Board 8 > Character Battle X Contest Analysis Crew - Part 9

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm still not convinced Joker with Brawl would beat Claire Redfield with a proper pic. I think she just barely passes the generic Smash Bros character test.

Would have been enough to beat what she got this contest though.
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

I'm glad we now know years in advance who the most overrated pre-contest character will be.

yeah Zelda LOL
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this does kinda feel like master chief in 2007, now that i think of it
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Master Chief in 2008 was still pretty good

But at the clip we get contests, it'll be more like Master Chief in 2010
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good to see link's rival keep it competitive lmao

LeonhartFour posted...

literally Joker in Smash Bros. lawl

ugh first thought was literally "a month too late"
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Master Moltar posted...

good to see link's rival keep it competitive lmao

LeonhartFour posted...

literally Joker in Smash Bros. lawl

ugh first thought was literally "a month too late"

There have been 19 zelda games released since FF7 was released (according to wikipedia, i've not played a zelda game). Its embarrassing for the contest that Cloud has made it so far tbh. Hes not been a main character in a game for nearly 22 years now.

LeonhartFour posted...

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

I'm glad we now know years in advance who the most overrated pre-contest character will be.

yeah Zelda LOL

Just wait until Ganon is #3.
As the votals continue to decay, it might happen !

Interesting comparison for Snake/Samus and Zelda/Mario:

If Sephiroth = Sonic, Mario gets 52.02% on Snake

Some people have considered Sephiroth to be the weakest Noble Niner, but this comparison shows there isn't too much room for Sephiroth to be weaker than Sonic while making sure Mario is still stronger than Snake. This also has implications for Zelda/Mario as Snake/Zelda were pretty much equal. If Samus does outperform that projection, it would likely support the idea of rSFF in Samus/Mario.
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LOL Sonic
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SlugSh0t posted...

Crono projected to beat MM based on today's cloud performance..he might even go up a good deal more in the night.

Only if you assume zero or little SFF in Link vs Pikachu.

LusterSoldier posted...

Interesting comparison for Snake/Samus and Zelda/Mario:

If Sephiroth = Sonic, Mario gets 52.02% on Snake

Some people have considered Sephiroth to be the weakest Noble Niner, but this comparison shows there isn't too much room for Sephiroth to be weaker than Sonic while making sure Mario is still stronger than Snake. This also has implications for Zelda/Mario as Snake/Zelda were pretty much equal. If Samus does outperform that projection, it would likely support the idea of rSFF in Samus/Mario.

Or in Tifa/Seph.
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This match having higher votals than usual makes me wonder how representative of stats it actually is.

I mean matches used to have wildly varying vote totals back in the day when our vote totals were high

this isn't even that much of an anomaly
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Crew Predictions: 122/140

Crew Prediction Challenge:

Monika: 119
transience: 118
Kleenex: 114
Leonhart: 113
Guest: 110

Crew Accuracy Challenge: transience gets the point for Snake, and Leonhart gets the point for Samus.

transience: 35
Guest: 33 (BetrayedTangy, SuperNiceDog (4), pjbasis, garetha200 (4), ZenOfThunder, Ranticoot (2), Hbthebattle (2), NowItsAngeTime, spooky96 (3), RoseChevalier, Lopen (2), paulg235 (3), DoctorJimmy133, Janus5k, BT, TsunamiXXVIII, ctesjbuvf (2), MetalmindStats (2))
Kleenex: 30
Monika: 22
Leonhart: 21
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@nokillingmoths Cloud is in all Dissidia games you know. And in some mobile games. Yeah he isn't the Hero but you can't say that he isn't in any games.
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Safer_777 posted...

@nokillingmoths Cloud is in all Dissidia games you know. And in some mobile games. Yeah he isn't the Hero but you can't say that he isn't in any games.

I didn't say he wasn't.

Sorry I thought you said he wasn't in any game. FF 7 remake will remedy everything! For real!
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He's a main character in the Dissidia games. Cloud and Sephiroth get top billings in the credits.
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Lopen's Unofficial Analysis x1

Honestly the possibility of a Zelda upset here is real. We're seeing what Link is doing to Cloud here. High 50s on Tifa in this environment probably isn't super impressive after all. Snake being stronger than Samus isn't totally out of the question, so a narrow win over Snake might make her on Samus's level.

But I prefer to ignore that result, just look at Mario vs Samus, and intuitively just think Samus is probably still slightly above Zelda's paygrade and leave it at that. For as poor as Samus has historically been in SFF situations, Zelda has been no better really. So while I expect Zelda to hold up fine because signs are she will based on how she's been doing and Mario vs Samus, I don't expect her to be a threat to win. If you want to upset Mario go with Samus on the runback.

