LogFAQs > #939328598

Round 1 Division 3 Day 6
Undertale 46.71%
Octopath Traveler 53.29%

Prediction Percentage 21.58%

The biggest upset of round 1, at least if you go by prediction percentage, sees previous Best Game Ever III winner lose to a Switch exclusive RPG that people had mixed feelings about. Unlike the other big upsets of round 1, this one also cost a lot of people 3 points. It was bigger in every way. There were even a very few people taking it further than that due to its previous result, but all experts knew Super Mario Odyssey was out of reach. A few people predicted Undertale to lose today, but it was the clear favorite with most people picking rather high percentages for it too. The ones that thought it would be anti-voted picked Shovel Knight to beat it in round 2 instead. What happened here is a mix of a bunch of things that was the perfect cocktail for getting Undertale out early.

The initial reaction was a huge number of anti-votes. Last contest we saw Amerterasu absolutely kill Draven in a contest that saw few blowouts. Draven was naturally weak, we knew that, but that result was out of proportions. Sans himself also looked very bad though not as bad. We have also seen various Poll of the Day questions show that we dont forget the contest invasions and are bitter ever after. Most people did not expect it to mean Undertale would lose to Octopath Traveler of all things, but that anti-votes came surprised no one.

In truth its probably not that bad. I dont doubt that there were anti-votes for a second, but they probably dont harm Undertale much worse than however much its boosted from the exposure last contest gave it. Weve seen bandwagons lasting over several contests in the past. L-Block is the key example of this. While using a 4-way match to beat Link was a one-time opportunity, L-Block was significantly stronger in future contests than it started out being in 2007. Undertale is not a joke entry in the same way, but a bunch of our regulars played it because of the attention it got. Undertale is a perfect game to take advantage of such since its cheap and short. This result looked extremely weird at the time, but Undertale ends up landing almost right where its supposed to. The adjusted x-stats have Shovel Knight barely beating it. Obviously, those have as much uncertainty as you get, but everything is in line here.

It then comes down to the severe underestimation of Octopath Traveler. As someone who expected Undertale to underperform and picked Shovel Knight to beat it, I did not expend Octopath Traveler to take enough advantage of it to win. The game was quite hyped before release. Being revealed at the first true Switch presentation, it had a lot of attention for its traditional RPG elements and graphics. It was aimed at people like us. However, while the game did fine, it wasnt spectacular by any means. I have not gotten around to play it myself yet, but the eight stories of the game made it repetitive and most characters werent very interesting, certainly not enough to compensate. I wonder how big it couldve been here if that was more popular.

Because Square RPG on a Nintendo console is among the best criteria you can have on this site. Chrono Trigger is the best example obviously, but there are others. Look at how well Bravely Default ends up looking, we didnt realize it yet, but this match had a lot to do with us just caring about Octopath. It would show next round. Tales of Symphonia is another good comparison. Its not a Square RPG, but a RPG on a Nintendo console that lacks big RPGs. Symphonia was almost unanimously liked, but the Gamecube wasnt too popular. The Switch is however, so Octopath had the perfect console to get exposure.

The part of the reason that people predicted big percentages was the huge indie hype round 1 had. It was thought that Undertale just didnt get to boost from it due to anti-votes, but it looks decent enough and couldve won a lot of round 1 matches. Its draw was rather unfortunate, we just hadnt realized yet. Its probably still a hindrance being an indie game. Not because of the fact that theyre indie games of course, just that indie games require word of mouth to become big, while something like Octopath is riding high on its developer name.

Finally, I usually dont express bitterness towards what happened in 2015, I mostly just express nothing. Im not vengeful and do not judge Undertale differently because of it. I played it because of the contest too! It was quite enjoyable. I will however use this match as an opportunity to laugh at all the many people claiming that their love for Undertale was endless and that they truly did believe it was the greatest game ever made instead of being the hot new flavor of the time. Seriously, its one of the biggest moments of what did we tell you?. I didnt mind using a flavor of the month kind of logic to vote in the contest, but the people saying so look so silly looking back. Almost none of them truly believed that, but just couldnt realize it when confronted about it back then. Undertale is not the phenomenon the internet allowed it to be briefly, its not an all time great and its not the best game ever made anywhere. Its just a pretty good and creative indie game with solid replay value. In that regard, its a shame it couldnt get a winnable match when so many indie games could, but it had its fun last time.

---

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.