Board 8 > ~~ Ctes' Post-Contest Analysis (PCA) ~~

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Round 3 Division 3 Day 27
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 63.61%
Marvels Spider-Man 36.39%

Prediction Percentage 52.13%

This match seemed to be the main reason why Super Mario Odyssey > Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became such a popular upset pick in second chance brackets despite almost everyone picking Ultimate without thinking twice about it beforehand. The reason is that people had such a hard time believing Marvels Spider-Man to have any strength, especially after it meant Minecraft would have to have strength itself.

Ultimate would go into the division finals as the favorite, by not nearly as big a favorite as it was before the contest began. The popular opinion was that Super Mario Odyssey looked better every single round. Most people knew it wouldnt come down to that however and its probably why Ultimate still remained the favorite. That match would ultimately come down to preferences within the Nintendo fanbase.

In the end we also learned Marvels Spider-Man is legit! Just like the Batman games. I honestly dont understand why that was so hard to accept. It was very successful and well-liked. It might not be the favorite games of a lot of people but that doesnt mean it cant be strong. It looked good enough in the Game of the Year polls, beating Dragon Quest XI and Red Dead Redemption 2 while losing to God of War. Sure, such a poll is not the best indicator, but a lot of the same people took God of Wars result that year at face value. It might have gotten a 1v1 result, but its pretty clear Spider-Man validated what it did then. Unfortunately, it had a very predictable bracket path, but it could have damaged good brackets if placed elsewhere. Its like that with a lot of games.

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Round 3 Division 3 Day 27
Shovel Knight 27.19%
Super Mario Odyssey 73.81%

Prediction Percentage 51.49%

This is one of the most boring matches in the contest as Super Mario Odyssey was always going to win very easily and the match cant even be used as a good indicator for anything because of possible overlap between these two games that may or may not be there. Shovel Knight gets the honor of being the only indie game to get this far in the contest, which is something. Its not necessarily the strongest, most people seem to think that honor goes to Cuphead or Stardew Valley. Shovel Knight would end up below several layers of SFF, so its hard to determine.

One interesting this about this match is the lack of a rally. Everyone remembers when the creators of Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games, tweeted about the match against Octopath Traveler making Shovel Knight win a battle of rallies. The comments to that tweet pointed out that Super Mario Odyssey was ahead and correctly recognized that it would be a tough match. Yacht Club Games responded to that saying We cant give up! Not even if pitted against our beloved mustachioed main man!. They made it pretty clear they were going to attempt once more.

Did anyone expect it make the match interesting? No, of course not. The gap was way too big and the affect of the tweet had already slowed down a good bit by the end of the previous match despite coming up with an hour to go. I did however expect them to try and cut off a significant chunk of percentage and finished somewhere between 30% and 40%. They seemed dedicated, but nope, they never tweeted about the match. I dont know if they simply forgot, it would be my best bet. No one cared to remind them because why would we, it wouldnt matter. Even if it had made no difference, it sure was anticlimactic.

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Also SK the only indie game to reach Round 3. Plus even with a rally it finishes like 33% at maximum, you can't rally against Mario.

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Round 3 Division 4 Day 28
Grand Theft Auto V 48.93%
Persona 4 Golden 51.07%

Prediction Percentage 14.01%

This match would be the final match of the contest where the consensus of what game won going into the match would not be the correct one. Grand Theft Auto V was expected to win this match because Red Dead Redemption had almost beaten Persona 4 Golden and GTAV was expected to be better. Others were thinking that they wouldnt perform too differently indirectly against something like a Persona game and that Persona 4 Golden would win again because of it, but GTAV was the popular pick today.

The match had some similar trends to the previous edition of Persona 4 Golden takes on a Rockstar game. Persona would win the board vote, but then not really get very far. GTAV actually did better than Red Dead Redemption did at that point, probably because it had more bracket votes. Persona was 45 votes ahead and the freeze and the match stood still for a couple of updates after that, then Persona took off, and it was a good bit faster than it was against Red Dead Redemption, indicating that perhaps GTAV won the board vote, at least relative to the rest of the match.

Persona 4 took off a lot faster than the first time once it got going, though GTAV would cut and stall a bit. Once Persona 4 had neared in on about 400 votes, GTAV would make a fine comeback attempt by cutting a bit more than 100 votes off in an hour, but it didnt go further than that and Persona 4 descended once more. The final attempt from GTAV came when had just passed the 600-vote lead. GTAV would stall for a while and then make a run for it with plenty of time to go. It managed to cut off about 200 votes this time, but it made less and less progress every hour and eventually time was running out and Persona 4 began gaining again and won by almost 600 votes, making GTAV lose by more than Red Dead Redemption did.

It was never truly exciting and despite the comeback hours, no one really doubted Persona 4 would win once the match was on. The last round taught us that. If it came down to it, Board 8 would definitely bail out Persona 4 once more. Not many believed it stood a chance in the division finals, though wed learn it absolutely did.

I am not doubting that Persona 4 was stronger in round 3 than round 2. It does not necessarily mean Persona 4 would have lost to GTAV in round 2, but I think a lot of us were too quick to just accept that Red Dead Redemption was the stronger Rockstar game. It had definitely caught a bandwagon in the next round, and I think it begun already here. Im not saying its impossible Red Dead Redemption is the stronger one, but I dont think their matches against a game that clearly boosted by beating them settles any debate, and theres just more reason to think GTAV is the stronger game. Its the bigger franchise even on this site, and it was significantly stronger last time too.

Well probably never know for sure, because this is the best chance well ever have of two Rockstar games meeting, and hey, this is the furthest a Grand Theft Auto game has ever gone in a contest, although Tommy Vercetti has also managed round 3 before, which was top 16 and not top 32 because of a smaller field. Its the first #1 seed to fall and the only one that doesnt fall to the others, but that hardly makes it a flop in my opinion. GTAV might have been the favorite to the division finals, but thats because people didnt expect Persona 4 Golden to be a perfect Persona 4 proxy and thought it would be hurt from being a Vita port of a 2008 game. Beating Cuphead so easily when a lot of people were scared it could drop then was what it needed to do to not embarrass itself relative to the site were on.

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I still can't believe that this is the first time ever than a GTA game has reached Round 3. Seriously. I mean I understand why new people don't come here since well everyone has played GTA games and almost everyone seems to like them but here? Yeah sure.

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Round 3 Division 4 Day 28
Xenoblade Chronicles 59.64%
Fire Emblem: Three Houses 40.36%

Prediction Percentage 16.7%

Only the people insisting on sticking to their bracket, or the people having a lot of faith in a specific type of Nintendo hierarchy thought Fire Emblem: Three Houses still stood a chance in this match. The board 8 favorite to make top 8 lost big time today and mass eliminated gurus. Despite Xenoblade Chronicles looking vastly superior for two straight rounds, oracles still thought it would win by significantly less. Xenoblade went from just being praised and given a chance to go far to people now supporting the idea of it actually being a top 8 game here and not just being fortunate to get there because of being in an easy division. That claim is also helped by Xenoblade being a board 8 darling, but this really did seem like a performance of that caliber.

Its hard to judge. This match could very easily have some SFF influencing the result, but while we have a lot of data on how some of the biggest Nintendo series, Zelda, Mario, Smash and Metroid, affect each other, we have nothing when it comes to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Pokemon seemingly not being hurt by Nintendo SFF as much proves that its not necessarily a hierarchy question. The easiest way to compare these two is exactly what made Three Houses the overwhelming board favorite to begin with. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening shared an opponent in 2015 and lost by basically the same amount. Three Houses was expected to be a good bit stronger than Awakening as it was the bigger release and the console game.

Im having my doubts about that though. Awakening was a long-awaited breakthrough for the franchise and saved it certain death and it came out in what was arguably the biggest year of the 3DS. Three Houses however did not have that savoir role. Instead it got a villains role by providing a character as the final character of the first Smash Ultimate fighters pass which otherwise consisted of only third-party stuff. A blue haired swordsman on top of it. I dont really think theres much of a difference in strength between Awakening and Three Houses, and Im not even sure Three Houses is the stronger one. If you think it is, its definitely not a belief you should think is certain.

Theres simply a limit of how much I think Xenoblade can have boosted as well. It had its Smash exposure and the definite edition was still on the horizon. Time and a bit more exposure could definitely help the game, I absolutely think its stronger and I really love that it is, but there has to be a limit. I believe it had some good opponents in the first three rounds to look good against. It would go to the division finals as the major favorite.

Three Houses was probably SFFd a bit, but most of all we just overestimated it a lot this contest. Its popular opinion that Fire Emblem is the turd of the contest, but they lost to two of the games that boosted the absolute most between contests and when we look at the end of the contest, Awakening doesnt look particularly worse and Three Houses just isnt as much stronger than it as we thought it would be.

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Round 3 Division 5 Day 29
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 60.60%
Super Mario Galaxy 2 39.40%

Prediction Percentage 65.39%

This is one of those matches where both games manage to look impressive magically. The Witcher 3 once again proved it was not going to have any trouble anytime soon. A few people feared a Nintendo game would run wild where they were kept out, similar to what Super Mario RPG did in 2015 and Galaxy 2 was an obvious candidate. It didnt get close. The Witcher 3 showed its mortality, but still broke 60% against a huge fan favorite game that is often depicted as the 3D Mario of best level design.

At the same time it was the first time it was down to earth, and its probably what kept people believing it could be upset by Persona 5 or Dark Souls, although it was probably more often than not that people just wanted to see it happen. Super Mario Galaxy 2 would need to have boosted since 2015 where it was fine but nothing spectacular, otherwise The Witcher 3 might be in trouble later on. Given how the first two rounds went, no one really doubted both boosted. Ironically it was right next to The Witcher 3 in the x-stats back then, which just proves how much stronger The Witcher 3 has become.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is criminally underrated in its seeding. In pure strength its most likely a #1 seed, the x-stats suggest this, even after adjustments. Its also even more unfortunate by not being placed in an eight pack it could upset out of. It would scare most #1 seeds more than this and outright beat some of them. It would beat every single #2 seed and #3 seed except most likely fellow Mario game Super Mario Odyssey. Marios punishment for once again being set up as a contest villain in 2018 was perhaps the most ridiculously unfair bracket placement of a franchise ever.

Regardless of that it makes me happy to see Super Mario Galaxy 2 get the respect it deserves when we look at contest stats in the end. Although it feels like a late 00s game, it came out in this decade and its my favorite Game of the Decade by a decent margin. It perfects 3D platformers and the few games of all time that I believe I like better are all really hard to compare to because theyre so different from it. I could spend a lot of time praising the game, but theres not much contest analysis in that.

