(1)Sephiroth vs (8)Vincent Valentine 2010

Ulti's Analysis
Shut up, Vincent's picture is awesome.

A lot of people expected Sephiroth to completely SFF Vincent into the ground here, and only HOCHI, CONTEST GOD was smart enough to hype Sephy not breaking 70% or so. Which is fine, but no one in their right mind expected Sephiroth to struggle to break 60%.

This isn't Sephiroth's failure to SFF Final Fantasy 7 or even Square characters, either. He's done it in the past, quite often, with great results: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1367 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1771 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2920 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3291 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3299

2920, the 4way with Sephiroth, Mario, Link and Vincent is especially noteworthy. Yes Vincent was Last Place Factor'd, but saying Vincent wouldn't have done much better without another FF7 character in that poll is ridiculous. Regardless, Vincent scored 24% on Sephiroth in that poll. Auron and Tifa have had similar "I'd do way better if there wasn't a Sephy in the way" moments.

Now Vincent legitimately holds Sephy at 60% for awhile (before Sephiroth pulls away for a MASSIVE AND CONVINCING 62.66% win) and suddenly Seph can't SFF other FF7 characters? Not buying it. This goes far beyond SFF or rSFF or whatever else.

This is simply, and very effectively, massive anti-voting. Final Fantasy 7, Cloud and Sephiroth have all entered Master Chief territory. It used to be FF7 would get anti-voted early in a cute way before the godstomp. It's not like that anymore. The anti-votes are so massive that they're a part of FF7's growing weakness. Once you're in Master Chief territory, there's no leaving it. FF7 is still very strong, but it's getting weaker and weaker every year. If anything, 4ways hid this fact. If we get another game contest, FF7 could underperform expectations by a lot.

As a more immediate effect, this was Sephiroth growing old right before our eyes. He's done. And what's sad is this wasn't close to how bad it would get regarding Sephy failing to do well against FF7 characters -- also, you can imagine how nuts the Missingno > Sephiroth hype got after this debacle.