Board 8 > Character Battle X Contest Analysis Crew - Part 7

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But a topic is never actually finished.
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...

Delete me.
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*turns off B8*
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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7352

Our boy Alucard did it and beat Red in a close, but not all that close, match. Since Red held up alright here, it really does seem like this is pretty much Alucard boosting in strength, and some of the stronger characters from previous contests like Sora and Big Boss falling to the midcard.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7353

Dang and I thought Zelda/Squall was shocking, but this caught me more off guard. Bowser, despite looking worse than Kirby all contest, has no problem beating the puffball out of the contest for a second time. This seems to be a case of the Nintendo hierarchy at play. Weve seen Mario characters over-perform on other Nintendo characters before, so its not a new phenomenon. Maybe it could also be one of those rare cases of rSFF? Or maybe Bowsers just been stronger all along and we underestimated 2B, Charizard, and that entire top half of the division while Kirby's half was even weaker than we thought.

Crew Predictions: 102/116

Crew Prediction Challenge:

Moltar: 100
transience: 98
Kleenex: 94
Leonhart: 93
Guest: 89

Crew Accuracy Challenge: transience gets the point for Alucard.

Kleenex: 28
transience: 27
Guest: 26 (BetrayedTangy, SuperNiceDog (4), pjbasis, garetha200 (4), ZenOfThunder, Ranticoot (2), Hbthebattle (2), NowItsAngeTime, spooky96, RoseChevalier, Lopen (2), paulg235, DoctorJimmy133, Janus5k, BT, paulg235, TsunamiXXVIII)
Moltar: 21
Leonhart: 17
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Im a little bummed that were not taking this bracket to its logical conclusion, even though I like the legends thing.

Ganon/Pikachu
Alucard/Bowser
Zelda/Auron
Luigi(or Tifa)/Sephiroth

who wins this? Zelda?
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Pikachu of course
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I think Seph can still take that. Real interesting though. Zelda vs Sephiroth is the final I think
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I guess well at least get to see the first round of that in the losers bracket, assuming no N9 breaks, but yeah Id love to see a Zelda/Seph match.
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I guess we can probably put the pieces together, somewhat, based on the losers bracket. cause as good as these guys are, they are losers compared to the big kids.
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Slap a trigger warning on that OP because I'm getting flashbacks.
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Yeah, it'd be awesome to see this bracket finish. Oh well.
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so we're assuming Auron > Aerith, right?

which means we think Aerith/Geralt would probably be really close

if you assume Geralt = Aerith, Zelda currently beats Auron with 59.58%

so yeah you'd need Geralt to beat Aerith pretty solidly for Auron to even come close
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I wouldn't assume Auron > Aerith any more than I would Squall > Auron or Squall > Aerith

edit: who wins, Fox or Geralt? I'd pick Fox
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Aerith > Vincent still strikes me as a strange result, but at the very least, they'd be dead even.
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transience posted...

edit: who wins, Fox or Geralt? I'd pick Fox

I guess you'd take Fox assuming he has to be better than Bayonetta, Pac-Man, or Simon Belmont, but I'm not too sure this year. It feels like all the midcard Smash characters are one big jumbled mess this year and Fox has never been as strong as some think he should be.
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whew just finished my last writeup for a week

the winners bracket might be kind of confusing to keep up with in terms of match order and how many matches per day we're getting so we should probably post the schedule in here once we get closer to the contest resuming
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yeah, Fox feels like he should be a half step better than Simon at least, but I'm with you on everything being a big jumbled mess.

I usually can gauge inter-fanbase hierarchies, but I could make a 16 character Smash or Smash-adjacent midcarder bracket and get some wildly different results. something like Falcon, Fox, Ness, Simon, Ridley, Ike, Waluigi, Toad, KKR, Rosalina, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Wario, Dedede, Master Hand, Ken. yuck.
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The thing that I find most surprising thing about Geralt/Auron is how Geralt has utterly failed to improve his percentage for the past five hours.
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Auron is the first opponent Geralt has faced that has similar trends to him. All the others have been more day characters (if you assume Simon has trends more similar to a Nintendo character now)
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That makes sense, though it's funny to think how Simon and Bayonetta have become "Nintendo" just since the last contest.
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Well, even Alucard hasn't really been night-oriented this year.
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Just for fun, here's an SFF adjustment for Kirby/Phoenix in Division 4 that sets Ike equal to Ness. See what you guys think.

