(1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Legends Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
Good. Freaking. Hell. We all knew Link would be a monster this year, but this is just insanity. As we all know, Cloud won the very first match he had with Link. Link has since spent 15 years beating the ever-loving shit out of the dude in revenge. It's been brutal. Here are all of the Link vs Cloud matches leading up to this one, in order:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1365-tournament-semifinal-link-vs-cloud-strife

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1780-tournament-final-link-vs-cloud-strife

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2129-tournament-of-champions-semifinal-link-vs-cloud-strife

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2566-battle-royale-final

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2925-tournament-final-link-cloud-l-block-snake

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3306-contest-final-link-crono-snake-cloud

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3856-contest-final-link-vs-cloud-strife

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4571-final-rounds-semifinal-link-vs-ganondorf-cloud-vs-sephiroth

Their games have a similar history, too. Final Fantasy 7 won the very first match with Ocarina of Time, and has gotten its ass whipped ever since.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1659-division-final-final-fantasy-vii-vs-the-legend-of-zelda

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3508-contest-final-ffvii-zelda-lttp-zelda-oot-ffx

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3509-contest-bonus-final-fantasy-vii-vs-zelda-ocarina-of-time

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6181-best-game-ever-bonus-final-fantasy-vii-vs-zelda-ocarina-of

There are two correlations here. One, Final Fantasy has not retained its strength. I'll get more into this when discussing the second match these two had, but Square been dropping the ball for almost two decades, and while Nintendo hasn't been perfect and in fact went through a long period between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild where they were awful, Nintendo has been killing it since Breath of the Wild came out. That singular game changed everything with making the Zelda series open world, and when you add in Smash Ultimate the Nintendo dominance on this site is unmatched. We saw signs of this all throughout the contest (just look at all my writeups and search for the word "Smash"), and those signs all had to lead somewhere.

They led to Link breaking 60 fucking percent on Cloud. That is an absurd number to get on someone who may still be our site's #2 character. Cloud actually breaking 40% in the rematch is a minor miracle. That's how dominant Link was in this contest, and had 1998 never happened in the years contest, Link in this one would be our most dominant non-rally champion ever.

The other correlation here is that as GameFAQs has gotten more and more corporate and politically correct, it has gotten deader and deader and our vote totals have died. I want everyone to click on all of those poll links and just look at the vote totals. Now look at this one. It didn't even break 30,000 votes. Link himself had 30k by lunch time in most of those matches against Cloud. I have no interest in turning this into a politics discussion, but you have to be a company like Nike to survive going political in today's climate. GameFAQs has enough disadvantages as-is with intentionally staying obsolete as gaming went more and more streamlined and modernized. Going full leftist on top of that was just an idiotic move, and you see it in our vote totals. When you push enough people off of your site and constantly tell them they're free to leave, eventually they'll just leave. To the point, as vote totals have lowered, Zelda has retained strength. Cloud has not. It is that simple.

But I want to focus on vote totals a bit. We don't even have to go back that far. Only five years ago, this match happened: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5253-character-battle-ix-division-1-final-link-vs-shepard-vs

122,000 votes. The finals that year got 150,000 votes. Three years ago, this match happened: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6175-best-game-ever-day-39-semifinal-smash-bros-melee-vs

The final, featuring Zelda vs Undertale, got 157,000 votes. Now, our best matches get 30,000. That isn't just anti-rallying measures. That's us being on a site actively chasing people off.

As for the match, it was interesting in the same way a car crash is interesting. Seeing Link be this much of a badass, even with lowered vote totals, was one hell of s site to see. He was actually over 62% at one point, which is just nuts. Cloud only won like 10 updates all match. This was just an embarrassment, and this is with Cloud having Smash Bros support. Can you even imagine how bad this would have been had he never gotten announced for Smash 4 or got cut from Ultimate? Does Link break 65% if that happens? Man. This was just brutal. Cloud would get to redeem himself in a way, but that doesn't stop this match from being completely and thoroughly embarrassing for him.