Board 8 > Leonhart Analyzes the Bracket!

(+) Yeah! (+)

itt crew writeup spoilers
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Leon holding out on that Joker match

You're killing me man
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UltimaterializerX posted...

I'll be SHOCKED if Ryu wins that match.

I'd be shocked if Simon Belmont suddenly became a strong midcarder. Being announced in Smash doesn't do that for people anymore.

I mean he can still beat Hayabusa because you never know with that guy but it won't be because of a Smash boost.
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MasterMoltar posted...

itt crew writeup spoilers

'whoops'

I'll probably change my mind on at least a few of these by the time the bracket closes down anyway.

plus I've actually got to figure out percentages for these matches so I can win the secondary Crew challenge yet again despite being awful at the Oracle overall
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I have no idea why Ryu Hayabusa does well in these things. Or is the Nintendo bias on this site that bad that him being on the NES originally boosts him loads? Everything that probably should give him an advantage is cancelled out by Simon. Both started life on the same system and thanks to Smash Simon is suddenly in the spotlight again. All Ryu has going for him at the moment is DOA and we all know how popular that series is these days.
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Ninjas r kewl
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(3) Auron
(14) Lucina

This one seems pretty straightforward. Auron's always been on a near elite level. Even if he's dropped some, it won't be by enough for Lucina to win this. This is the easiest match in this division.

Winner: Auron
Odds: 100%

(6) Magus
(11) Vincent Valentine

Expert trolling from SBAllen setting this match up. Now for some amateur trolling from me: Vincent could win this even with his Turks pic...! Seriously though, as bad as Vincent looked in 2013, Magus still looked worse. Give me KOS-MOS over Otacon any day, and I honestly do wonder if Magus could even keep it as close to Phoenix as sabotaged Vincent did. It would be quite a monumental fall from grace for Vincent to lose this because he would have actually fallen from the heights we used to think Magus was at and never truly was. The one thing that would keep me from being 100% certain on that is CT's performance in 2015. The mantra "characters =/= games" still holds true, but could Crono, Frog, and Magus have received at least a little benefit from that? Of course, FFVII looked pretty good in 2015, too. Not as good as CT, but still looking like it could easily beat anything aside from OoT and maybe CT.

Winner: Vincent
Odds: 85%

(7) Shulk
(10) Sub-Zero

Sub-Zero is perpetually undervalued by Board 8. He's been a good midcarder in every appearance. I feel like Shulk is going to be one of those sexy upset picks a lot of people take because of Smash and because Xenoblade is probably more popular in general now than it was in 2013. I don't think it'll be enough though. MK9 and MK10 will be enough to keep Sub-Zero from fading into irrelevance around here (although I think he's iconic enough like Ryu that he'll be pretty stable regardless), so I think he'll win this one pretty easily. If you think Shulk could beat Tidus now, then this upset might be worth taking. If not, I'd stay away.

Winner: Sub-Zero
Odds: 90%

(2) Ren Amamiya
(15) Claire Redfield

Here's my biggest fear with Joker: That name. I don't know how many Persona 5 fans even know that's his official name. He had him listed as "Ren Amamiya/Joker" in the auto-fill form, but he's dropped it in the actual bracket, so that concerns me. Another concern is the picture. If he has the school uniform look instead of his Phantom Thieves look in a match pic, I think that'll hurt him, too. Appropriately enough, that makes Joker a bit of a wild card here. I think Persona 5 is legitimately popular here, too. It's done well in just about every poll it's been in so far, so I think Joker could be a decent low midcarder, which is probably around where Claire is. Claire has never been anything special here, as evidenced by the fact that she's never won a match and she lost to friggin' Kairi in 2006. But Joker's a bit unpredictable because we don't know what he's going to look like when the match rolls around, so this could be as good of a chance as any for her to finally win. I think at max potential, Joker will win comfortably, but the chances at an upset is real.

Winner: Joker
Odds: 60%
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shane15 posted...

I have no idea why Ryu Hayabusa does well in these things. Or is the Nintendo bias on this site that bad that him being on the NES originally boosts him loads? Everything that probably should give him an advantage is cancelled out by Simon. Both started life on the same system and thanks to Smash Simon is suddenly in the spotlight again. All Ryu has going for him at the moment is DOA and we all know how popular that series is these days.