Bowser 50.00%
Kirby 46.14%
Charizard 43.45%
2B 41.81%
Terra Branford 41.02%
Phoenix Wright 39.21%
Ness 38.70%
Ike 38.70%
Shadow the Hedgehog 36.17%
Chris Redfield 33.78%
Joel 29.17%
Isaac 27.42%
Guile 23.49%
Gordon Freeman 22.61%
Estelle Bright 19.40%
Cayde-6 18.56%
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Those stats somehow look a lot more plausible than the ones we have, though I think saying Ike is equal to Ness is rating Ike a bit too highly.

Man 2B scores like 44% on Kirby right? What is going on?
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fantastic OP, this is as good as the Umineko year
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Tag
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Round 4: Division Finals Luigi vs. Tifa Lockheart

Moltars Analysis

Luigi
Round 1 - 77.47% vs. Miles Edgeworth
Round 2 - 61.63% vs. Frog
Round 3 - 69.65% vs. Miles Tails Prower

Tifa
Round 1 - 73.19% vs. Geno
Round 2 - 58.10% vs. Mewtwo
Round 3 - 50.18% vs. Mega Man X

Man, now this one is just as tough as Tifa/X was to me, and knowing how close that one turned out makes me think Im on to something here.

Before the contest, I had X beating both Tifa and Luigi. I actually thought Tifa would be Xs toughest challenge, as I felt she would still hold up pretty well in strength after all these years. Both of them are in that upper near-elite category for me.

Luigi though? I counted him out. Between him, Bowser, and Yoshi, I thought of him as the weakest. In terms of near-elites, I thought he was towards the bottom. He had already lost to Tifa way back in 2005. I struggled more with Tifa/X than the winner of that facing Luigi.

Well...I think I was wrong about that. Luigi has looked very good this contest. His performances in Round 1 and 3 are self-explanatory, and his number on Frog also looks very good if you think CT is stronger overall (and looking at Magus too, that seems to be the case).

After seeing the entire contest play out, Im thinking I was wrong about Luigi. Tifa and X are essentially equals, and do appear to be as strong as I figured they would be. The thing is, in this Nintendo boost year, I think someone thats pure Nintendo and pure Mario like Luigi has the slight edge here. History may repeat itself and Tifa beats Luigi again, but that was close last time, and this environment seems much more friendly to Luigi now.

Moltars Bracket: MMX (sad)

Moltars Prediction: Luigi 52%

transiences Analysis

You'd think by round 4 that I'd have a great handle on these two, but I just don't! I'm gonna start with crunching some numbers. Let's start with Luigi. It's hard to know what to do with the Tails match, but if it's legit, he should beat Tifa without too much trouble. Luigi's clearest metric is probably Frog. Frog is probably kinda close to Magus? I guess? Auron extrapolates out to 57% on Magus, and Luigi did 62% on Frog. Tifa's better than Auron by a few percentage points, probably. That makes them seem about equal, but there's a lot of guesswork there. I'm also more likely to give CT characters the benefit of the doubt this year because of its awesome 2015 performance.. but then, Geralt's currently working Auron down to a 53%ish win. Blah!

Tifa probably should have lost to MMX. That's not sour grapes or anything, it's just true - the rallying actually pushed the match out of being a great photo finish to being a fairly clear win in the last 30 minutes for Tifa. Match of the contest for sure, but it could have been better than that. Tifa's best clear performance has been the 58% on Mewtwo, which after Bowser's surprise win over Kirby looks pretty good. Then again, I don't trust Kirby. The numbers, they fail me here!

Luigi/Tifa is a fairly famous 2005 match, where Tifa put up a Cloud-like performance on Vyse and had us all lose our minds. It was kinda similar to how Zelda looks like Link this year (only Zelda's doing it to former top 15 characters). Anyway, after Vyse, Luigi came along post-Boost, put up 47% on her and brought everyone back down to earth as the Noble Nine lived another year.
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Logically, this match seems awfully similar to Zelda/Squall. Maybe not 63/37, but Luigi should probably be the favourite. Luigi/Tifa was close in 05, Nintendo is much better and Square is a little worse.. but yet, I still feel like this one might go the same way. Bowser faced Kirby in 2005 and got 52%... and faced him this year and got 54% despite Kirby having had a much better time since 05. Luigi could win, but I just feel better with Tifa for some reason.

transience's prediction: Tifa with 50.77%

Leonharts Analysis

Ive got Luigi in my bracket here and felt good about it, even as I was high on Tifa beating Mewtwo and Mega Man X. Ive felt that hes the second strongest Mario character for a while. Mario characters in particular have looked pretty strong this year, too, as were seeing Bowser polish off Kirby and Alucard making Peach retroactively seem very solid. If Luigi really is the second strongest Mario character, he probably should win this based on what weve seen from Square this year.