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Round 3 Division 5 Day 29
Fallout: New Vegas 44.73%
God of War 55.27%

Prediction Percentage 48.88%

God of War was never going to lose this match, but Fallout: New Vegas wasnt the worst upset if you were desperate to find one. Fallout is traditionally a stronger series than God of War here. Judging from the Game of the Year polls however, the new God of War would be a good step above the others and its not like they were that bad. The first one did reasonably well in the first Game of the Decade. If would go to the division finals looking good enough to challenge a few division winner favorites, but The Witcher 3 had removed all hope of an upset.

This would have probably been closer if Bethesda didnt screw things up so badly in the latter half of the decade. New Vegas is by all means not the game to get screwed the most by that as the game was developed by Bethesda and made by a bunch of the same people working on Fallout 3, the series peak. It does however carry the name of a series that isnt exactly the most well liked in the eyes of people any longer. Fallout 4 wasnt too good and Fallout 76 flopped horribly. I dont think its a big enough difference to put God of War in danger, but the board vote indicates that it happened.

Its fun to think about whether or not therell be any Fallout in the next Game of the Decade. New Vegas is from 2010 and its the last one people truly enjoyed. The series is at a critical point at the moment and I doubt its the first thing Bethesda wants to fix. It might just be better to focus on Elder Scrolls and whatever else and new Ips before trying to follow up on Fallout again, if they ever should. Bethesda needs to regain some trust from the people before a new Fallout hits the market.

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Round 3 Division 6 Day 30
Persona 5 67.89%
Sonic Mania 32.11%

Prediction Percentage 63.69%

It was perfectly clear after this match what an awfully weak four-pack Sonic Mania came out of. The game clearly didnt belong in round 3. It did however serve the purpose of giving people hope that Persona 5 stood a chance to reach the semi-finals, which gave us some more fun in the latter half of the contest. Persona 5 had just the right opponents to look better than it possibly was in round 2 and 3 and it was second place in our GotY polls in 2017 on top of that, where everything looked to be stronger than expected. If its match in the division finals were ever in doubt, it definitely wasnt any longer.

Sonic Mania feels weird, honestly. If it wasnt a Sonic game, Im sure a lot of people would praise it a good bit more. Its a pretty fun game. I like to think of it is an equivalent to if Super Marios only good games post the 90s were New Super Mario Bros games. Theyd be enjoyed, but Mario overall wouldnt be the same because the newer games had nothing on the classic ones. Sonic Mania is probably stronger due to its name than it would have been without it. It would need to drop a lot to not reach this point, but Im sure it performed better because of Sonic still has an iconic status. I think its funny to think of what games our Noble Nine comes from and see where they are today, obviously not counting Smash Bros which features seven of them. A lot of them havent kept up the level, in fact only two of them has games as good as ever, but unlike most others, Sonic actually had a better Game of the Decade than the previous one where only Sonic Adventure 2 got in and somehow managed to lose to lose to Street Fighter IV. So hey, Sonic actually moves forward!

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Round 3 Division 6 Day 30
Portal 2 53.48%
Red Dead Redemption 2 46.52%

Prediction Percentage 23.57%

In what was a pretty good division half, Portal 2 managed to come out on top. Every match had the guru favorite winning, but you could make a decent argument for every game that won round 1 getting to the division finals. Portal was favored by only 50% of people, which is the most, but not that great in a chalky cookie cutter bracket like this one.

Portal 2 is one of the leftover games of the previous decade. It was released in 2011 of course, but I mean that if you tried to group games together by era, Portal 2 belongs with its predecessor in the previous decade. Portal not being very relevant any longer is one of the main reasons why as many people hesitated to pick it here. There was fine reason to think it was not at peak strength any longer. The Portal games performances in 2015 looked weaker than how the first one had performed previously and GLaDOS looked a good bit weaker in 2018 compared to 2013.

Then theres Red Dead Redemption 2, the upset most people went with today and clearly also the best one. The game released to universal appeal in 2018 and the franchise is probably at all time peak. If you look at the 2015 x-stats, the Portal games look no better than Red Dead Redemption. Yes, both Portal games were clouded by rallies from Melee and Undertale, but even so. It was reasonable enough to expect Portal to continue to decline and RDR2 to be stronger than the first one. You only needed one of the things to be a little bit true for the upset to look likely. In fact, Im sure more people would have picked RDR2 if the match had been more talked about. Most people probably looked at the match and thought it looked like something Portal would win on GameFAQs and didnt think more about it.

The match had a bit of early excitement. Portal 2 had the lead from the start but struggled to run away with it initially. People expected Portal 2 to have the bracket votes and its a big deal on board 8. On top of that, Rockstar games tend to not do so well with the board vote. The first Red Dead Redemption and GTAV had both made some decent comeback attempts later in the day, so maybe if RDR2 could keep it close early on, it stood a chance. It turned out Portal actually struggled the most initially and as end of the power hour drew near, it would take off and set the match in stone. Im guessing Red Dead Redemption actually had the most bracket votes, its likely only board 8 Portal 2 was the favorite on and even here it wasnt by that much.

Turns out Portal 2 didnt really decline or if it did, the Game of the Decade title kept it up again, perhaps even stronger than in 2015. Its been mentioned in Game of the Decade debates in a lot of places and perhaps that helped it out today. I still believe Red Dead Redemption 2 is stronger than the first game, it makes sense for it to be. The adjusted x-stats kept it below, but I disagree with some of the decisions regarding division 4. I think Xenoblade should have been adjusted down a bit and Persona 4s rallies and bandwagon effect certainly wasnt adjusted for as much as I believe it should. I hope and expect to see Red Dead Redemption 2 back again.

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Round 3 Division 7 Day 31
Dark Souls 63.29%
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 36.71%

Prediction Percentage 56.17%

This match had the honor of being our only repeat of the contest, which does not often happen, but then we had a Game of the Decade contest happening five years after the latest games contest instead of a year later like the first one did. As such it was not exactly exciting. Last time they met, Metal Gear Solid V was the favorite, but Dark Souls managed to pull off the upset in a 55-45 match. No one thought Dark Souls could drop it this time. Even if you didnt think Dark Souls boosted the slightest bit, there was no way Metal Gear Solid V would be even the slightest bit stronger. The best it could hope for was to not drop any further.

The difference is almost 8%. I expect most of it to be Dark Souls boosting. The Souldborne games have continued to grow in popularity, and more importantly, we had seen countless times by now that the title of the contest coupled with the forced voting helped certain games and Dark Souls is among the most defining games of the decade.

I dont expect Metal Gear Solid V to drop that much. It might sound weird, but the game was simply not as well received as the others in the franchise at any point. Nothing has actually happened since last games contest. Though its hard to imagine Metal Gear Solid V not dropping at least a little bit. Then franchise name helps it a bit, but it should grow weaker as time goes by.

I believe what happened with Kojima and Konami especially centering around Metal Gear is among the most unfortunate and frustrating things to happen to the gaming industry. Theres a good chance that all four of the first games would place in my top 20 games of all time. Theyre that great. There was plenty of reason to think Kojima could make more Metal Gear masterpieces if all that didnt happen. Even if they wouldnt all be A++ games, I hate to think of what could have been.

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Round 3 Division 7 Day 31
Batman: Arkham City 44.76%
The Last of Us 55.24%

Prediction Percentage 58.13%

Before the contest, The Last of Us winning the division final was one of the most popular upset picks. Its ironic how it came closer to not even getting there than actually pulling that off, though we were already expecting that after the previous round. If we look at the 2015 x-stats, The Last of Us actually won by more than it was supposed, so I think we had just forgotten about Batman: Arkham City before the contest. Of course, there are reasons to think that result would have changed but were plenty of times in this contest where we only looked at 2015 stats and didnt consider how things could have changed. In fact, picking The Last of Us to win the division final is a perfect example of that.

Its possible people thought The Last of Us would be consistent with a sequel coming right up, but thought Batman would fall off since its no longer as relevant. It turns out both superhero games this contest were pretty decent, however. They look to be close to equal indirectly, makes me wonder how a direct matchup would go. Well probably never find out.

The match started out being pretty intense. Bracket votes werent there today, perhaps because people had started to be out of prize contention or perhaps because they didnt think it would be needed. If you believed the early part to be bracket votes, The Last of Us was in even more trouble though. It was behind the whole freeze, basically. It was close, but Batman was ahead and The Last of Us couldnt quite take the lead. It did in the next update, but only by a mere three votes, it would quickly take off though. Despite a few stalls and cuts from Batman, TLoU never really looked back eventually winning the match with ease. What a board vote that way though, and I think its mostly Naughty Dog not being very popular any longer.

It should be noted that this match happened just before a lot of The Last of Us 2 was leaked to a massive internet outrage. I wonder how much that would have changed. There are quite different opinions on how much that damaged The Last of Us. I doubt myself that it would have changed more than 2500 votes, but it certainly would have given The Last of Us a bigger scare.

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Something to note: Ulti brought up in his topic how Batman/TLOU went more or less the way it was supposed to going off of the x-stats, and using that as a measure of how much TLOU dropped post-leak after its result the following round. I really object to this, since Arkham City and TLOU were in the same division in 2015 so it's possible they were both overrated (it was Chrono Trigger's division, and CT was given #1 in the adjusted stats by a pretty big margin).

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Or that they both dropped a bit in strength.

That's for the next round though!

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That too, yeah.

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Round 3 Division 8 Day 32
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 60.90%
Mario Kart 8 39.10%

Prediction Percentage 69.25%

This is the match that truly made Skyrim a big target and had people thinking it would be the weakest division winner in this half of the bracket, with a very few even thinking it could lose the next round. A group of us were defending Skyrims performance against Journey, but there certainly werent many people left defending Skyrim after today. I only remember myself and Lightning Strikes stepping up for Skyrim, though Im not saying there couldnt be more. People really couldnt find the reasons to believe Skyrim would still be in the elite.

Lets first put some numbers on the table. The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to get 76% in this match. Over 15% more than it got today. Mario Kart 8 was behind Super Mario 64 SFF back then, but they lost to the same game. Despite many thinking Skyrim disappointed against Journey in the previous contest, oracles overestimated it be roughly 2.5%. Skyrim did the same against Mario Kart 8 as The Witcher 3 did to Super Mario Galaxy 2, further darkening Skyrims chances of making the final. The 2015 stats also show Metal Gear Solid V well above Mario Kart 8 as well, so Skyrim looked a good deal worse than Dark Souls in the eyes of many too.

Now, its time to pull out the Skyrim defense force again. First of all, Mario Kart 8 is near the bottom of the x-stats because we didnt adjust for Mario Kart 8 at all. It drew Super Mario 64 and nothing was done about it. I think thats largely forgotten. Theyre both Mario games, that match is loaded with SFF. It could be 65-35 without it and it wouldnt surprise me. Against something completely different Mario Kart 8 gets its appreciation but against perhaps the most respected game in the franchise and the biggest 3D Mario by a good margin, the fanbase has a favorite.