Hayabusa has done horrendously every time he's had a NES Ninja Gaiden sprite. It's almost as bad as Snake's sprite pics, so I don't think it's that!

It's more along the lines of what Zen said.
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Yeah, Id wager Hayabusa does well because hes a ninja. Lots of people like ninjas. If the TMNT ever got in Id take them pretty far

So according to this most of my bracket is going to be wrong, but I always do worse when I change.

You never know what will be rallied.
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Predicting rallies is a futile effort imo.

I remember when everyone kept talking about Hearthstone only for Undertale to be the one that blew everything.

For all I know there's some hidden Cuphead community waiting to drop the flames of buttdevastation onto the bracket.

I'm just making a regular bracket, with maybe one or two meme-based upsets, and hoping everyone fails to predict the rallies so I get eliminated last in the Guru.

LeonhartFour posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

I'll be SHOCKED if Ryu wins that match.

I'd be shocked if Simon Belmont suddenly became a strong midcarder. Being announced in Smash doesn't do that for people anymore.

I mean he can still beat Hayabusa because you never know with that guy but it won't be because of a Smash boost.

We havent had a contest to test Smash announcements since what, Snake in Brawl?
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2008 was the year of the Brawl Deboost man

people got everything Smash related they could possibly get in and most of them flopped
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UItimaterializer posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

I'll be SHOCKED if Ryu wins that match.

I'd be shocked if Simon Belmont suddenly became a strong midcarder. Being announced in Smash doesn't do that for people anymore.

I mean he can still beat Hayabusa because you never know with that guy but it won't be because of a Smash boost.

We havent had a contest to test Smash announcements since what, Snake in Brawl?

Sonic in Brawl and Mega Man in Smash 4 also happened in 07 and 13 respectively
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Snake is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to Smash. There will never be anything like that ever again. Even Sonic's boost from being announced in Brawl was temporary because he lost to Auron and Kirby in 2008.
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Shull being fed to Sub-Zero makes me sad.

Joker is going to tank if hes not named Joker. Only time getting an anime adaptation will have weakened a character!
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LeonhartFour posted...

I'd be shocked if Simon Belmont suddenly became a strong midcarder.

doesnt have to if ryu sucks now!
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Jokers gonna lose in R1 regardless anyways isnt he?

Claire's got RE2 hype!

That has to be the only reason she even made it back.
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Joker with his Phantom Thieves outfit and having "Joker" listed as his name can totally win that match tbqh.

If only Ren is listed and it's his casual clothes or something and not even the school uniform he's gonna look so bad.
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I mean for reference Chie and Yu couldnt even beat Jak or Shadow the Hedgehog. I dont think Joker has a chance in hell against Claire

This is one of those matches when I want to pick the Persona dude because the internet is clearly in love with the Persona but then I remember gameFAQs =/= internet.

Is Persona popular in this site

I have Claire > Joker in bracket at the moment.
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ZeldaTPLink posted...

Is Persona popular in this site

<searches for Persona in the main page>

Godanmit it has a living board. And more than 4 faqs.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Is Persona popular in this site

P5 won PS4 2017 GotY pretty comfortably over Horizon and Automata. It then placed second in the overall GotY to BotW. It got doubled by it, but it was BotW: 49%, P5: 25%, 3rd Place (Cuphead): 8%.
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Persona has been growing in popularity, but Im not even sure it would beat Tales of yet on this site. Contest wise the best it has done is like P5 getting 2nd place for GotY 2017 I think and P4 like doing 35% on Twilight Princess or something

35% on TP isn't bad tbqh. I don't think any Tales game could pull that at least. >_>

Edit: I know Symphonia probably looks to be at about that indirectly through Paper Mario but eh.
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Sticking with Claire out of favoritism.

This thread got me to change some of my picks: namely Knuckles > Zidane, Kazuma > Bomberman, and something the heck else I can't remember off the top of my head. However, I'm sticking with Donkey Kong over Tidus - Tidus has consistently disappointed in contests for a while now while DK has had a resurgence this decade. If DK can kill Lightning that badly while sharing a poll with Falco, he might do BAD things to Tidus.