Yet Tifa (and Vivi, too) has been defying the trends this year. As every other notable Final Fantasy character seems to fall off, Tifa holds strong as a near elite (unless Mewtwo and Mega Man X are even bigger frauds than I thought!). As a comparison point, Im trying to think of who Id favor in a Luigi/Ganondorf match and a Tifa/Vivi match, and I feel more confident in saying Tifa would win her matchup.

The one element that gives me pause here is that Luigi/Frog result. Im not sure how to take it. It could mean that Luigis just not as strong as I thought, or it could mean that Chrono Trigger is just much stronger this year, but theres no way to know right now. I feel like there are fewer question marks about Tifas strength level than Luigis at the moment, but I still think his potential ceiling is higher, so Ill stick with him here (although why I would expect my bracket to be right when Ive gotten a grand total of 1 match correct this round so far is beyond me). Plus, we just saw a Mario character pull off a nonsensical result, so why not another!

Leonharts Vote: Luigi

Leonharts Prediction: Luigi with 50.50%
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Kleenexs Analysis

The fact that were not getting a rerun of the 2005 picture is a crime. Historically, Tifa has been stronger than Luigi. She barely squeaked by MMX last round, but I still think MMX is pretty good, so it doesnt actually look like Tifa has lost as much of some of her other FF7 brethren. But Luigi this year has looked like a monster. Im sure there was some SFF going on last round, but 70% on Tail is whew. (Plus if Luigi is a monster, it makes Frog look that much better, so please I need this).

This will probably end pretty close, but I think where Luigi gets a significant advantage is the fact that 1) hes going to destroy Tifa early on, and 2) his Euro vote isnt going to be as abysmal as MMXs. Unless we start rallying on hentai forums again, its probably going to be tough for Tifa to make up all the votes shes going to fall behind in that first hour or so. L is real 2018.

Kleenexs Prediction: Luigi with 53%

Guests Analysis - MetalmindStats

I really think Luigi can and will win this match, despite my sentiments in my Luigi vs. Frog write-up, calling him doomed against the Tifa/X winner with the rather low percentage he wound up scoring. Since then, Ive flipped into thinking that Frog and Magus have largely vindicated Chrono Triggers huge leap in 2015, and that Frog being about on par with Mewtwo is far from inconceivable given that and after Red and Charizards flops. It doesnt help Tifas case that she needed hentai rallies to beat a fellow near elite whos notably weak in the Eastern Hemisphere, not a flaw that Luigi shares. Given all these developments, Im back to putting full confidence in my bracket that has Luigi not just winning the match at hand, but even beating Sephiroth something hell need to win convincingly here to pull off.

Prediction: Luigi wins with 54.22%

Crew Consensus: Luigi comes out on top over Tifa.
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transcience's analysis posted...

Tifa probably should have lost to MMX. That's not sour grapes or anything, it's just true - the rallying actually pushed the match out of being a great photo finish to being a fairly clear win in the last 30 minutes for Tifa.

Worth noting that X had a pretty popular rally topic on reddit that was up for a longer time than Tifa's stuff. Tifa kinda stormed at the end but as KP pointed out Tifa was basically 50-50 with the registered vote which implies in a completely unrallied environment Tifa wins given FFVII usually does better with the anonymous vote (and Mega Man worse)
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time to make a comeback on Moltar
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there was a rally topic on r/finalfantasy too (by extha, which is hilarious). that match was so flat that I don't think you could even tell that there was a rally until the very end there.
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Yeah. The MMX topic was apparently popular enough to break into subscriber feeds though according to I think Zen, which gives it a bit more sway vs Extha's.