Thats before we even consider how Mario Kart 8 has all the reason to boost significantly. Weve talked about before how I believe Marios strength is determined partly by the current status of Nintendo. In 2015, Mario Kart 8 was a Wii U exclusive and that contest took place well after the peak of the Wii U. Do you know how low the peak of the Wii U was? Since then, Nintendo is perhaps bigger than theyve been since the N64 or at the very least since the early DS/Wii years. Furthermore, Mario Kart 8 was released on Switch. People like to use Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta 2 as examples of why that might not matter too much, but those are different stories. Mario Kart 8 wasnt just released on the Switch, it also sold significantly more copies than any Switch game and is one of the very best selling games of all time. Everyone appreciates Mario Kart 8 and Skyrim is the perfect opponent for it to show that against. The spin-off franchise is huge, and Mario Kart 8 is widely regarded as the best one. At least it is if we remove our nostalgia goggles when looking at Super Mario 64.

People also tend to forget that after the initial board vote, Skyrim rises to the sky after the board vote, perhaps even to the outer rim. But Skyrim was behind for more than a minute and it was barely ahead at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there, but that embarrassment had already hit it, and people rarely look much at the match after its over. Im sure a good bunch of people thought Skyrim looked worse because it was at 55-56% when they looked despite it ending above 60%.

I dont actually need to defend Skyrim on the other side of the contest, because it went on to prove that it was still quite strong, even though The Witcher 3 was stronger. Mario Kart 8 therefore also ends up being a lot stronger than what the general consensus was and what its seeding indicated. Its the most underseeded game of the bracket, getting a #14 seed when it should have easily been a #3 seed at the least.

Mario Kart games have been in contests before, but they literally always run into other Nintendo games. That has happened every single time until now. Mario Kart Wii beating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is the only match the series has had without other Nintendo games and that was the Wii edition facing a DS game after the Wii stopped being too popular here. It really is a shame Super Mario Kart didnt get to participate in the year of SNES appreciation 2015 because if really was on par with Super Metroid it would have looked beastly that year. I have believed Mario Kart had always had a bit more to show than it got the chance too, and as everyone know I also believed Uncharted 4 was better than most people thought it would.

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I still say Skyrim loses to Metroid Prime in a rematch.

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I'd probably pick that too.

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Round 3 Division 8 Day 32
Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 51.87%
NieR: Automata 48.13%

Prediction Percentage 48.25%

This match managed to stay exciting up until a bit into it. There were people thinking that Pokemon would have an easy time after the first few rounds, but there were also people thinking that a Pokemon game from generation 4 would start doing worse once it faced actual competition. The debated had been centered mostly around the strength of Pokemon HGSS before the contest, but the performances of NieR: Automata were obviously considered too now. The Bayonetta 2 result was the most discussed of them. People had a hard time believing in SFF in that match and without it, Automata (and Divinity) looks really good, though it requires you to believe Bayonetta 2 had boosted a bit from the first contest.

What kept Pokemon HGSS as the favorite was probably that remakes had so far done as good as we possibly thought they could be. Resident Evil 2 and Persona 4 Golden were both still in the competition. They clearly wouldnt have been if people anti-voted them for being remakes. Persona 4 Golden especially shows that its fine being a remake. Though not all of us, a good amount of people picked Automata to the division finals in their brackets because of lack of faith in Pokemon. There was not much reason to have that any longer.

The match wasnt without excitement initially, although there was never a point where Pokemon HGSS was not in the lead. They were neck to neck at first, until Pokemon very slowly build a small lead before the freeze. Pokemon would only gain from 30 to 38 the next update and Automata made a small cut after that. That gave people hope, because Pokemon usually has the board vote and bracket votes might be on its site too. It would gain from there, and while the match had a bunch of updates in a row that looked good for Automata, it was clear pretty fast in the overall picture that Pokemon wasnt losing this.

Pokemon HGSS and Automata probably both had a good amount of bracket votes and are both good with the board too. Board 8 seems quite into NieR, so it makes sense. Ive seen people say that NieR: Automata was a disappointment after it could not win this match and HGSS went on to easily lose to Skyrim. It probably doesnt help that it looked weaker than Mario Kart 8 when people had such a hard time accepting strength of Mario Kart 8, but it looks just fine at the end of the contest. I picked Automata today and I didnt have expectations higher than this for it really.

No, the reason Automata lost as I see it, had more to do with Pokemon HGSS being worth almost as much as we thought it could. Its the perfect combination between nostalgic fans and hardcore fans and being a remake didnt hurt it at all. The Automata upset being as popular as it was depended on Pokemon being weaker that that. I hope and expect to see Automata back in a contest again, I could see it coming back stronger when the franchise has more exposure.

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That's round 3! Mid-Contest Thoughts coming up next. The PCA doesn't get the weak long break lol.

Updates list of matches I have something to add to

DOOM vs. Inside
Undertale vs. Octopath Traveler
Super Mario Odyssey vs. Mortal Kombat 11
Dragon Age: Inquisition vs. Ori and the Blind Forest
Yakuza 0 vs. The Witness
BioShock Infinite vs. Terraria
Uncharted 4: A Theif's End vs. Mario Kart 8
Mass Effect 2 vs. Fallout 4
Fire Emblem: Awakening vs. Bloodborne
Marvel's Spider-Man vs. Minecraft
Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne (maybe)
Grand Theft Auto V vs. Persona 4 Golden
The Witcher 3 vs. Super Mario Galaxy 2

Maybe I should start putting things in the wiki. Otherwise, it'll just be when I finish this.

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Mid-Contest Thoughts

Just like Character Battle X had in 2018, this contest featured a weeklong break before the top 16, so that everyone could fill out second chance brackets. Different from last time was that there was no losers bracket and a finals division, we just had a top 16 games. That would mean only 15 matches remained instead of the 30 matches there were left last time.

The low amount of matches left made people skeptical, because there would be plenty of people getting all matches correct and it would take very few alt brackets to create every single possible outcome, in the sense of what realistically had a chance to happen. Breath of the Wild was basically guaranteed to win the whole competition and the winner of division 3 was guaranteed to beat the winner of division 4. Thats already four matches out of the way, and those are only the ones where not even a single crazy person took the upset. People recalled back in Rivalry Rumble, when the Battle Challenge had a ton of people going perfect into the final match of the contest and Allen had to create a crazy oracle finish. Would we the see the same now?

Not quite, but the oracle kind of challenge would play a part. Allen worked out a second chance challenge in the best possible way in my opinion. You had to not just guess the winner, but guess their final percentage rounded to nearest integer. You would get 50 points for a perfect prediction and then lose a point for every whole percentage, you were away. However, if you guessed the winner wrong, you would get 0 points. That meant if you guessed Resident Evil 2 with 51% but Mass Effect 2 won with 51%, you would not get 48 points, you would get 0. This created a challenge that was bracket challenge first and foremost and oracle to break tiebreaker. Of course, you could theoretically win despite getting a match wrong, but everyone knew you would be out of contention. True enough, the 27 best brackets had more than 700 points, the maximum you could get with one match wrong.

If we were to have a second chance bracket, this one was as good as they come, except that the slide bar you made picks on was a bit confusing and it caused a surprisingly high amount of people to pick the winner they didnt intended. I mean, you should always look more carefully than that, so its the smallest complaint possible if it is one. People knew that the most important aspect of the bracket was picking the Breath of the Wild matches correctly. The rest of the matches were all thought to be reasonably close, so if you just picked 55% for your winner in all of those, youd be really good. Breath of the Wild was different though, peoples opinions often had more than 10% between them in those, sometimes more than 15%.

Whether or not we should have had a second chance bracket at all is another discussion though. People liked the format, but a lot of people also found it unnecessary because it would damage contest flow and votals just to give us an extra challenge. It made more sense in 2018. The promotion was also quite terrible. Casual voters really had no idea of knowing what happened. After the division 8 matches ended, there was simply no poll on the front page and initially no way to enter the second chance bracket, this would come a day later. That created a lot of confusion if you missed the part about the second chance bracket beforehand. Votals are higher than number of brackets, so a lot of people did. Considering the amount of second chance brackets werent much higher than the number of voters we seemed to initially lose, I believe the concept was unnecessary. Because Allen insists on having multiple matches each day until the semi-finals, we only had nine days left of matches. The break itself was almost that long as it was eight days.

I hope this is the last time we had such a break, I appreciate the idea of a second chance bracket and it was fun, but if it cant be worked without taking that much time off, I fully believe were better off without it. Promotion could help. A shorter break could help. Bonus matches could help. Ultimately though, I dont think even the combination of those would make me prefer this. The Losers Bracket made it seem more reasonable, but that part had issues of its own. I believe it was fun for change but has no real reason to come back.

In any case, we had an exciting last part of the contest ahead of us. A top 16 thats a lot closer to the general opinion than GameFAQs usually is, division 4 being the biggest outlier, but the remakes in general also looking weird. The bracket was made to be quite diverse and respect the whole decade, it shows in our final bracket where likely top 16 games such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 and A Link Between Worlds were fed to top games early. It had not always made for a better bracket, but there was at least some excitement to almost all remaining matches now that the Breath of the Wild matches looked to decide the second chance bracket.

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Round 4 Division 1 Day 33
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 70.22%
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 29.78%

Prediction Percentage 76.59%

Its to the surprise of no one that Breath of the Wild would continue to completely dominate the competition even this late in the contest. It did however do so significantly less than it did in the first three rounds. It went from breaking 80% three rounds straight to barely breaking 70%. That speaks volumes about Dragon Quest XI and its incredible how good you can look despite failing to break 30% in a match. Board 8 underrated DQXI by more than 5% today after underestimating it in the other rounds. It makes the whole upper division look almost unbelievably weak compared to the lower half. Something was off.

Weve talked a lot about how the contest title combined with the forced voting has caused more blowouts than usual and have caused the top games to perform even better than they would have otherwise. I believe the same thing happened to Breath of the Wild up until this point. Final Fantasy XV might be a previous Game of the Year winner, but this is the first time Breath of the Wild faced something that it actually cared about. Its not to take any credit away from Dragon Quest XI, the contrary actually, but theres no way the top half of the division is as bad as the stats suggest. As I stated last round, its no coincidence the weakest game in both round 2 and 3 according to the x-stats is the one that face Breath of the Wild. It took a game that actually have a big fanbase and that people believe deserves to be here to stop Breath of the Wild from taking 80% of the votes.

Its amazingly weird to see Dragon Quest succeed where Final Fantasy couldnt. Being of the same time, there wasnt a huge difference at first, but throughout the 90s Final Fantasy established itself as one of the biggest franchises of all time and without a doubt the biggest franchise on this site. Dragon Quest was rather niche and continued to be so. Not that everyone didnt know how much that had changed, but Breath of the Wild striking down both of their main games from the last decade just makes it so clear. Of course Dragon Quest XI would have its strongest game come out 2017. It says a lot more about Final Fantasy than Dragon Quest, but its still clear that Dragon Quest is more legit than ever. It loses big time today, but it ends up looking like it deserved its seeding.