Sticking with Ryu Hayabusa over Simon Belmont because Simon was worth like what, 36% on Gordon Freeman last contest? If we assume that Gordon would have 55-45'd Ryu back in 2013 if they clashed (which seems pretty generous to Gordon), Ryu would still be worth about 60% on Simon. Is a Smash announcement really going to make THAT much of a difference?
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The GotY poll is pretty bad to use too. I mean megaton Zelda didnt even get 7,000 votes and had almost 50% and the rest of the games in the poll were pretty laughable for the most part. I mean P5 getting 2nd when the other games are like Fire Emblem Heroes, FFXII port and Cuphead and such isnt really that amazing. Really its the vote totals that are so bad its hard to tell if anything in recent years even looks good >_>

LeonhartFour posted...

Snake is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to Smash. There will never be anything like that ever again. Even Sonic's boost from being announced in Brawl was temporary because he lost to Auron and Kirby in 2008.

Don't forget Snake had MGS4 hype at the same time!

Then people decided the game sucked for some reason.

Oh yeah and didn't Spyro do better against Sephiroth than Chun-Li did against Tifa last contest? Spyro was a heck of a lot more impressive in any case.
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Well I think P5 would be a good bit stronger than P4 (even this board is split on that), and Joker also has considerably more appeal than Yu. Especially if Allen decides to put "Joker" as part of his name and he gets Phantom Thief pics.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any Tales game besides Symphonia has ever shown strength here.
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Division 7

(1) Luigi
(16) Miles Edgeworth

Weegi time! Poor Edgey. I mean, there are probably not very many characters in this thing he could beat anyway, but Luigi is gonna make him look bad. On the bright side, we can compare this performance to what Big Boss did on Edgeworth in 2010 and see how these two characters compare after their showdown in CBIX.

Winner: Luigi
Odds: 100%

(8) Frog
(9) Monokuma

I've already seen a lot of people afraid that we're going to get another Mithos situation with Monokuma here, but I don't think that's likely. If SBAllen has never played DR, he'll be confused by any pic other than the bear one, so that's all he'll allow. If he has played it, then he wouldn't allow anything other than the bear for spoiler reasons. All that to say that Frog's gonna beat down Monokuma regardless, so whatever.

Winner: Frog
Odds: 100%

(5) Master Chief
(12) Goro Majima

Not even Master Chief could lose this one, right? Right? I think this will be the weakest Chief we've seen since 2003 because the site is down on the Xbox in general and Halo is irrelevant now, to boot. We'll probably have a good laugh at how poorly Chief does like we did against Felix and CATS, but this would be a new low if he managed to lose this.

Winner: Master Chief
Odds: 100%

(4) Nathan Drake
(13) Miles "Tails" Prower

This is a tough one. Going through their matches with The Boss in 2007 and 2010, these two are probably pretty close in strength, or at least they were at one point. Maybe not though because The Boss has appeared to get stronger over the years. Drake's had UC4 since the last time we saw him in CBIX where he narrowly edged out Pac-Man. Tails has had Sonic Mania, but we don't know what that's worth. He's been in every contest except for 2006, and he still only has that one win over Viewtiful Joe to his credit. I don't think this is a Viewtiful Joe situation here, but what do I know? I picked Joe to win in 2004, too...! But I think if Drake can beat Pac-Man, he can beat Tails. I imagine there's not much of a strength difference between those two. Now that I think about it, I don't even know who I'd take there. I think this is a good upset to take if you're looking for one because we know Drake's a very low midcarder, so he's far from unbeatable here.

Winner: Drake
Odds: 65%

(3) Tifa Lockhart
(14) Geno

Now that Guybrush is out (and finally beat someone in a poll), I guess Geno is now that guy who gets in every year even though he really has no business being here. I love Super Mario RPG and it had a wild ride in 2015, but Geno's never been worth anything. He almost got doubled by Ness. Just let Geno go. It's sad seeing him get dominated every year.

