LogFAQs > #939105650

Round 1 Division 1 Day 1
Hollow Knight 62.81%
Tales of Berseria 37.19%

Prediction Percentage 75.63%

The final match of the first day gave us a major blow to board 8 from casuals. This match was hotly debated on board 8 and when something doesnt even break 40%, thats on us. Hollow Knight was the guru favorite, so we werent completely off, but it was very evenly split. It also serves as our first indicator of indie games being legit, but that didnt really take off until the next day. While the gurus favored Hollow Knight, the oracles did not and those are the bigger contest nerds. With 61.82%, Black Turtle had by far the best oracle prediction and it lower than the actual result. He sure made us here for it too! Then look at the prediction percentage. This was an embarrassing start for us even if we made up for later on.

It was almost over right away, but there were a few minutes of hope for Berseria. It certainly had the board vote to the surprise of no one. A minute into the match, Berseria was doubling Hollow Knight, then suddenly Hollow Knight rose to heaven and was almost doubling Berseria at the freeze. The match had everyones attention, but the next update sealed the deal completely. Hollow Knight extended its lead above 200 votes and never looked back.

What happened then? Basically everything we could look at indicated the match being even, and in even matches picking the RPG is usually a good call. Hollow Knight lost big time in its two GotY polls. Tales of Berseria had no such polls to make predictions based on, which probably didnt speak well for it, but means to was untested. Kingdom Hearts III was snubbed from GotY too and that game had decent enough strength to win here. Velvet was in our latest contest and won a match with relative ease before getting almost 30% on Yoshi. Such strength could be enough today.

For a long time, Hollow Knight was believed to just be really good. A contender for best indie game, which quickly looked to be a decent title. Also, a crucial thing a lot of people didnt take into account when making this prediction was Hollow Knights Switch exposure coming later than its original release. I had Berseria today and expected it to be close thinking Hollow Knight was of the same strength as in its first GotY poll. Had I realized it wasnt initially on the Switch, I would have picked it. I would not have felt safe, but I would have picked it. Last contest proved being on Switch is a really good thing.

It seems clear now that the result had a lot more to do with Tales of Berseria simply being absurdly weak. Not that anyone thought it wasnt weak after today, but its even worse than anticipated. It looks straight up awful. The Tales series is extremely niche these days, being mostly only cared about in very specific RPG happy circles like board 8. Symphonia looks like it will always be the strongest of these despite being limited to the Gamecube outside of Japan for a long time, and the previous games contest showed us it isnt even the strongest RPG on the Gamecube as it lost to Paper Mario II. Not that there is any shame in that since Paper Mario II is perfect. A decade after Vesperia did slightly worse than anticipated, were taught to have no faith in this franchise in contests and we got a good early reminder that characters =/= games.

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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.