(5)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (12)Xenogears 2015

[Ulti's Analysis
There was a decent denate pre-contest about this match, and for good reason. KOTOR's strength is nothing insane, but it is respectable. 40% on Vice City in 2004 is alright, because that's back when GameFAQs didn't give a toss about western RPGs. The 2009 round 1 loss where it got third place was just random bad luck. Any of those four games could have gotten anything between 1st and 4th place, and it was one of the closest things we'll ever see to 25/25/25/25 in a fourway poll. Then in 2010, it got to round 3 and put up 47% on Final Fantasy 9. Again nothing nuts, but respectable.

But Xenogears had never been in a fair poll. The GSC match in 2004 was back during the Pokemon anti-vote days and had to be run twice because of a glitch on day 1 where only registered users could vote (side note, the vote totals that way were trash and the people who want a registered-only contest to combat rallies are out of their minds, you would literally see every poll get like 10k votes). In round 2, it faced Final Fantasy 7, aka the literal worst opponent Xenogears could ever have. In 2009, it got the lite version and had Final Fantasy 8 in round 1.

The case could be made for Xenogears having hidden strength all these years, and I don't think those people were wrong even though Xenogears lost. KOTOR took an early lead, but then bled some percentage all day as Xenogears made various small cuts and stalls. The percentage bleed wasn't anything nuts, but 3% in the 50s is a lot different than bleeding only 3% when the higher game is in the 80s or 90s. It tells me that if the seedings were reversed here, Xenogears might have won.

Maybe one day, it'll actually get to win a fair match! We all know the GSC 2004 nonsense doesn't really count.