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Round 4 Division 2 Day 33
Mass Effect 2 52.47%
Resident Evil 2 47.53%

Prediction Percentage 20.82%

The battle of the sequels was one of the matches in the final phrase that had people split the most. Both games had a good case of making it through today. Mass Effect 2 looked really good in the previous two rounds. Everyone had accepted at this point that Resident Evil 7 was simply a lot better than people gave it credit for, but that could also mean good things for Resident Evil 2. It seemed like a case where many people simply went with whatever game their gut feelings told them to go with. There were people very confident in both games.

Taking Resident Evil 2 to win here was always a good late round upset pick. Look at how it dealt with a rallied Bloodborne, which beat Awakening even before rallies. Mass Effect 2 is projected to easily win those two matches in 2015, with ~55% against Awakening and ~58% against Bloodborne, but look at how much stronger Bloodborne is now. Even if you believe Mass Effect 2 is undervalued in the 2015 x-stats, you can also believe Andromeda hurt the name. Resident Evil 2 took care of a rallied Bloodborne, so it was certainly within striking distance. Furthermore, the original Resident Evil 2 was in 2015 and is projected to beat Awakening with less than Resident Evil 2 beat Three Houses in Game of the Year. We've been through GotY polls, but certainly a 1v1 poll is worth a little bit and I just want to state that the upset was clearly possible.

The match opened with much excitement. The games were dead even for the opening minutes until Mass Effect 2 started being every so slightly ahead. Then it jumped ahead by quite a bit at the first update and very quickly climbed above the 200-vote lead. Resident Evil 2 would then stall quite a bit, cutting the percentage Mass Effect 2 had from almost 55% to almost 51% as the lead was cut from 250 votes to below 200 in a very few updates. It couldnt keep it up though. Mass Effect 2 began climbing again and this time it didnt look back at all.

It has been suggested that the break hurt Resident Evil 2s chances here because it won the very close match with Bloodborne that would have given it a bandwagon. I seriously doubt its the case though. Resident Evil 2 was always the favorite to make the division finals, Bloodborne just made it a lot closer that people thought. Usually such things come from big upsets and that match wasnt really that. Besides, if it did get something of a bandwagon, the break shouldnt make much a difference. The people that followed Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne closely enough definitely remembered it, but a lot of people just voted in the match and saw Resident Evil 2 won, which was largely expected.

I believe the match was decided mostly by the contest title. Its pretty clear that Mass Effect 2 was not hurt by andromeda or the third game or anything. Shepard looked a lot worse last character battle and Mass Effect 3 was killed, but in the light of the contest people remembered what Mass Effect 2 how did gaming, how big a deal it was. It would be the oldest game to reach the top 8 only barely being a game of the current decade. Its nice that after the franchise quickly became an all-timer and seemingly dropped it rather quickly again, Mass Effect 2 would be remembered as the great game it was.

Resident Evil 2 ended up being as good as you could hope it is despite being a remake, Mass Effect 2 was simply better than it looked in 2015. The remake discussion shouldnt concern Resident Evil 2 much really, because its different enough that it deserves its spot for sure, while the other two can be discussed. The previous Game of the Decade contest had Resident Evil 4 get further and it was praised as one of the absolute best and most influential games of all time. The series isnt at that point, but Resident Evil 7 was more like than we thought, and the recent three remakes have shown that theyre still capable of making fantastic games, so perhaps theres hope for future entries after all.

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Despite being decided in seconds, the next match will have one of the very longest write-ups so far.

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Oh I get it.

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Round 4 Division 3 Day 34
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 55.94%
Super Mario Odyssey 44.06%

Prediction Percentage 40.52%

This was perhaps the most hyped match of the ones that were in the second chance part. Before the contest began, almost everyone picked Super Smash Bros. Ultimate because Smash has been bigger than Mario on every single Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64. The original Super Smash Bros was a good idea not yet truly experienced with, while Super Mario 64 is one of biggest games of all time and by far the strongest 3D Mario. On the Camecube, Melee easily beats Sunshine, the latter being a disappointment to many. On the Wii, the controversial Brawl easily beats Galaxy, and the fourth game is easily better than both 3D Land and 3D World as they never even appeared in a contest. Ultimate is the best selling Smash game, so the Nintendo hierarchy should do its work.

Super Mario Odyssey had a few supporters before the contest, but no one really listened until Odyssey looked better than Ultimate every single round leading up to this match. Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11 are similar enough except Mortal Kombat has always been the bigger deal of the two franchises here. Ultimate couldnt SFF A Link Between Worlds and strugged with Marvels Spider-Man while Odyssey killed Devil May Cry 5 and Shovel Knight. Suddenly it was time to listen to the Odyssey supporters. A lot of people picked Super Mario Odyssey in their second chance brackets, because it didnt look impossible at all.

A lot of arguments in favor of Super Mario Odyssey were actually cases against Ultimate. Brawl is perhaps the most hyped game of all time and would have won the first game of the decade if not for some late round backlash. Since then, the games have been iterative. They add more things but doesnt get a lot better. Ultimate has polls where its voted the best Smash game, but when the series is as iterative as it is, maybe it wouldnt matter much. In 2015, Smash 4 was thought of threatening FFVII because its historically big and added Cloud, Ryu, Mega Man and Bayonetta amongst others, but it didnt get close at all. It was being said that people buy Smash games because of the spectacle and the celebration of tons of various franchises rather than the gameplay. Sakurai himself have said that Ultimate is not simply a fighting game, but a celebration of gaming.

When Ultimate came out the Everyone is here! was a huge selling point. Snake and Cloud returned contrary to what everyone believed, and every single other character returned to the field with them. Obvious new additions such as Isabella and Inkling came along with big fan demands such as Ridley and King K. Rool and third-party characters continued to come with Castlevania, Persona 5, Dragon Quest, Fata Fury and even Banjo & Kazooie now being in. There are great new single player modes, but that doesnt seem to be the main draw any longer.

Smash is a multiplayer game at heart, and were no longer a site that plays multiplayer with our friends, partly because were older. Weve seen various multiplayer games declining in strength. People argued Smash was less and less about gameplay and more relevant because of how endearing a franchise it is and all the cool videos they make, which makes it universally loved but also means it wont complete with the top like it did a decade ago.

Finally, there are its poll results, not just in this contest, people liked to point at the match against God of War for the title of Game of the Decade 2018. Ultimate looked vulnerable in those and there is only so good it could get without also boosting God of War up a lot, which judging by the contest so far didnt seem right. The poll in talk happened right after Ultimate released and the hype was still crazy:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7473-best-of-2018-game-of-the-year-final-final-vote

That was a lot of cases against Ultimate, but it still got to this point with ease. Lets go over why Odyssey was thought to make the difference. It has polls that back it up as the strongest 3D since Super Mario 64. Unlike Smash, Mario is not an iterative franchise, so it mattered here. The Galaxies are loved but they have the Wii to drag them down while Odyssey on a console that everyone loves right now. Galaxy 2 looking so good until now just meant Odyssey should be even better. Odyssey was a huge deal and its exactly what we love on this site. It was very hyped and lived up to every last bit of it. It helped get Nintendo in a positive light again that it hasnt been for 20 years.

Super Mario Odyssey has no Game of the Year polls to back it up, but that hardly mattered when it shared its only one with Breath of the Wild. Ocarina of Time killed Super Mario 64 in 2004, but then the latter came back in 2009 and beat Chrono Trigger when it shared the poll with Yoshis Island. Those parallels were drawn. BotW/Odyssey/Ultimate felt like a modern day OoT/Mario 64/Melee. When Zelda and Mario are at their best they will beat even the best Smash game. Brawl could defeat the Mario and Zelda games of that generation (and it did!), but it would have never challenged peak Zelda and Mario. Odyssey felt like peak Mario again. Nintendo aced their first party titles in the latter half of the decade. The hierarchy has shown itself ridiculous in the past, but lots of people all contest were expressing that they didnt think Odyssey would beat Ultimate but that they wish it would. Well, if enough people think so, it might just do that.

A final point in Odysseys favor people brought up was not as big but still worth mentioning. In 2015, Melee rallied past GameFAQs biggest darlings Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. Weve seen Draven and Undertale getting punished when returning to the field again. Most of the site arent loud about it, but still votes against them on principle. Now, Ultimate is not Melee, but perhaps this could transfer to Smash in general and could explain why Smash couldnt reach the poll highs that Odyssey could. If Ultimate began rallies too, there would definitely be a lot of people counter-rallying Odyssey against it.

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Thats a load of evidence in Odysseys favor, but Ultimate was still the favorite. Lets first go through a few things that didnt end up being relevant. The first one is bracket votes. Ultimate absolutely had those and it could make a difference worth a few percentage points, although the second chance brackets might lessen those because Odyssey was slightly more popular then and most people knew they werent going to win the ordinary bracket challenge. Secondly, despite what I said before, if Ultimate actually went ahead and rallied in a close match, most people did know it would hard to anything against. The Smash community is if anything else very active and very online. They may like to swear off aspects of their game a lot because a great part of the fanbase is straight up awful, but seeing them bail their game out of stuff like this was within imagination and thatd be terribly hard to counter.

People sided mostly with Ultimate because it felt right. The hierarchy is so well established, and we saw as late as the latest Character Battle how much Smash matters in our contests. Ultimate isnt mentioned in a lot of Game of the Decade discussions. The game took a good formula and improved it. It celebrated a bunch of franchises while it revolutionized none. Its why it wasnt destroying stuff on the levels of the other top games of the bracket. It doesnt have the same respect votes that Odyssey among other titles gathered from the forced voting and the title. Its just really lied in general. Im not doubting that Ultimate beats God of War by more if the poll wasnt called Game of the Year. Im not doubting Ultimate looks better in a contest not titled Game of the Decade and all its opponents honestly has at least as much claim to such a title as Ultimate. Its not the most influencing game ever, its just really well liked.

Most people expected the match to be over right away. Whichever game prevailed it likely would struggle because of the SFF involved in the fight. True enough, the match was over it mere seconds. Ultimate was ahead from the start and while it was slow to get going only a single update in the match gave real hope to Odyssey fans. That was the update after the freeze. Odyssey cut the lead from 64 to 44 and when you expect Ultimate to the bracket votes, that could mean things, but it didnt. Ultimate went up to 103 the next update and by the end of the hour it was already above 400 votes. All that hype about Odyssey was for nothing, it lost as easily as we thought before the contest began.

The hierarchy was obviously a thing, but people tend to forget why that hierarchy existed in the first place. People really do love Smash Bros. Perhaps were not as vocal about it as we used to be, but Smash would not be able to continue to get us hyped everyone single game if we werent all going to play it. They get us hyped because we loved it. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a rare exception in the final part of the contest to a trend. Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2 and so on. Theyre all here not only because theyre good but also because theyre praised for all theyve done for the gaming industry. That clearly made some of them more dominant than they would have been otherwise.

