(8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (9)Tales of Symphonia 2015

Ulti's Analysis
This was our first close match this contest, though it was hardly some barn-burner and was honestly decided very early. This contest was pretty lacking in photo finishes, but really you can't expect insanely close finishes when tens of thousands of votes are out there. We were just spoiled back in the day.

Anyway, this was the part of the match where Tales of Symphonia got to do its seasonal choke job, and for whatever reason people thought Tales could win this match. Not only was it against FREAKING Mario, not only was it not DAT TOP OPTION in a debated closely-seeded match, not only has Tales proven time and again it doesn't win anything, but it was a JRPG against another JRPG on the exact same system. Tales was fighting very uphill before this match began, and honestly it making this a match at all was an accomplishment.

The prediction percentage lined up with bracket voting likely giving Paper Mario its early lead in the match, and 30 minutes in it had a lead of 200 with the percentages hovering around 55-45. From there Tales treated us to one of those matches where the numbers looked much closer than the actual match suggested. Tales bled percentage and Tales made some minor cuts here and there, even slowly bleeding 100 votes off the lead overnight, but when the morning vote favored Mario, that was that. Match over. Not that we would have to wait long for our first "HOLY SHIT" match of this contest, which of course involved Mario yet again because that's what he does.

The weird thing about this match is I honestly do feel like Tales wins if the seedings were reversed, but it's Tales of Symphonia's destiny to job out in these things. It's like watching Clockwork in competitive MvC2. He's fun to watch, but you know he's going to lose.