it was a 16-seed. All indications were that the series was toast. And yet, we still believed in it here, for the simple reason that Civilization has always been absolute garbage here. Civ V itself had appeared in 2015 and got doubled by Dark Souls in round 1; Civ IV made it into the first GotD and lost a close match with Persona 3 where it was actually favored roughly 57-43 by both Gurus and casuals; the series as a whole managed to just narrowly clear 10% in the opening match of the 2006 series contest against The Legend of Zelda; and in the series' lone failure to come in dead last in a contest poll, the first game in the series beat out Castlevania III for third place by almost 1000 votes while still coming nearly 28000 votes shy of second place Street Fighter II (which was itself nearly 10000 votes out of first). The Persona 3-Civ IV match might've been sticking in Gurus heads, because honestly, neither 47.65% on P3 nor 33.3% on Dark Souls feel like awful results. But the fact that it lost as a favorite, even though with hindsight it doesn't feel like it should have been a favorite, leaves you with a "won't get fooled again" mentality. This is exactly why Kefka's been burning us over and over with his nonsensical newfound strength. But with AC also declining, this was far from consensus; over 25% of Gurus had Civ V, and about 28% of Oracle predictions were for it. The casuals were similarly conflicted but clearly leaning in the correct direction; 63.47% of brackets had this right, which feels about right for a match that had a clear favorite but was somewhat debatable.

Match 43: Sonic Mania vs. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA

Sonic Mania 15592
Ys VIII 9258

Sonic's woes have been talked about at length for many contests, so a blowout win felt unlikely even though Mania was the return to the series' roots that the fans had long been clamoring for and Ys has always been a fairly niche RPG series. Then again, it's still an RPG series, and a Japanese one at that, so, you know, Flowchart.

Or maybe not. In fact, out of 57 Oracle predictions, a grand total of one predicted Sonic Mania to win with a percentage lower than it actually did, though it did so by a wide enough margin to not even get a top 5 out of it. Was it Sonic antivotes or just RPGFAQs up to its usual shenanigans? We'd hopefully find out next round, since its next opponent would be an indie game regardless of who won the next match!

Match 44: Super Meat Boy vs. Slay the Spire

Super Meat Boy 17138
Slay the Spire 7713

Super Meat Boy was the Guru nomination, which it rode to a 4-seed. Meat Boy had been in the contest before, once solo and once in *sigh* Rivalry Rumble. The 2013 solo outing is nothing to speak of--he came in third to Mr. Game & Watch and Lee Everett from The Walking Dead--but the ability to not get doubled by a Final Fantasy hero/main villain pair, even if it was only Zidane/Kuja, is actually kind of impressive. Though it could just be the silly character design at work. Giving it a fellow indie game to beat was a nice gesture by Allen, since so many Guru noms just fall flat immediately. But would it be beloved enough to get past an established icon like Sonic the Hedgehog?

...My bracket certainly hopes so! (seriously what was I thinking)

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Also known as Cyberchao X.