Results[]
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 4 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 80 |
| Match Date | Wednesday, April 15, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 63.04% 54 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 59.21% |
| User Votes |
Ori and the Blind Forest - 3511 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5845 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Ori and the Blind Forest - 3310 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5340 |
This was just a brutal match for anyone who had Three Houses beating Xenoblade and/or winning this division. In round 1, Three Houses looked off against South Park, but one could easily blame that on the match just being goofy.
This match against Ori and the Blind Forest was not goofy. There were no excuses to be made here, even with Ori getting a sequel mid-contest and looking better than expected in round 1. One is an accident, two is a problem. Fire Emblem was in serious trouble, and remember also that this match was happening during a bunch of Persona 4 Golden hentai rallies. Three Houses is very heavily related to Persona with how it plays, so it's not unreasonable to think those types of rallies would help the game out. They didn't.
Given what happened to Fire Emblem: Awakening in this contest as well, another bad performance from Three Houses would cement the entire series for "Turd of the Contest" honors. Spoiler alert -- Fire Emblem was the Turd of the Contest. These warning signs did not exactly bode well for Three Houses in the match to come, and we'll talk in full about what happened and why during the match Three Houses had with Xenoblade.
That said, a lot of this was also Ori being a lot better than expected, so it deserves credit for both upsetting Dragon Age and exposing Fire Emblem. I actually bought this game on the Switch because of this contest, and it deserves all of the praise I saw you guys giving it while this contest was going on. I'm saving a lot of my love for when I finally write a review for it, but I feel like this writeup would be missing something without a quick mention of how incredibly beautiful the game is.
https://gamespot1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2826043-2015030713392201.jpg
That one shot really says it all. One of my favorite things about contests is getting to discover new games to play, and had this little run not happened I never would have known a game like this existed. Hell, without these contests I probably never would have played Chrono Trigger, Metroid Prime, Symphony of the Night, Kingdom Hearts, Gunstar Heroes, Lunar, Phantasy Star, Half-Life, and so, so, so many other games. Good times. I always love seeing topics pop up about people trying new games because of these things.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Yet another round and yet another underwhelming performance for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This is in no way how you want to perform when you’re the favorite to win the division. Despite its round 1 result, it still went a little below Board 8’s expectations for it. Ultimately, none of that looked to matter all too much because Xenoblade was leagues ahead of where we expected it to be. Three Houses could have done what it was supposed to do for two rounds and it still wouldn’t be the favorite to win the following round. Three Houses had to hope there was some Nintendo or Smash hierarchy that favored against Xenoblade next round, but it was weird to imagine.
Ori and the Blind Forest ends up looking like one of the top indie games, although I think its indie game status is a grey area. It appears to be behind Cuphead, Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight, but above things like Hollow Knight. I think it’s misleading and that it’s actually a bit lower than that. Ori was only released on Xbox and PC until very recently where it got a definite edition on Switch. I have a hard time imagining it’s that high up there. I think Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an easy game to overperform against. The Smash community are pretty tired of Fire Emblem right now and it was pretty clear in the previous Character Battle how much influence the Smash fanbase has over our contests. I also think Xenoblade overperformed a bit against Ultimate, but that does not seem to be the popular opinion.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So after the suprise win of Ori on Round 1 there was some scepticism here. Sure Dragon Age was far weaker than we expected but still it is not that FE3H dominated on the first round match. So we had to see what it would do in this match if it could be redeemed at least.
So for the match. FE3H won and it did as expected I guess? Or actually worse now that I think about it. Look we all thought before the contest that it would win the division but now? I don't think anyone still expects that. Seems strange because FE3H is on Switch and it is the FE game with the best critical reception from both fans and critics plus FE is a core franchise. Also how many FE characters are in Smash? Seriously. Also Ori is a franchise now and I think it is not an indie game? I am not sure about that. Still when a game does decent and in the previous match a game does amazing where people were expecting to be the other way around you know you did something wrong. Anyways at least FE3H won.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
We all believed prior to this match that FE3H was probably the favorite in Round 3, and after this, not so much so. Holy crap what a disappointment. Or maybe Ori's just that good. I'd be willing to believe that Ori's actually kind of strong. But I still think XBC has the advantage next round, much as I hate it.