(6)Kingdom Hearts II vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2010

Ulti's Analysis
The most even and fair match picture of the entire contest! (shut up, yoblazer)

This is the one match all contest I'm unable to wrap my head around. I mean know why this happened -- KH2 is what made Sora popular, "darker and more mature theme" that all the 13 year-old gothic wannabes want to imitate, Organization 13, more FF7 fanservice, the beginning of all Nomura's make-it-up-as-I-go storylines that people eat up because they don't know what a good story actually is and etc -- but I really thought nostalgia would come through here for the original. I'm probably in the minority here, but 1 was the much better game. The Disney elements were seamless instead of feeling shoehorned, the gameplay was much more interesting instead of 2's easymode skills and reaction abilities, the Gummi Ship stuff was better, and the Coliseum. I can't get over how badly 2 ruined that place.

But above all, Kingdom Hearts was Square's last great game. Every single new game since, for one reason or another, has not lived up to that A+ status from the 1990s. And I say this as someone who really likes FF13, but I won't be naïve and say the game matches up to the golden age. You'd think people would vote accordingly.

Then the match happened, and you could tell right away Kingdom Hearts was in for a world of hurt. It had brackets and battle picks and gurus behind it, and even then it couldn't do anything early on. Then for a little while KH2 hovered with this small lead with 1 making these dinky little comeback attempts. And every single time, 2 would go berserk for one update and start the whole process over again.

It stayed like this for awhile, then the ASV kicked in. Just for kicks, this was the score at 2:30 PM EST:

Kingdom Hearts 2 - 7028 [49.98%] Kingdom Hearts - 7033 [50.02%] Total Votes - 14061

The KH2 ASV wasn't as laughably dominant as Halo's, but it came close. To turn a 5 point match into getting well over 52-48 is crazy, and it proved who the stronger game among these two was with no doubts. This was no fluke match, as two Kingdom Hearts duel happened during the day, the series' best time. This match also went and shot down all those nostalgia arguments for Melee > Brawl, since Kingdom Hearts 2 won this match for all the same reasons Brawl would win the Smash duel. In retrospect it's good this match happened first, so that all us Melee fans were prepared accordingly in advance for what would be the worst match to ever happen.