(2)Aqua vs (15)Quiet 2018

Ulti's Analysis
Man do I love when the final match of round one is... simple and clean.

No?

...ahem.

There was some debate about this match pre-contest, because Aqua was clearly overseeded and people were banking on an unknown factor like Kingdom Hearts 3 hype. If it isn't Nintendo hype, it's unreliable. And this is Metal Gear Solid, weakened state or no. But that was pre contest. Any and all debate about this match ended very quickly when this abomination was uploaded to the web site.

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb10/128.png

Not that Quiet was strong enough to win this match anyway, but good hell. What even is that?

And this match wasn't due to Aqua being strong, either. I've played Birth By Sleep. Outside of Terra, that game is a pile of sewage and Aqua is a huge reason why. We could have avoided the entire laughable Kingdom Hearts plot if she would have just trusted Terra from the jump. We could have avoided it all. All of Tetsuya Nomura's pretentious drivel. All of the bad artwork. All of the belts. All of the EVERYONE IS XEHANORT garbage. Everything. Kingdom Hearts as a series was amazing for the original, pretty good for Chain of Memories, decent for 2, and pure trash afterwards due to Tetsuya Nomura being a complete idiot. The guy sucks at art. Of course he sucks at game design. He is the #1 reason for the current state of Square and I will never forgive him for it. We went from the 90s era of Square, where they could do no wrong, to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l65fmEZHUrM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO1Nay8VLWk

To say I was pumped up for the possibility of KOS-MOS beating this bitch's ass in round 2 was putting it lightly. I like Kingdom Hearts. I really do. But there are parts of these games that are so embarrassing that I'd rather get caught watching porn. I at least have a logical explanation for that. What on earth would be the explanation for stuff like those two songs?

And with that, round one was over. If this were a normal PCA, I'd actually be done the entire thing. For this bracket, I'm not even halfway done. We are past time to reduce the field in these things and make getting into a contest special again. 136 characters in 1v1 matches is just nuts. This can, and should, get cut back down to 64. I could maybe see the logic for 96 and letting the top 8 in each division have a round one bye. But the way things are is just too bloated, and I think it contributes to the low vote totals. The slow burn of a 64 character 1v1 with one match per day and 15 minute updates was fine. Too many characters with too big a field these days.