I find the registered vote numbers (which have hurt FF and helped Nintendo across the board) most compelling though rather than attempts at trying to compare rallies in any case. 5031 to 5029 MMX, a difference of literally 2 votes. I mean even unrallied it's probably really close-- not trying to claim X isn't even in it without them but yeah. Probably 50.5-49.5 Tifa or something.
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I've been going over the x-stats and for Division 1 they seem fine, but for Division 2 Master Hand and Noctis seem a fair bit lower than where one would expect given their pedigrees, and also Wario and Monika both seem a little high (judging by what I've heard about Monika, I can NOT for the life of me imagine her actually beating the protagonist of a GOTY-winning Final Fantasy), probably just Wario riding momentum from his two wins against Zero.
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Have we seriously gone from expecting the Tifa/X/Mewtwo winner to take the division to LOOEEEGEE being the favorite the day before the match because we now suspect everyone not Nintendo to be FRAUDS?
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Think Luigi is getting overestimated here. He hasn't put up any resembling a definitive performance. He blew out bad fodder, did worse on Frog than Bowser did, then SFFd a C tier Sonic character. I think people are mostly picking him because it's been an up year for Nintendo, which is reasonable, but I dont think Luigi himself has proved he's earned this much confidence.
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Luigi has the most Guru brackets (albeit only 6 more than X), and I'd guess probably the most site-wide brackets since he's the big casual guy and the 1 seed. Indeed I had Luigi in my bracket for a while before switching to X close to the end. Dude's looked strong last few contests, and still looks good this contest.

I like him here but that's mostly because of Nintendo boosting. Think like with X the early match is going to be brutal for Tifa, but a lot more here.
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I dont think he's done that impressively in recent contests either. Losing to Big Boss (even by LFF) isn't that inspiring.
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Lopen's Unofficial Analysis x2

Luigi vs Tifa
Have had Luigi > Tifa > MMX (> Mewtwo) in my bracket since the start. Haven't really had much reason to doubt it. Luigi hasn't really disappointed and I would put him above MMX in general, as Mega Man fans have proven they know the difference and don't just treat X as a Mega Man proxy. I expect not a commanding win but a comfortable one that even HENTAI RALLIES won't be able to stop.

Luigi with 52.88%

Sephiroth vs Ryu
Ryu is up to FIGHT but I think Sephiroth is going to be just a bit too much for him. Really the only way to humor Ryu winning here is to take Amaterasu's performance on Sephiroth as the most flattering, and have KOS-MOS at her peak strengths. I mean, this is maybe vaguely plausible if you take Chun-Li's performance vs Ganondorf seriously. I don't, however. Prefer Seph here but I'm voting Ryu because it's time he proved himself in the FIGHT. The answer lies in the heart of battle-- well Sephiroth unfortunately has the answer key and it was Masamune.

Sephiroth with 54.12%
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KamikazePotato posted...

I dont think he's done that impressively in recent contests either. Losing to Big Boss (even by LFF) isn't that inspiring.

I mean he barely lost and probably beats him by more than Kirby did the next round if you take Ness out

KamikazePotato posted...

but I dont think Luigi himself has proved he's earned this much confidence.

I mean Bowser hadn't either and yet...!
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also I partly picked Luigi because I expected Tifa to be the favorite

my instincts are just off this year
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Luigi went big on a halfway decent opponent and Tifa needed a rally to beat MMX. also, Zelda.

edit: also Bowser
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transience posted...

Tifa needed a rally to beat MMX.

I mean only because MMX rallied first

like the idea that Tifa couldn't have beaten MMX on natural strength is wrong
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they're obviously close enough that either can win on another day, but it's hard to deny that last hour
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but the idea that Tifa "needed" a rally to be able to beat MMX is a little misleading

she only needed one because he needed one
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The registered vs unregistered vote splits favor Tifa would win on that day in a neutral non rallied environment.

Obviously it isn't a convincing win but I don't think downplaying Tifa's win with "she had to rally" is giving an accurate account
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I dont think it does though. Tifas other matches are within 1% if you look at it. her r1 match is .1% off between registered and final percentage.

also, MMX didnt have big surges like Tifa did at the end, so if that was a rally, it was the worst one ever.

Im fine with letting go of Tifa needing a rally to win thanks to how close it was, but a counter rally, I dunno
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Well normal rallies aren't actually always dead obvious. MMX had some surges early. They just seemed to be "normal voting" because they were during times of higher voting but the match was well ahead of usual vote totals even before the last hour.
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MMX's rally started and peaked way earlier than Tifa's. The reason that Tifa surged at the end was because that's just when she started getting them, while MMX's had been exhausted long before then.

