(2)Mass Effect 2 vs (15)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2015

Ulti's Analysis
It was fun listing prediction round 1 percentages for the 1 seeds, so let's do it for the 2 seeds.

Final Fantasy 7 - 94.02% Persona 4 - 92.48% Mass Effect 2 - 92% Super Mario World - 90.18% Majora's Mask - 89.29% Symphony of the Night - 88.76% Resident Evil 4 - 77.09% The Last of Us - 74.96%

Seeing FF7 as a 2 seed while GTA5 is sitting there as a 1 is ridiculous. The Last of Us and Persona 4 also don't belong as 2 seeds, but in the opposite direction. Those two were overseeded.

I love when the last match of round 1 is a blowout, for PCA purposes. Sub-Zero > Master Chief or Pac-Man > Ocelot are fun and all, but I do love some reflection. Mass Effect 2 got a nice, relaxing 79-21 blowout that let us all reflect on Stars and Turds! Remember, this is purely personal.

Star of the Round: Chrono Trigger, honorable mention to Super Metroid. I'd give this to Undertale, but for 18 hours that game was hardly a Star of the Round. Star series was the Zelda series for sure. 5 dominant wins, with the two biggest blowouts of the contest.

Turd of the Round: Super Mario Maker, dishonorable mentions to Destiny and Mass Effect 3. Mario Maker goes without saying, as does Destiny's being hot garbage, but you have to be mentioned in this category when you give up a 9252 vote lead. Don't forget that our record before this was 2483. Turd series was easily Metal Gear Solid. 5 games got in. Only one looked good in winning, while three of the games looked horrible in wins and MGS4 just outright lost.

It was a rather entertaining round 1, even if there were a ton of predictable matches. That happens with any contest, though. It set up what would be a really fun round 2, which would also be four matches per day. Past that, it would drop to 2 matches per day until the semis, then one match per day. The best match of round 1 was probably Undertale > Mass Effect 3. The worst, at least for me personally, was MGS5 > Perfect Dark. I love Perfect Dark, don't get me wrong, but seeing MGS5 shit the bed like that was heartbreaking. Kojima getting fired, then banned from the video game awards was stupid. The entire thing just pisses me off, and the match (not to mention MGS5 itself) reminded me of wasted potential. Kojima built up all this good will over years and years of hard work. Konami ruined it. I'm tired of seeing the things I love ruin themselves.

My last anecdote for round 1 before moving on is holy crap is this a lot of matches. I've done 64 writeups, which used to be the length of an entire PCA! We've reached the halfway point though; all downhill from here!