Ultimate does not get the same boost, but its still one of our favorite games of the decade. People never explain how they think it deserves it, but I saw Ultimate on the top of a lot of peoples favorite lists during the contest. Its a game thats here because its our favorite, not necessarily because its the best and that distinction is important. Its so much more than a multiplayer game to its fans. I want to make it clear that I believe Ultimate deserves to be here as much as any other game. It doesnt matter that it didnt improve too much on the formula, the formula is nearly perfect and its a fantastic game.

When that is said, Super Mario Odyssey got screwed so severely by bracket placement. Ive complained slightly about this before, but this is the time to do it right. Mario had a fantastic decade. Super Mario Odyssey deserved to get further that this and Super Mario Galaxy 2 deserved to get further that it did. I realize that people are accusing us of always having Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals (or Square, but they were out of the question this decade), but this was just ridiculous. Mario has been fed to Link many times and its always lame. Last contest Mario and Samus were actually put opposite of Link and they didnt get to him. Sure, Zelda was part of the reason, but in the end it was Cloud.

Ultimate and Odyssey would have exactly on interesting match this contest, this one, and you could argue they had none. The winner here would lose to Zelda. Both games could have had very interesting bracket paths, but they were instead just here to take each other out instead. I wouldnt be surprised if Odyssey would have been #1 seed, but that they were set up to not have too many Nintendo first party games in the top 8. Not saying it necessarily happened, just that it wouldnt surprise me. Nintendo were screwed so much by this bracket because apparently delivering top class games for many years deserves punishment.

Even if you grow tired of seeing something like Super Mario RPG reach the top 4, could we not punish the Nintendo game that is actually universally praised, loved by everyone and generally regarded as an all time great? Odyssey doing good wouldnt be a typical GameFAQs kind of deal. It would certainly not have beat The Witcher 3. It might beat the other division winners in the lower half, but we wont know. Its as ridiculous as giving us Melee vs. Brawl in the top 16 last contest. Even if we did end up getting a Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals. So what? Wed have a more interesting path there if we didnt have them run into each other, and lets be real, the finals were perhaps as uninteresting as it has ever been regardless.

Mario had both his games in the top 8 of the x-stats this contest, yet they made top 16 and top 32. What a waste. But let us give our respects to our favorite mustached plumper, because Mario is currently about as good as it has ever been, and such consistently of dominating a genre during the lifetime of an industry is about as impressive as it gets.

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Round 4 Division 4 Day 34
Persona 4 Golden 49.79%
Xenoblade Chronicles 50.21%

Prediction Percentage 6.29%

Not many of us expected this match to deliver as much as it did. Most of us took Xenoblade without thinking twice today. The logic most gurus used before the contest was that the winner of Xenoblade vs. Three Houses would win the division. Three Houses had some previous polls making it look like it should be the clear favorite to get here, as Xenoblade and Awakening shared an opponent in 2015, but most Three Houses supporters had acknowledged from the start that Xenoblade might as well do it instead. As soon as we saw the games in the field, it became clear Xenoblade would be the game to reach this point instead.

The prediction percentage is the lowest of the contest. Casuals had GTAV, RDR or maybe even Overwatch winning this one. Mostly the former two, they were close enough for a bunch of experts to pick them as well with good reasons. Most experts knew the Nintendo games would have a real chance of winning the division. We remember things like San Andreas losing to Golden Sun and GTAV losing to Super Mario RPG. Picking the winner of the Nintendo showdown today was the expert move, but we sided with the wrong one because we trusted previous stats too much. As such, only a very few actually had Xenoblade going out of this one.

Then theres Persona 4 Golden. As much as we thought we would see another edition of GameFAQs Nintendo RPG darling beat a Rockstar game, another RPG stole that show and beat them both instead. People expected P4G to be a proxy of Persona 4 with some level of quality but not many expected that it would basically be a perfect proxy. Its a Vita game, and there is no way it would have been here if it hadnt also been a beloved Playstation 2 game. Yet here it was and so the division came down to two niche RPG series that are becoming mainstream in recent years. For as much as we believe this bracket is the most mainstream weve been in a long time, this division final was about as stereotypical GameFAQs as it gets.

Xenoblade might have been on some hype train at this point. Some loud board 8ers loved the game looking so good as it did while getting this far, but make no mistake, those were the people that always voted for it to begin with mostly. Whatever boost it had this contest, it had it from the start. Theres only so much you can bandwagon from beating a Three Houses game, especially when everyone was just trashing Fire Emblem and giving that much of the reason. No one was trashing Metal Gear Solid when Shadow of the Colossus was on a bandwagon, no one was trashing Kingdom Hearts or Wind Waker when Starcraft was on a bandwagon (at least not rightfully based on their performances). Those things happened because the games got further than most people believed they would, Xenoblade doesnt have the same thing going for it because after round 1, literally all of us would have picked it to reach the division finals and probably win it too.

Persona 4 Golden is the game that was riding a bandwagon to get there. Beating Rockstar games grants you that, in particular when even most experts had you losing before this point. Xenoblade upsetting Three Houses is a case where you think oh, I guess I had the wrong Nintendo game winning that, Persona 4 Golden getting here is a case where you think s*** this Vita remaster is beating up some of the most critically acclaimed games of the decade, its hilarious. If you dont believe me try looking at the x-stats. You should take those with a grain of salt of course, but things look so off if you believe Xenoblade is the game on a bandwagon here. Make no mistake, Persona 4 was already on a bandwagon last match because It beat a Rockstar game! Wouldnt it be funny if it beat another? and that absolutely fueled things to make it even stronger now.

Im not doubting for a second after seeing how good Xenoblade looked from the beginning that it easily wins this match if nothing had caught a bandwagon. Its just legit now. It had gotten tons of exposure and trailers for its upcoming definitive edition on the definitive Nintendo console was releasing right around this contest. You can argue that it SFFd Splatoon 2, but it certainly gained no momentum from winning that match and it slaughtered Overwatch way beyond our expectations too. Xenoblade 2 looks really good at this point despite not getting out of round 1. It all adds up, Xenoblade is just legit now.

Xenoblade had to fight for its life today in what would be the last truly exciting match of the contest. Xenoblade struggled in the opening minutes, but eventually slowly got rolling, but Persona fans were not going to give it an easy time at all. That fanbase proved this match that its perfectly capable of rallying. Xenoblade was just never allowed to close the match. The first time it tried reaching for a 200-vote lead, it almost dropped to 100 instead. Then it got above 200 it was dropped down to mid-100s instead. Repeat that for a few times before Xenoblade went over 300.

The match looked close, but it also looked like Persona 4 Golden could never really make a run for it. Xenoblade looked safe because natural votes were in its favor. That was all until P4G made its biggest rally attempt of the match near the end. It stalled when it was just above 300 votes away for a good bit, then cut down to below 300 votes for a long time as Xenoblade was holding on for its dear life. When it got close to 200 very suddenly, it looked like it just might pull if off but these surges of votes from rallies never last that long so Xenoblade held on once more.

The biggest scare came in the end. With two hours to go Xenoblade was ahead by 232 votes, but with an hour to go it was only 99 votes ahead. Persona fans were really passionate and tried really hard and it came as close to paying off as you could hope for. At this point it looked like they might just pull it off, but Xenoblade managed to hold on in that last hour eventually winning the match by roughly that amount.

If you want to know how successful Persona 4 rallies were today, it actually wins the match without the registered user bonus. It would then win by 8 votes. The only other time this contest where that happened was with Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne where the latter with its rallies also would have won without the bonus. It would certainly have been on a monstrous bandwagon if it got out here, bigger than Xenoblade would be for having its name in the top 8, thats for sure. Persona 4 came just short today, but man what a contest run it had. Its run is easily one of the most entertaining parts of the contest, I have to give it that.

When that is said, Im glad Xenoblade won today, I think it deserves to be that one odd one out in the late rounds the most. Board 8 has both joked and been serious about it being Game of the Year in five different years this past decade. The Persona franchise deserves a lot of praise and well get there, I promise, but Im happy the Vita port and proxy would not be that odd one out-game, however good it might be. We can eagerly await to see what Persona 4 is capable of next contest, but while Golden gave us a more exciting contest, it probably shouldnt have been here to begin with. Persona already had top 8 representation in a game that actually deserved it. It just feels nicer having Xenoblade get there too.

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Round 4 Division 5 Day 35
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 64.48%
God of War 35.52%

Prediction Percentage 51.77%

We didnt really need any more evidence at this point that The Witcher 3 was going to reach the finals without breaking a sweat, but here we are. Witcher 3 made a complete joke of God of War today, it looked like it didnt belong here at all. Picking God of War in this match looked like a somewhat reasonable upset before the contest if you used previous polls a bit much, but Witcher 3 did its best to make you looks ridiculously stupid for picking that.

God of War looks too bad today though. Unless you were ready to accept the upper half of the division being ridiculously good or the lower half being ridiculously bad, something was off today. I was among the first to believe some kind of SFF here, similar to what happened to Mass Effect 3 and maybe even Assassins Creed Odyssey. God of War is a Playstation 4 exclusive, that is the console Witcher 3 is biggest on. Maybe its bigger on PC now, but that shouldnt matter on GameFAQs. They also have similar demographics. Then thrown against each other with Game of the Decade written above them and forced voting and Witcher 3 will overperform. It doesnt have too be all that much to make everything seem a lot more reasonable. God of War looked pretty good so far.

I tried to explain this several times in the stats topic, but what everyone got from it was Western SFF. Lets be real, thats not what was suggested, but thats what caught on. I mean, Im sure someone suggested it, but I was quoted saying the idea of Western SFF sounded stupid. Eventually this term caught on, it was short and sweet, but lets just make it clear how misleading that is. Im absolutely not saying Witcher 3 could SFF whatever games come outside of Japan and Im not sure anyone initially was, but it was eventually spread that Im sure weve made people believe that by now. It doesnt even make much sense because Witcher 3 is from Poland, that is, closer to Japan that to California where Santa Monica is based. Thats the developers of God of War in case you dont know. I get its a short a sweet term, but could we not name things misleading names just because of that.

Regardless of that, SFF happened here, but people definitely overshot it. I think God of War was adjusted a bit too high in the x-stats. God of War has been overrated the whole contest because of that one poll against Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where it got more than 55%. People were ready to accept lots of weird things before not taking that poll at face value. Smash Bros isnt trying to make new exciting formats, its trying to perfect what it is and show love and exposure to all kinds of things. Its an easy game to overperform against in a poll that says Game of the Year or Game of the Decade for that matter. Were far from the days where Smash Bros games are dominating such things.