Mario with 54.04%
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Legends Bracket: Round 3 Zelda vs. Mario

Monikas Analysis

Zelda
Legends Round 1 - 50.32% vs. Solid Snake
Legends Round 2 - 56.45% vs. Sonic the Hedgehog

Mario
Legends Round 1 - 59.25% vs. Sephiroth
Legends Round 2 - 51.42% vs. Samus

This is kind of interesting. Marios looking like a top 3 dude, but the one franchise thats been able to keep Mario in line is Zelda. Like Ive said before, Zelda is no Link, but shes not all that far off from him anymore. Nintendo hierarchy has always been Link > Mario > rest, but Zeldas thrown all sorts of contest traditions out the window this contest so far. She broke the Noble Nine, but can she break the Hierarchy?

I dont think so. I would still take Samus over Zelda, and while Samus came very close, she still could not beat Mario. Zelda also doesnt look indirectly stronger than Mario, as I would take Mario to beat Snake and Sonic by a little bit more than she did.

Zelda wont get SFFed hard here, so she should put up a respectable number.

Monikas Voting Tip of the Day: Okay, everyone! It's time to......I'm just kidding. I just used to really like saying that for some reason. Ahaha!

Monikas Prediction of the Day: Mario 54%

...That's my advice for today! Thanks for listening~
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transiences Analysis

I'm watching Link annihilate Cloud here, far worse than has ever been done before, and am slowly replaying the entire contest in my head, kind of verifying my assumptions. After all, Link is to Cloud as Zelda is to Squall (or Aeris) now, which kinda makes sense.

Is this a case of Zelda characters being absolutely unreal, or Final Fantasy VII just being even worse than I thought?

My preexisting conception of this contest -- and this goes back to pre-contest -- is that Link is untouchable, Mario and Samus are 2 and 3, and Cloud/Snake/Seph/Crono are a tier below that. Obviously I didn't see Zelda coming but it was tough to see her jumping into the stratosphere.

But what if it's actually worse than that? What if Mario and Samus only look good because Final Fantasy VII sucks? What does it say about Crono that Link can destroy Cloud like this? Maybe Snake can still beat Mario -- and if that's true, what about Zelda? If FF7 sucks and Zelda reigns supreme, maybe we're in for the worst possible timeline.

I can't pick Zelda over Mario. There's too much hierarchy there for my tastes, even though Zelda will always be higher than Mario on the game/series hierarchy. But in the last 24 hours, I've at least acknowledged that it's conceivable that Zelda takes that newfound Zelda power and just goes to town on Mario and we end up with a hilariously pathetic Link/Zelda final. It's possible that Zelda runs into the king of Nintendo and just gets demolished, but more likely she holds up and puts up a pretty respectable performance. This shouldn't be a good match by any metric but I'm super interested to see how it goes and what it means for the rest of the contest.

transience's prediction: Mario with 54.67%

Leonharts Analysis

Heres the next big test for Zelda. Shes passed every one with flying colors thus far, but how will she fare against Mr. Nintendo himself? Mario showed a bit of vulnerability against Samus, which makes me think Zelda will hold up very well here, even if she doesnt win. She might have built up a bandwagon at this point from all these big wins. Its just hard for me to envision Mario outright losing this, but it would sure make Squall and Snake look great if he did! I dont really know how to analyze it beyond this because weve never seen Zelda at this level before and were still not totally sure exactly how strong she is.

Leonharts Vote: Zelda

Leonharts Prediction: Mario with 53.85%
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Kleenexs Analysis

Stranger things have happened, right? Zelda has looked insane this contest. Completely stomping all over her main bracket division, going even with (and beating) Snake, and then embarrassing Sonic. Does she have a shot here? Probably not. I think Mario likely invokes some HIERARCHY in this match and puts a damper on Zeldas great run this year. The fact that she was only barely able to beat Snake (who Im pretty sure gets thrashed by Mario at this point), makes this a bit too much of a long shot. That being said, Mario did look somewhat vulnerable against Samus last round. Zelda isnt at Samuss level, but who knows. If she gets some momentum behind her after these last few wins, I wouldnt be surprised by anything at this point. Im just not banking on it for the purpose of this writeup.

Kleenexs Prediction: Mario with 54%

Guests Analysis - spooky96

This is an extremely interesting match. Zelda's numbers have been extremely impressive this year - mid 60s on Aerith & Squall and going 50-50 with Snake is one of the biggest boost I've ever seen for any character. While Mario's 59% on Sephiroth is still more impressive, there's no way Mario's having an easy match here and I'm sure no one would be surprised if Zelda managed to beat Mario as well, as pre-contract, and even now, you could argue that Cloud/Snake/Mario are #2 (+Zelda now) on GameFAQs. It has been good to see that the strength gap between all the characters barring Link has been lessened this year. Any match which doesn't involve Link has the potential to be very close from this point on.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of faith in Mario either to be honest, he might have performed fine this year, but Zelda is just something else this contest. As I write this write-up I'm suddunely leaning towards Zelda, hoping that the chicks this year have performed really well this year, plus at least you can rally for Zelda, where are you gonna rally for Mario?