Also, the biggest reason people started posting Tifa rallies is because someone found the successful Mega Man X rally thread in the Mega Man reddit!
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Round 4: Division Finals Sephiroth vs. Ryu

transiences Analysis

This match is hard to rationalize. Seph and Ryu both had confusing starts to the last match and recovered fairly nicely, Ryu moreso than Seph. When you factor in results this contest and the totality of contest history, it's awfully hard to bet against Sephiroth. He's always been on a tier that Ryu can't touch. Ryu is our most consistent upper midcarder to elite dude ever, but Sephiroth is a contest god. A weird god, but still a league above anything Ryu could reasonably do.

But in reality, I'm honestly not sure what to expect. I could totally see Seph putting 60% on Ryu, because that's the kind of thing that Sephiroth does, or for Ryu to legit threaten him early and force a comeback after an hour or so en route to getting 47 or 48%. A legit Ryu win would shock me, but given this contest's results it wouldn't be impossible. It feels weird to write that.

Hey, it's the last match before a much needed writing break! Happy Thanksgiving guys, and may your second bracket be better than your first.

transience's prediction: Sephiroth with 54.46%

Leonharts Analysis

Whew, last writeup for a week! Ive seen some people hyping up Ryu > Sephiroth this year, but I never saw it and I still havent seen it. Theyve each put up similar percentages in the mid-60s to low-70s every round so far, but I think Sephiroths opponents have just been better than Ryus this year. Id love to be wrong and see Ryu be the first to beat a Noble Niner 1-on-1 for 24 hours, but I dont think hes up to the task this year. I think Ryu will put up a good fight and maybe even contend for the lead a little bit, but much like when he did the same thing against Sonic in 2004, hell gradually fade as the match goes along.

Leonharts Vote: Ryu

Leonharts Prediction: Sephiroth with 55.54%

Kleenexs Analysis

This could theoretically be a dangerous match for Sephiroth. Ryu is no scrub, and yadda yadda FF7 yadda yadda. But you know what? I think Seph is going to be fine. Hes actually impressed me the past few rounds, and really does recover nicely from that initial board vote. Ryu is stronger than any opponent Seph has faced so far, but none of Ryus performances have really shouted hey Im going to be Sephiroth to me. Hes still not at Sephiroth-level and nothing this contest has led me to believe that he has a real shot. Itll be close, but I expect Sephiroth to walk away from this one without too many scratches.

Kleenexs Prediction: Sephiroth with 55%

Guests Analysis - ctesjbuvf

This match has been talked about a bit pre-contest, but mostly just by people blindly looking to see Sephiroth have fallen a ridiculous amount from before, on the background of... I don't even know. I guested in another Sephiroth match this contest and as I said then, in such a crazy contest 2013 was, Sephiroth beating Kirby and Big Boss as he did was a fine result. He also good against Falcon regardless of what people like to admit.

Since the Cloud/Falcon match in 2010 proved to work fine, so let's use the same logic (funny how similar Cloud's 2010 division and Sephiroth's 2018 division is I guess), because Falcon and Ryu are both probably a little bit stronger. In 2010 Cloud almost doubled Ryu. Sephiroth will probably land about 60-40. I don't think it's unreasonable to think Amaterasu is just really good now.

Sephiroth - 60.96%
Ryu - 39.04%

Crew Consensus: Sephiroth perfects Ryu
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Moltars Analysis

Sephiroth
Round 1 - 70.28% vs. Albert Wesker
Round 2 - 64.93% vs. Captain Falcon
Round 3 - 61.37% vs. Amaterasu

Ryu
Round 1 - 68.44% vs. Lloyd Irving
Round 2 - 66.55% vs. Commander Shepard
Round 3 - 65.07% vs. KOS-MOS

Remember Ganondorf/Chun-Li? This should be like the grown-up version of that match. I dont think Ryu threatens Seph, but he should hold up just fine.

Moltars Bracket: Sephiroth

Moltars Prediction: Sephiroth 56%



Oh, youre asking what Im doing here by myself? Are you finally noticing me? Is that what it takes for you to remember me?

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Maybe its time for the facade to end.

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Load me.
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