Results[]
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 5 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 106 |
| Match Date | Thursday, December 3, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 56.93% 76 for - 2 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 39.43% |
SUBTITLE WAR!! PLATFORMER WAR!! I know Symphony of the Night is technically a Metroidvania RPG, but hey.
You know how every year in the NCAAs, you see a low seed or two make the Sweet 16, then they play a team from a power conference and usually get waxed? There are exceptions to this, but usually your Florida Gulf Coast Universities and Valparaisos and Richmonds and Bradleys get their asses whipped in round 3. That was this match for Donkey Kong Country 2. It made a really good run in this contest, but folded the second it came across a really strong game as its opponent.
And that's fine. It doesn't change how good DKC2 did this season. It helped Donkey Kong shake off a lot of that choker label, plus 38% on Symphony of the Night really isn't that bad. There were some hopes that DKC2 could win this match and it won the board vote, but Symphony started climbing quickly, got this thing above 60% within the hour and never looked back.
Symphony of the Night has gotten out of the first round in every contest it's ever been in, but had never gotten past round 2 before this contest. This year, it got to win three matches before finally losing. So overall, this whole match was a feel-good affair, but unfortunately only one game gets to win it all, so everyone else has to lose eventually.
Ctes' Analysis[]
No one ever doubted that Symphony of the Night would have trouble winning this match, but people expected it to be a whole lot closer than it was judging by the oracle predictions. I suppose when Donkey Kong Country 2 managed to upset two games it made people think that game was a lot stronger than we thought, but what people forgot was that neither Xenoblade Chronicles nor Fire Emblem: Awakening had the strength we thought. Yes, it's the Year of SNES and without that Donkey Kong Country 2 would've lost to both of those games at their current strength fairly easily, but it's not just Year of SNES, it's also that we're NostalgiaFAQs. Those two games are two recent for out site, we just weren't aware of that pre-contest!
It might also have been that Symphony of the Night was stronger than people expected it to be. It clearly is stronger now than then, where it struggled to beat Perfect Dark before easily getting disposed of by GoldenEye. It was also a #11 seed. Although it was a 64-entrant field back then, meaning that a #11 seed then would be a #6 seed if the contest had 128 entrants too, it's still a #2 seed now. Seeds can be misleading, but when a Playstation 1 game suddenly receives a much higher seed, you should know that it probably has gotten stronger. Despite it not being that era which benefit the most by NostalgiaFAQs, it certainly wasn't hurt by it either and it was clear over the course of the first two rounds that this Symphony of the Night is different from the one we used to know.
Of course, it's easy to ignore that when Symphony of the Night was already supposed to win this match, but I'm surprised so many didn't. I don't usually brag, but this the only match I won in the oracle, despite getting closer to a perfect prediction in a few others, so I'm going to a little. I was the only user that did not predict Symphony of the Night to do worse than it did, as I predicted it to do 0.1% better than it did. Only eight people had it above 60%. Would you really expect a Donkey Kong game to have improved enough for it to get so close? It's Year of SNES, but it would take an insane boost. I'm sure most people do their oracle picks fairly fast, in particular when you have so many matches in such a short time, but I'm actually really surprised everybody else had Symphony of the Night doing worse than this. I suppose maybe people had a hard time seeing Banjo-Kazooie outperforming Donkey Kong Country 2 considering their platforms and main characters, which makes sense, but it's still ignoring previous results a bit. Symphony of the Night would obviously stand no chance next round, but although it took a really weak half of a division, getting to the top 16 is a really great accomplish for it.