Zelda with 50.20%

Crew Consensus: Mario doesnt rescue this Princess.
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Nobody above 55%? Seriously? It is FREAKING MARIO! He either wins big, or loses to Link big or when things are tough he cheats votes. If he doesn't score at least 55% here I will admit that I am wrong. This is important!
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Safer_777 posted...

Nobody above 55%? Seriously? It is FREAKING MARIO! He either wins big, or loses to Link big or when things are tough he cheats votes. If he doesn't score at least 55% here I will admit that I am wrong. This is important!

The most recent match from Mario in this contest denies that.

Damn you are right! Forgot about that. Still if Zelda beats him it will be the more hilarious final match ever. Link VS Zelda. Damn!
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aw yeah im the high one. lets go king of sff
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SFF ain't what it used to be
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Safer_777 posted...

Nobody above 55%? Seriously? It is FREAKING MARIO! He either wins big, or loses to Link big or when things are tough he cheats votes. If he doesn't score at least 55% here I will admit that I am wrong. This is important!

IT'S FREAKING MARIO died the day Vivi was rallied against him. The argument shouldn't be brought up again.
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Okay, part of me feels like Cloud and Sephiroth weakening faster than Tifa and Aeris/th might not be so much a "female increase" of some sort or this site's demographic getting older and moving past edgy dudes - it was probably more that "dark and edgy" was the spirit of the 2000s when most of these contests took place, while now that isn't so much the case.

Even outside of video games, the 2000s featured a lot of "dark and edgy" superhero movies like Blade, Hulk, Daredevil, and The Dark Knight Trilogy. Nowadays every superhero movie that tries to be like that is destroyed by critics and seen as a mockery.

Aside from that, I did some research and there's an awful lot of speculation that Cloud in Kingdom Hearts 1 is meant to be a stand-in for Vincent Valentine, who might not have fit the tone of the game. That makes sense, since Vincent was being pushed pretty heavily by Square at the time, thus explaining why he's so much weaker now...but Square was giving Vincent all that publicity because "dark and edgy" was the in-thing at the time. Might also explain why characters like Squall, Auron, Dante, and Charizard are so much weaker now.

As an aside, part of me feels like Samus was so prone to SFF in earlier contests because she got a lot of contest strength from simply being recognizable to the vast majority of this site's demographic. Nowadays though a lot of her strength is legit.
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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Might also explain why characters like Squall, Auron, Dante, and Charizard are so much weaker now.

Putting aside the meat of your point a second I'm not convinced Auron and Dante are weaker. I think their peers just got stronger and left them behind. Aside from that Chun Li match (which feels like an anomaly more than anything) Ganondorf looked fine and seeing Zelda beast as she is I'd imagine he just got stronger. Auron on the other hand looked pretty much on par aside from the Geralt match
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rooting for zelda!
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this feels like a first 3 minutes kind of thing but who the hell knows anymore
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haha yes

go zelda
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I think I like Mario here in a close one.. but who knows
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Feeling good about Samus in the rematch.
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Feeling good about Samus in the rematch.

too bad Snake's going to beat them both first
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so zelda = mario = snake

and then there's samus, who may have been rsffed or not
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...

leon what does aerith get on sephiroth
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what does the boss get on ryu
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

...

leon what does aerith get on sephiroth

currently 46.39%
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btw the reason i am feeling good about SMAUS is that i think a good chunk of that is the smash hype, which probably favors zelda to mario

and we know who smash people will pick in samus vs. snake (and I'm betting samus vs. mario...!)
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sonic beats sephiroth with like 55% if my brain is guessing right here
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which means.. so does auron, and geralt gets like 49%

weird stuff, and thats not even counting the tifa match
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transcience posted...

sonic beats sephiroth with like 55% of my brain is guessing right here

How does he compare to crono/mm now?
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transcience posted...

sonic beats sephiroth with like 55% of my brain is guessing right here

Currently Sonic wins with 54.88% so you're pretty close!
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leon you may have missed my other bout with madness

what does the boss get on ryu
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

leon you may have missed my other bout with madness

what does the boss get on ryu

Currently 46.90%
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Snake will help save the stats by giving us non-hierarchy matches

Until then, lol
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So, how fucked is Samus?
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LeonhartFour posted...

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

leon you may have missed my other bout with madness

what does the boss get on ryu

Currently 46.90%

Thanks, that should take care of my madness for now.

....

....Okay last one until tomorrow maybe what does Link need on Zelda for Peach = Sephiroth.
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