LogFAQs > #937900379

Match 84: Nioh vs. God of War

Nioh 7151
God of War 20845

Without even meaning to, I ended up bringing up a topic of discussion with my Guest Analysis of this match for the Crew: Can Japanese and Western games SFF each other? I honestly don't see why they shouldn't, but apparently people think that they don't overlap that much. I mean, this isn't exactly the best match for it since Nioh's an ARPG and God of War is a straight-up hack-and-slash AAG, but I feel like unless you're loyal to a specific company, you wouldn't be any less likely to be a fan of other games from the same genre just because they were developed on the other side of the Pacific. In a weird way, even those same people realized it in other genres, when they figured that a Mario game would be harder for "the indies" to rally against. A lot of those indies are Western in origin, you know! But for some reason, platformers are apparently the only thing that's allowed to SFF across the ocean.

(Though I have to admit I haven't played that many WRPGs, if any. I've had this copy of Skyrim sitting around for years since I got it second-hand for practically nothing and I've never actually installed it because I wanted to stream my blind playthrough and there have been other things higher on my streaming priority list. I need to play it! Maybe when this contest is over, since Skyrim's obviously going to go really far.)

Match 85: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 vs. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

P5 18600
AC4 7575

Well, Persona's definitely in the mainstream now. 73.69% of brackets got this right, and ACIV was the favorite in its R1 match. I guess Assassin's Creed just isn't that well respected any more? I seem to remember that the other Assassin's Creed game in this bracket got slaughtered and everyone knew that it would. Who was that against, again? ...Oh, of course. The Witcher 3. Really looking more and more like a contender for the title with every passing match!

Match 86: Sonic Mania vs. Super Meat Boy

Sonic Mania 16972
Super Meat Boy 9202

So apparently Sonic's worth something again? This was a great showing, and a lot of people saw it coming; while the prediction percentage was under 50%, it's close enough to be a clear plurality. It seems like a lot of the disappointments of the past decade figured it out at the end. Ah, well, at least the Guru Nomination made it to Round 2.

Match 87: Portal 2 vs. Kingdom Hearts III

Portal 2 16322
Kingdom Hearts III 9850

Nothing to talk about here; over half the brackets got this right and the match wasn't even close. RPGFAQs strikes again...

...wait, Portal 2 was the winner? Not Kingdom Hearts III? And people expected this? Fuck, man, I didn't even remotely consider this one, and their respective Round 1 results did nothing to sway me one way or the other. I guess KH3 did have the worse result, even with the slightly better percentage, because its opponent was a lot less recognizable than Portal 2's, but come on. Portal 2 got upset in Round 1 in 2015 (which I called correctly) and Wheatley lost to Crash Bandicoot in Round 1 in 2013 (not so much so). 2015 X-Stats say Portal 2 gets 35.96% on KH1 and 34.04% on KH2. And that makes perfect sense because they're fucking Square Enix RPGs; hell, I think KH1 might technically be pre-merger Squaresoft. Yes, the endless spinoffs dragged the series down, but this is a numbered game. Kingdom Hearts III. This wasn't supposed to be a contest. It just...I keep wanting to say "I didn't even consider this upset possibility", because I can't wrap my head around the fact that Kingdom Hearts III was the upset pick! I honestly wouldn't have been surprised to see Persona 5 > Kingdom Hearts III as our "haw haw casuals" moment, because Persona still doesn't have the name recognition that Kingdom Hearts does. I'm pretty sure "the casuals" don't actually exist anymore, but still. Portal 2 was proven crap, and yet it's pretty much dead even with RDR1 in the 2015 X-Stats so we knew that RDR2 would be even less of a challenge, except actually we didn't know that at all because the idea of Portal 2 not weakening considerably since 2015 was also laughable.

You know what, Portal 2 was in Division 3, aka "the Undertale Division". Yes, it lost to Sonic 2 and Sonic 2 lost to Pokmon, but the exact X-Stat numbers on that would still be fishy because we were already prepping Pokmon to be our savior again, just like in 2013 with Mewtwo. Maybe Portal 1 can give us something "cleaner"? ...Goddamnit Portal 1 was fed to Melee in the first round. We had nothing. Nothing remotely reliable, aside from the characters bombing, and as we all know, Characters =/= Games. And we...oh. Forget "prepping to be our savior". RBYG-StH2 was the same day as UT-SMW! And Undertale's own rallies favor Pokmon there. We really had nothing. Except...

Portal (2015g) VS Kingdom Hearts 2 (2015g)

Portal has a strength of 24.72.
Kingdom Hearts 2 has a strength of 34.22.

Kingdom Hearts 2 wins with 63.88% of the vote!
A win of 16,900 with 60,875 total votes cast.

That one barely moves at all when switched to raw X-Stats; I suspect the fact that it moves at all is just due to rounding errors. Because Melee was perceived to have rallied in Round 2 against Pokmon GSC, and then in every round from Round 4 against Chrono Trigger until its defeat against Undertale. The two matches where it had not been perceived to have rallied were Round 1 against Portal...and Round 3 against Kingdom Hearts II. It's a clean comparison, even if it was through an entrant that had rallied.

Which begs the question: Why? Was Kingdom Hearts III that poorly received? There is no good reason for Portal 2 to have gotten stronger, since there are no other games in the series. Yet somehow, everyone just kind of knew that Portal 2 would win. Against probably the biggest Square RPG of the decade. What site am I even on anymore?

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Also known as Cyberchao X.