On top of that, do we ever learn not to take regular polls to face value? Its like we only learned not to take 10-way regular polls at face value. Regular polls are a fine indicator of contest strength, but you should be ready to discard them as soon as a contest match points against it. Does anyone remember Final Fantasy VI vs. Final Fantasy VII? That match happened in a regular poll and in a contest match not too long from each other. Neither result was close, but the winner was different. Why was it that didnt reach us to always take regular polls with a grain of salt?

Its a shame God of War had to go out in such a humiliating way, but something had to draw Witcher 3 here I suppose. God of War is totally worthy of a top 16 finish, however. Its a fantastic game which did not only bring life back into the franchise of one of Sonys biggest mascots but is also the best game in that franchise and I am so darn prepared for more if it comes.

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ctesjbuvf posted...

Theres only so much you can bandwagon from beating a Three Houses game, especially when everyone was just trashing Fire Emblem and giving that much of the reason.

I think you reversed these two by accident.

Also, I can't say I agree with your take on the bandwagons in this match. You seem intently focused on B8's perceptions of each game's runs and the likelihood thereof, which I'd argue greatly overstates B8's influence on the process. Case in point: an outright majority of Gurus took Super Mario RPG to the divisional finals in 2015, giving it an over 2-to-1 advantage against second place, and yet no one in their right mind would deny that Mario RPG was on a bandwagon by that point.

Like it or not, Xenoblade reaching this match was almost as big an upset from a sitewide perspective as P4G doing the same was. There were two real differences in the two games' paths to get there: one, that sitewide brackets respected Overwatch and Three Houses less than RDR and GTAV, and two, that P4G squeaked by two matches in a row (which does seem to matter in the bandwagon process, as evidenced by Geralt in 2018). Now, those factors do admittedly favor a stronger P4G bandwagon, but they also suggest that Xenoblade was bandwagoning in its own right. Likewise, the various layers of extrapolation available also imply that the two games were operating under comparable, though perhaps not identical, circumstances. The alternative forces some pretty weird assumptions, like P4G not boosting at all from Persona 5's release and the aftermath thereof, or Twilight Princess and Skies of Arcadia both declining from 2010 to 2015 in lockstep.

As a final side note, I'm not sure what your basis for saying things look totally off in Xenoblade's half of the division if Xenoblade alone was bandwagoning is. It's not like we have any sort of reliable gauge for anything in that half anyways. Now, I'm not trying to argue that Xenoblade had the only bandwagon against P4G - I agree that claim would be highly suspect - but is it really impossible for Xenoblade not to have gained as much as we thought, and for Three Houses to have been SFF'd and/or damaged greatly by Smash backlash relative to its GotY finals result?

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I did not actually try to argue Xenoblade had nothing of the sort up until now. Some parts might give that feel, but others make it clear that I'm not against the idea of Xenoblade having momentum. In its next match, I was actually arguing quite a bit that it had a bandwagon, while a lot of people seemed to not think so lol.

The main point is that Persona had the bigger one, because P4G possibly already won a match with its momentum, Xenoblade easily wins all three of its without it. Beating Overwatch would be the one to fuel anything of the sorts, I don't believe Xenoblade / Three Houses adds much other than Xenoblade getting a round further. What happens when two games on a bandwagon face each other? It's impossible to tell and might be different each time that happens, but thinking the bigger bandwagon matters most seems like the safe bet and I'm not doubting for a second Persona had that.

Well, dirently comparing Golden with the original Persona 4 is difficult. It rallied in three of its four matches and bandwagoned too. So many uncertainties there.

It's more Persona's half of the division that look off actually, in particular, RDR looks too good. The whole division is tough to determine though, because Smash/Xenoblade is doubtful and Smash got SFF'd to death later.

Switching Three Houses and Fire Emblem around is rather hillarious, so yeah, if not already, I'll add this to the list of rereads. Some paragraphs need to be more clear for sure. As always, thank you for your quality comments, the topic gets better with them.

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Round 4 Division 6 Day 35
Persona 5 57.47%
Portal 2 42.53%

Prediction Percentage 29.22%

There was at no point of the contest any real doubt of what game would make it out this division. Sure, some gurus tried to get a hot upset here, but Persona 5 was a lock to get past this point from the start. The fifth main installment in the series would be what finally pushed the series to what you would call mainstream and a while after the releasing it would even have Smash representation on top of that. Probably helps that it was released as Persona 5 and not Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 because that has always screamed some cult Japanese thing to casual owners of a Playstation, unfortunately. The main reason is of course just that its a really good game.

The beginning of this match was very weird. Persona has consistently had great board votes. Portal usually has too, though against Kingdom Hearts III, it boosted after the board vote instead. Then this match begins right another match featuring a Persona game ends. That other match had the Persona game rallying quite heavily by the end of this match and Im the general Persona subreddit stickied a rally thread and while later changing the title to show this match instead of the other one.

Yet the first minutes were the worst for Persona 5 in the match. Well, the first minute was great, but Portal 2 looked like it was in this match all the way up until the freeze. It was actually ever so slightly closing the gap in the end. Then 10 minutes into the match, it was all over and Persona 5 never looked back. That seems weird. I mean, maybe board 8 just really loves Portal 2 as well or maybe some rally backfire happened, though that seems unlikely. What does seem likely is that the rally thread wasnt affecting this match all too much early on, because it was somewhat out of fuel near the end of the Persona 4/Xenoblade match and it would be a bit before people on reddit noticed a title change. The votals at the freeze are slightly better than the other days, but they had been growing each day already so maybe thats natural.

Then Im just left finding it weird that the hierarchy here is Kingdom Hearts III > Portal 2 > Persona 5, I wouldve guessed it the other way around, but alright, its not too important. Persona 5 likely does slightly worse without the rally thread but its nothing noticeably.

Im glad Portal 2 managed to get here despite the off chance it would have declining further throughout the decade as it hasnt been relevant for a while and the memes are far beyond existing at this point. Its nice the contest title is taken seriously. Its probably the final time well see one of the Portal games doing so well, so lets enjoy that for a while.

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Round 4 Division 7 Day 36
Dark Souls 58.30%
The Last of Us 41.70%

Prediction Percentage 30.19%

This match had not really been in doubt since round 2 where The Last of Us failed to look impressive against Diablo III and Souldborne in general looked to be better than ever, but man, for such a popular upset pick as The Last of Us winning here, it sure didnt come close at all. Now under normal circumstances this would be a tribute to another fantastic game of the decade leaving the contest and all that, but this was not normal circumstances.

The Last of Us part II had been delayed three times by now, which was not exactly a popular decision to begin with. Then a day after its previous match a new and final release day would be announced, but it would also be the day the world collapsed when the game was leaked to the internet. Were talking lengthy videos. Theres gameplay and there are cutscenes. A lot of it was out there. This is always unfortunate, but we were still a good while off. Its different that when this happens because some employee is a jerk.

Information spreads rapidly fast these days and it has ever since been dangerous to be anywhere on the internet. Comment sections of Playstation threads that had nothing to do with the game became danger zones. Hell, Ive seen people say they were spoiled on Smash forums. It was everywhere. The Last of Us has certainly been the talks of the internet these past months.

This matters in this match because the internet really hated what they saw. I wont go into details about whats in there, no aspects about it either. Its a very interesting discussion for another time, but I dont think it would appropriate here. What we need to take from it is that it exploded the internet with negativity. Everything theyve uploaded since has had liked/dislikes and comments disabled. There was that one video from Neil Druckmann where he passionately spoke about the game vaguely and told people to look forward to it that and 75-80% of people disliked it. It was insane.

On top of everything, it was initially believed that the leak happened by an employee that was tired of his working conditions, a rumor which was believed by most because its not the first time weve heard something like that happening with Naughty Dog. Eventually we learned it was not why the leak happened, but Im mentioning it because it certainly fueled the fire of burning hate coming in the direction of The Last of Us. This would hurt the games already bad chances of making it out of this match.

Fortunately, it was not getting out of it in the first place, so the many people that had their brackets die today at least cant blame this. How much the leaks damaged it is tough to determine, but we can try to look at it. Before the match, a few people went as high as thinking 15%. Thats pretty clearly not the case, but its reasonable to expect some backlash even here.

Batman: Arkham City vs. The Last of Us went almost exactly as the 2015 stats suggest it would. Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V had Dark Souls winning by 8% more than it did in 2015. The Last of Us is projected to get about the same on Dark Souls as on Batman in 2015. These are the important things. The last of them is obviously the reason why The Last of Us was picked by as many as it was. It had a sequel coming and it had claim get far in a contest of this title. Even it Dark Souls was slightly stronger, it could still happen.

Lets begin with the 8% difference in Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V. Ill credit almost all of that to Dark Souls and Ive said so before. Theres not really much reason for MGSV to decline further, maybe a little bit but the whole Konami and Kojima incident was already past us back in 2015. The relevance of all that drama back then might even upweight that Metal Gear Solid is less relevant today. Dark Souls and Soulsborne in general are however one of the most memorable things of the decade. They have boosted a good bit this contest and are more popular than ever. It would not surprise me if Dark Souls just grew that much by itself.

If we accept that the match would be about 54-46 in favor of Dark Souls. Most people probably expect Dark Souls and MGSV to split that a bit more. Most people also believed The Last of Us had already declined a bit before the leaks though, and thats an important point. I believe so too. It just didnt look that great, especially if you consider how many of the big games seemed to boost from the contest title and the forced voting.

The Batman match suggests that The Last of Us was constant from 2015 to now, but its not hard to imagine that Batman just declined a bit as well. I mean, those games were a much bigger deal in the beginning of the decade than they are now. It would not be terribly surprising. Im thinking thats the case, because I doubt the leak is much more than a few points of percentage.

Most of our site is a bit older than most of the whiny fans on the internet. Most of our site know that The Last of Us was still a good game despite of what happened and there are probably also many people trying to avoid the leaks and not judging things based on what little things they hear. This was a big deal of course, but the people complaining always seem like a bigger group than they are because theyre loud. Theres only so much damage I see the leak doing here. Its impossible to know exactly, but I think its less than it seems most people think.

The Last of Us is in no way as big a deal as it was when it came out. Those games also never were as big here as everyone else. Its similar to how Uncharted was a bigger deal in general than our site suggests. The finalists at this point are all games that are big on our site. The game has aged fine in some areas but not as well in others. Were past the zombie craze of the early part of the decade, and a lot of the in-game mechanics feel outdated already. Thats how it is with games like that, unfortunately. I can see it and Batman declining a few percentage points and thus the leak only mattering a few percentage points.

When all that is said and done, The Last of Us deserves some respect. The game is great, I still think its fun today. They took some very bold decisions that paid off. Im not as big a fan of the ending of the game as most, but that was a huge deal. The game had depth and was a fantastic presentation. Also, in a decade of open world games and very long stories I seriously have to appreciate the few of the gems that can be played in a few days. I have a much harder time getting through all the games I want to these days and its not just because Im busier.