Winner: Tifa
Odds: 100%

(6) GlaDOS
(11) Mewtwo

Alert: This will be the first of many times you will hear me say this. Mewtwo is a fraud. I don't buy his CBIX performance for a second. Maybe he finally turned the corner, but I doubt it. He was given a path that enabled him to overperform repeatedly (with a little help from some pic sabotage), so I wouldn't be surprised if he pulled a Charizard and came back down to earth this time. I honestly wouldn't be 100% shocked if he lost this match. GlaDOS was really good in CBIX. She beat Kefka, which didn't used to be worth bragging about, but suddenly, it is! Now it's possible that GlaDOS may fade a little bit as we get further and further away from Portal's heyday. The first game looked really bad in 2015, although Portal 2 did surprisingly well, so I don't know what to make of that. All that to say that I don't think GlaDOS wins, but she might pull a Midna and strike some fear into Mewtwo's heart here. I'd really love to pull the trigger here, but I won't.

Winner: Mewtwo
Odds: 75%
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Symphonia is the strongest here yeah. Id take Lloyd to clobber Joker, Yu and Chie though

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Is Persona popular in this site

Is Resident Evil?

Seriously, no one gives a shit about any game in that series since 4. Shame because 7 is good, but that series has ridiculous hate right now.

Persona fans are also completely insane. In any close match, they got this.
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I picked MMX to win the next match without much hesitation, I don't trust Mewtwo either.
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swordz9 posted...

The GotY poll is pretty bad to use too. I mean megaton Zelda didnt even get 7,000 votes and had almost 50% and the rest of the games in the poll were pretty laughable for the most part. I mean P5 getting 2nd when the other games are like Fire Emblem Heroes, FFXII port and Cuphead and such isnt really that amazing. Really its the vote totals that are so bad its hard to tell if anything in recent years even looks good >_>

Avoiding the doubling against BotW (which I'd already take over Twilight Princess right now) is really good, I think.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Don't forget Snake had MGS4 hype at the same time!

Then people decided the game sucked for some reason.

And yet Snake has managed to maintain that popularity and perhaps get even stronger. He's the exception to the rule when it comes to Smash boosts.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Oh yeah and didn't Spyro do better against Sephiroth than Chun-Li did against Tifa last contest? Spyro was a heck of a lot more impressive in any case.

Don't take Sephiroth matches against weak characters seriously. Dude is an anti-vote magnet.

Also, I've thought for a long time that Tifa overperforms against other female characters (for obvious reasons). Tifa made Chunners look way weaker than she ever has, so I don't know that I find that result totally credible either.
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Can we work Claire Redfield's butt into a match picture?
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swordz9 posted...

Symphonia is the strongest here yeah. Id take Lloyd to clobber Joker, Yu and Chie though

I mean Lloyd is high fodder but Kratos barely beat a chocobo from FFV

Again, P5 will be stronger than P4 is here, and it's already pretty decent. Of course, Joker has the same problem that Narukami had: Not everyone knows that name.

But I have zero question Joker would clobber Yu or Chie, too, even without SFF.
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Remember that amazing 4 pack with TWEWY,P4,Dead Rising and another game that escapes me?
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spooky96 posted...

I picked MMX to win the next match without much hesitation, I don't trust Mewtwo either.

I thought this about Pokemon/Mario 3. Pokemon is just a different animal now.
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shane15 posted...

Remember that amazing 4 pack with TWEWY,P4,Dead Rising and another game that escapes me?

That would be Braid.
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I picked R/B/Y to go to the finals in 2015.

Mewtwo is a fraud.
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Sweet topic tag
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LeonhartFour posted...

shane15 posted...

Remember that amazing 4 pack with TWEWY,P4,Dead Rising and another game that escapes me?

That would be Braid.

Yeah that was it.
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I dunno. Yakuza seems kinda big to me these days. Maybe not on GameFAQs but it's up against Halo. I wouldn't give Masterchief 100% Odds
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And it's at this point I just now realized that two of my best gals are up against each other in the first round.

Aqua or Quiet... I can't choose ;_;
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Eh, I'd give Frog a 95% chance over Monokuma, because I still remember how Danganronpa won that Honest Trailers contest on Youtube last year. Different site, different demographic, I know. I'm just saying, don't underestimate the power of obsessive fanbases.
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@LeonhartFour I have archived all your posts up until this point in my Anal Archive thread:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/184626-traffic-jam/76917465?page=1#84
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shane15 posted...

Remember that amazing 4 pack with TWEWY,P4,Dead Rising and another game that escapes me?

Yeah, P4 was pretty bad a decade ago.

Then it got Golden and a billion spinoffs and I guess it's okay now
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