We would go into a highly anticipated Dark Souls vs. Skyrim match without truly learning more about Dark Souls today because there are too many uncertainties regarding The Last of Us, but Skyrim redeeming itself made it look like we were in for quite a match!

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Round 4 Division 8 Day 36
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 59.82%
Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 40.18%

Prediction Percentage 53.66%

Skyrim had had a rough contest up until this point with everyone targeting it for looking bad. Almost no one thought it would actually lose today, but it was underestimated by quite a bit, almost 6% by oracles. This would be Skyrims big redemption match. Beating Witcher 3 was out of the question a long time ago, but that didnt mean Skyrim had to be significantly worse. After trying to defend Skyrim for a couple of rounds it was such a relief to see. This wasnt even a fanboy thing, I have never played Skyrim and I love Pokemon HGSS, but being seemingly right is always nice and it sure seemed like it now. Although Skyrim needed to beat Dark Souls to truly confirm how legit it still is, along with how Journey, Mario Kart 8 and Uncharted 4 all being better than most people gave them credit for.

The opening moments were of course hilarious as always. HGSS took the lead instantly and kept it for a bit. Then they were tied for a while, but Skyrim took it. For a little while, it looked to be somewhat close despite not being in doubt, but then Skyrim took off and never looked back, rising in percentage over the whole course of the day. We love Pokemon. We do not love Bethesda.

Im sure Skyrim wouldnt be as big a favorite against Dark Souls if they met before Skyrim got to show off here, but it would actually end up being one after all. You had to be pretty stubborn to still insist Mario Kart 8 couldnt be good at this point. Still, the match was hyped and everyone expected the guru contest to be decided with that match as the final three matches all seemed obvious. Its part of the reason why its such a shame that only those three are up alone. The quarter finals are very often more interesting than the semi-finals.

At the end of the contest, HeartGold and SoulSilver probably didnt act as proxies for Gold and Silver. At least they seem significantly weaker. Skyrim is projected to beat GSC in 2015, but not by much. 51.79% to be exact. Everyone agrees that Skyrim is weaker now. That means no matter how you adjust things, the remakes are a good bit below. Its not too surprising if you know the fanbase. They treat remakes as new entries and Pokemon fans consider these games part of generation 4 and not generation 2. Theyre much more loved than the original fanbase among hardcore fans, but our site will not care about anything past generation 2 as much as the first two. Im sure no one would have expected FireRed and LeafGreen to be as good as RBY if they had been in the first Game of the Decade. RBY looked so good in 2009 that it would have probably beat everything in the first Game of the Decade, and Im sure no one would pick FireRed and LeafGreen to do that. In this way, Pokemon is quite different from the other remakes in the contest.

I dont mind them being in, but they probably should not have been. I dont think its as clear a case as Persona 4 Golden. While its the same story line, it also comes with all the general changes they made fom gen 2 to gen 4, which were a lot. I also dont mind them getting this far because they were the only Pokemon representation in the bracket. They represent how good Pokemon was at the beginning of this generation.

Its a huge shame that the more casual approach recent Pokemon games have had come at the expense of the quality that fans loved from Platinum to Black 2 and White 2. Pokemon is definitely a victim of its own popularity. Quantity matters more these days. Its more important for them to spit out new entries constantly than to give us games that feel polished and good.

Im sure that only one Pokemon game appearing is a decision made to have a more diverse bracket. Its the absolute biggest confirmation that Allen wanted variety regardless of whether or not a series cap at exactly two games was put in place. The Pokemon fans were split sure, and it hurt nominations sure, but no way one of them then took a #3 seed while the others saw less nominations than Baba is You and Subnautica (no disrespect to either). Theres just no way.

For some random trivia, HGSS being the one to get the most nominations and therefore be chosen to represent the series, means that Gold and Silver and their remakes have appeared in every single game contest to date. If you count HGSS as the same game, its the only game to accomplish this because two of our five contests have been Game of the Decades. It sure lucked out being the representant both now and in 2004 where it was the only Pokemon game in the bracket.

The way things are going now, Pokemon wont be worth much in a decade. The new games anyway. Hopefully they find some middle ground, but as long as we all buy whatever they put out, and I shamefully will, then they can care less and less about polishing their games.

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Quarter-Finals Day 37
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 68.33%
Mass Effect 2 31.67%

Prediction Percentage 64.65%

The fifth match in the contest and Breath of the Wild once again easily achieves the doubling but still declined in percentage from the previous round. This time the oracles actually underestimated a bit, but I guess what we underestimated was Dragon Quest. The Witcher 3 does its best to look impressive each round and it does, but its just clear every time that Breath of the Wild has a match that even a solid rally from The Witcher 3 would not put it near Breath of the Wild. Fortunately, the second chance bracket being an oracle type of challenge meant that we had reason to follow a match like this.

Mass Effect 2 is just happy to be here. It achieved everything it could hope for by winning its division and breaking 30% today was what it could have hoped for. Its a clear step ahead of GTAV and a clear step below the rest of the #1 seeds, so its a good choice for something to be fed to Breath of the Wild. It had already entertained us plenty up to this point.

Mass Effect as a franchise is a done deal now, so its great to see that we fondly remember the second entry in the series. This was the game that made it as big as it was. Remember how much stronger Mass Effect was in 2010 than in 2009 because this game had come out? How much better Shepard looked after this game came out? Its fantastic. They really nailed what they were trying to accomplish. I mean, the first one is good, but this is the one that really caught us.

The series has been through a lot since then. The third game came out to a very mixed reception among fans. I personally love most of it, but I agree with the common critique of the story not being rounded off properly. DLC fixed some issues, but fixing things through DLC doesnt redeem everything. They still dropped the ball a bit then. Andromeda came out years later to completely kill the series though. A huge shame they couldnt create another fantastic trilogy, but what can you do. At least Mass Effect 2 having success today proved that the series reached our hearts back then and despite almost coming out in the previous decade, we showed that respect 10 years later.

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Quarter-Finals Day 37
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 59.61%
Xenoblade Chronicles 40.39%

Prediction Percentage 28.79%

Except for the Breath of the Wild matches, this was the least exciting match of the second chance challenge. Not a single serious bracket had the winner of division 4 beating the winner of division 3. It doesnt matter what permutation of Ultimate, Odyssey, P4G and Xenoblade we had today, the upper game would win easily and prepare itself for the biggest SFF slaughter in a long time.

Xenoblade did better than we expected of it though, about 3%. Its definitely better than almost all of us gave it credit for before the contest, but I think it got a bit too much credit today. Ive praised the game a lot this contest and I personally love it, but lets take a step back here. The idea was that Ultimate SFFd Xenoblade today and therefore Xenoblade was likely better than this indirectly. An idea which Im not personally a huge fan of, because that doesnt really consider the bandwagon Xenoblade was on at this point quite enough.

No matter the size of whatever bandwagon Xenoblade might have had already, it certainly was on one now. Xenoblade getting to this point of the contest was the biggest surprise judged by prediction percentage by a good amount. Thats the main material used for making a bandwagon. This reminds me a lot of the Mario vs Charizard match 10 years ago where Mario won by a good bit below 55-45 because Charizard was on a huge bandwagon by that point and had used a game release to each that point. Its a good comparison because except for L-Block, Draven and Undertale matches, Charizard winning a 1/8 final match is the only match ever to have a lower prediction percentage than Xenoblade going so. Back then everyone knew Mario would have beat Charizard by more than that under normal circumstances.

People didnt exactly discard the idea of Xenoblade being on a bandwagon as much as they didnt believe it mattered more than SFF. At least many felt that way. I disagree with this and I believe the stats overestimates Xenoblade because of it. Why are were so sure that there was SFF here again? Im sure its partly so that some part of the x-stats look better, like Three Houses being better than Awakening for instance, but theyre covered up by layers of rallies and SFF matches on top of the uncertainties that come with it to begin with. Regardless of how you adjust here, something will look weird. Its like that when were this late in the contest. Fixing one thing here will just break something else.

Instead of looking at the x-stats, Ill look at this match in itself and say I just dont really think Ultimate would SFF Xenoblade by much if any amount. Sure, Xenoblade is a Nintendo game represented in Smash the Nintendo hierarchy doesnt reach that far out. Its mostly the first party titles and characters that work that way and even those can divert from the norm. Whats mostly consistent is the SFF between the strongest Zelda, Smash and Mario things. Metroid is often like that too but has shown resistance before. Lets bring up that Mario vs. Charizard match again. Does anyone think that had SFF? Pokemon has often been immune to Nintendo SFF. I dont see why Xenoblade should be all too much different. At the very least, we should be open to the possibility.

In any case, itll be very interesting to see Xenoblade back in the contests in the future. It was a lot stronger this time and next time it will have a Switch release to help it as well. Its definitely the biggest outlier in our top 8 games, but division 4 was almost certainly going to be the division to give us that from the start. Cheers to Game of the Year 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and soon 2020.

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It's certainly possible, but I don't think we can exclude the possibility of both TLoU and Batman being weaker.

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Quarter-Finals Day 38
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 56.53%
Persona 5 43.47%

Prediction Percentage 39.23%

This match had been hyped a lot throughout the contest, a lot more than it should have. The Witcher 3 looked like a clear favorite to the finals every passing round, but Persona 5 proved to be strong and thats all it needed to do for people to feel like it had a chance. Most people took The Witcher 3 to win rather easily, but Persona 5 had a vocal minority of people believing it could do this and a large group of people hoping it could.

The fans are incredibly passionate about their game. A few times so passionate it annoyed me which is unusual, but at times it was borderline obnoxious. It seemed like Persona 5 could only do well. I see the franchise mentioned as the star of the contest often, and I mean, Persona 4 Golden impressed sure, but the fifth one? It did good, but when something does exactly like almost everyone expected you to every single round and that is completely inline with pre-contest expectations, then Im not going to call that star of anything.

The most annoying part was that it was praised every single round as if it exceeded any expectations. People were thinking it would be a challenge for Witcher 3 to get out of this match. Witcher 3 looked overly dominant every round and it was only enough for people to accept it was the favorite today despite, you know, being the guru favorite to win this match. You didnt see Dark Souls or Skyrim treated that way. Witcher 3 won this match easily despite Persona 5 rallying a bit and the reaction was that Persona 5 looked so impressive going out despite not living up to the expectations of challenging Witcher 3 at all and looking like the weakest of the division winners in this half of the bracket. There were so many claims that both games here were better than the two in the next match and that this match would be closer than the semi-final. Being happy your favorite games does well and hoping they do better is everything these contests are about, and thats cool, but lets not go from there to acting like Persona 5 did anything we didnt think it would.

Alright, with that out of the way, lets switch to positive thoughts. I hope you all know that Im targeting a small but loud group here. Persona 5 deserves a lot of respect for how far it advanced the franchise and for how good a game it is. Its pretty clearly a top 8 game in the bracket and thats far from where it used to be. It has moved out of obscurity and placed itself as a top franchise with the latest game being a huge success. Now that aspect of it is impressive.

The passionate fans made as big an attempt as they could. From when the match began, Persona 5 rallied full force. It looks to be around 600 votes give or take by the end of the match, but it seemed like full force at first. On top of that, Persona 5 has a fantastic board vote and Witcher 3 does not, so the opening minutes were entertaining. When the match opened, Persona 5 stormed out the gate leading big time and it kept the lead for a few minutes. Then they were tied basically the rest of the time until the freeze. Witcher 3 would gain next update, but after that it stood still for some updates. The board vote was definitely still in full effect. Witcher 3 made two decent jumps at the :30 and :35 updates, and it this point it seemed like the board vote and rally rush was over and that Witcher 3 would rise to heaven.

I made that claim myself in the stats topic. The next thing that happened was the opposite. Persona 5 cut from 83 to 61 and suddenly I looked stupid lol. You can imagine you something like the stats topic reacted to such an upside judging by some of the earlier paragraphs here, Im sure, but it looked like there was hope at that point if you thought the rallied could be kept up. Then Witcher 3 doubled its lead next update and that was the match. Witcher 3 rose a lot from there, especially once rallies stopped being effective and people realized victory for Persona 5 was out of the question.

Im excited to see the Persona games in future contests. Im not sure theres much point of anything before the fourth one returning. We had high expectations for the third one in 2015 and it completely failed to live up to them. Persona 5 especially will be fun to see in the regular field again. I really hope Atlus can keep up the level of quality. Its impressive how large a jump theyve done with every game up until now, hopefully that continues.

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Of course they can keep it up. There is not a bad Atlus game in the last years.

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to be fair to the people that were hyping up Persona to have a chance in this match, no one expected Witcher 3 to be such an insane monster. it might legitimately be close to top 10 in an all time bracket.

Oh I mean it was a cool upset pick before the contest.

But the chance was dead by the time the match happened.

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Quarter-Finals Day 38
Dark Souls 47.32%
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 52.68%

Prediction Percentage 35.31%

The final interesting match of the contest. Dark Souls pulling off the upset here had been hyped for a long time. First it was clear that Skyrim wasnt getting past Witcher, but then it looked like it might not even get past here for a while. If Skyrim didnt tear apart Pokemon HGSS like it did, Dark Souls might have been the favorite today, at least it would have had more supporters I think. It did still have people supporting it and I doubt people felt safe picking Skyrim.

The match delivered for a while. Dark Souls and Skyrim have both had pretty awful board votes, although Dark Souls did better against Metal Gear Solid V and The Last of Us. It would be interesting to see which game had the worst one. Skyirm was the safe bet because it a lot more throughout the day than Dark Souls did, but only time would tell.

The match was basically tied for the first five minutes. Next update Skyrim jumped up to a 51-vote lead in what could have been in, but Dark Souls had a lot more fight in it. Dark Souls that back all the way down to 15 and then they stayed there for a bit. The lead would at no point change, but Dark Souls made a push that made it seem like it would a lot of times. Skyrim quickly rose to near 100, but Dark Souls cut it down to near 50 again. Skyrim takes it all back and more in a single update and Dark Souls cuts most of it away again. That was basically the match. It took Skyrim more than three hours to finally take off, until then Dark Souls kept the lead below 100 for a long time.

If the Persona 5 rallies mattered, they were probably in favor of Dark Souls, but its hard to tell due to the rallies being the most affective in Skyrims worst hours. Skyrim interestingly took off the quickest with the morning vote. The match ended up being fairly close, but Dark Souls didnt really ever manage to make a match of it despite giving hope a few times in the first hours.

This match eliminated the COVlD-19 guru bracket, which had eliminated lots of people and would win if Dark Souls could reach the finals. It was later revealed to be made by Polycosm, who managed to make a better bracket with the alt despite having Skyrim winning today in his own one. There were talks about whether entering twice should have any punishment, because its not actually allowed. Poly hadnt imagined the alt would be one of the last brackets standing, it ended up getting more attention than anticipated. I dont think anything should be done about it, other than declaring second place the winner had the alt actually won. As long as it doesnt become a thing, it was fine for once, it entertained a lot of us. It would also be today that it was perfectly clear azuarc would win since the last three matches really werent in much doubt.

Skyrim would end up redeeming itself a whole lot and do as thought of it, although nothing to do about The Witcher 3 being leagues ahead of what was expected of it. Dark Souls also looks very good here, even if it didnt win. Its hard to determine exactly how it would compete with the big Switch games not named Zelda, but it certainly proved that its seeding was deserved. The game had come a long way, had major influence on the decade as a whole and is just really good. Respected by casuals and hardcore gamers alike, it would not only do well itself, but FromSoftware looks really good and hopefully they keep the pace up. Dark Souls will be fun to see back in a regular contest because its a lot stronger than 2015 indicates, hopefully the contest title didnt do much of that!

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Tomorrow will be the day this finishes! Yes, that's a promise. Three matches left, a bonus match and the post-contest thoughts, all coming tomorrow.

A month and a day after I begun, which is faster than the contest went even without considering the break, so all is good. That was the pace I wanted to have. Faster would have been fine, but this is all good too.

I'll update the wiki once I'm done, but I have a deadline the 19th, so probably not before then.

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I remember people saying I should have entered the Guru contest. Maybe next time?

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Yeah, you would have been alive until that match, which is very impressive! It takes a minute to enter. You just need to have the winner in your signature for a minimum of two weeks and dedicate a nomination to the guru winner in the next contest.

Only five people were alive after that match and three of them did not have BotW winning.

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Semi-Finals Day 39
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 67.76%
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 32.24%

Prediction Percentage 48.81%

This is the sixth out of seven rounds and Breath of the Wild has still managed to double everything in its path so far. Granted, this is a bad case of SFF, but it still just shows how absolutely dominant Breath of the Wild is. Weve seen Ocarina of Time brutally kill other Nintendo games in similar fashion before, so it shouldnt be a huge surprise to anyone, even if we did predict the match a bit lower than this. For our first solo match of the day, its rather anti-climactic and the prediction percentage is sky high for a semi-final.

Breath of the Wild had started being hurt by its own popularity at this point. The power hour was by huge lengths its worst time of the day. I mean, Smash usually has a good time there, but this was rather insane. Ultimate was above 40% the whole time until the freeze happened, then it lost almost 5% the next update. It continued to decline the whole day until Breath of the Wild was well above the doubling. Its incredible to think this was somehow the worst performance for our contest winner so far.

Breath of the Wild has the anti-votes, but it also has the votes from the people who look at the contest title. Ultimate is such a huge game, but when people read Game of the Decade, they think of what games have been inspirational and innovative while simultaneously being top quality. Ultimate is only the latter of those things. Its why its performances havent looked as dominating as you could expect. Im sure it doesnt do as badly as this under normal circumstances ether.

Ultimate absolutely deserves to be here though. It doesnt matter that it didnt win as many awards, its a popularity contest first and foremost and Ultimate is just really good. I dont think were appreciating quite enough what we have right now. The everyone is here deal is huge, we might never see a game be such a huge celebration of gaming again and Im sure its part of the reason Sakurai is doing a second fighters pass, other than simply being forced to do it. Lets get as many things into this game as possible, we might never have them all together again. A game that makes us fight as Mario, Link, Samus, Pikachu, Snake, Cloud, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Joker, Banjo & Kazooie, Simon Belmont, Ryu, Dragon Quest Hero, Terry Bogard and every other Nintendo character you can think of on top of the ones I mentioned sounds like something out of impossible not too long ago. Remember how crazy everyone went when Snake was released. People have run out of real suggestions for Nintendo characters at this point and that company has been with us for the lifetime of the industry. The roster is insane, lets appreciate that.

It wouldnt be good on that alone, of course. The game has basically perfected what it is, and thats a huge part of the reason why its not as innovative as the rest of the games getting far in ther bracket. Melee was still the biggest competitive scene when Smash 4 was the most recent one, thats no longer the case, Ultimate surpassed it. The game sold phenomenally too. Its one of the most perfect games for what its trying to be.

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okay next page

I thought I had posted the other semi-final already.

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Semi-Finals Day 40
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 55.20%
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 44.80%

Prediction Percentage 21.57%

The very hot upset pick which looked to be the favorite since the first round and grew basically every round since then finally happened. As it looked like, The Witcher 3 would have little trouble beating Skyrim to secure its spot in the final match of the contest, a feature it by all means deserved to achieve.

The match was never truly in doubt, but both games today had had significantly bad board votes up until this point for whatever reason. On top of the fight for the spot in the finals, theyd also fight for who had the worse board vote. It turned out Witcher 3 won both of those. Skyrim lead for a very short moment, but Witcher 3 couldnt close the match at first. It was only 15 votes ahead at the freeze and Skyrim managed to cut that down to 6 at the next update. Witcher 3 pulled that up to 13 again and then basically doubled its lead for a couple of updates as it rose to the easy victory we all thought it would have.

It surprises me that Witcher 3 has such an awful board vote that it could do to Skyrim what Skyrim had done so far. Its pretty clear to me that the board has a lot more respect for Witcher 3 than for Skyrim and while most of us favored Skyrim before the contest, Im sure everyone had Witcher 3 in their second chance bracket, which would be the one alive at this point. A lot of us went perfect there. I suppose Witcher 3 does best in Europe, but even so, this seems weird to me.

Theres a possibility that Witcher 3 SFFd Skyrim a bit here. Theyre both from the same genre and played by the same people where Witcher 3 is viewed as having evolved on a lot of things Skyrim did. Skyrim is already third in the x-stats before that SFF so it certainly ended up looking better than it seemed at first. Ultimate and Super Mario Odyssey were SFFd to a point where we cant tell how theyd do against Skyrim, but we thought that before the contest too. In the end, Skyrim managed to look basically as good as most of us thought, its just that Witcher 3 boosted from a variety of different things. The Bethesda anti-voting exists, but it seems minimal enough, I suppose it doesnt hurt Skyirm a lot. It wasnt an issue then.

Its no coincidence that the Game of the 2010s came down to these two open-world games facing another open-world game. Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3 and Skyrim are the pinnacle of a genre that has largely dominated this decade. Not only has the most popular games been huge overworld games you can spend hundreds of hours in, games have been criticized for being linear more than ever before.

Skyrim deserves a lot of that praise. Maybe it isnt the best of the genre at the end of the decade, but it sure influenced it the most. Open world games would not have been as big today if Skyrim hadnt existed, thats for sure. It could only underperform relative to expectations this contest, but perhaps next contest it will be an underdog instead and can surprise us. Its impossible to tell if well know more of the next Elder Scrolls game then, but well certainly see Skyrim again.

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