Ulti's Analysis[]
Not gonna lie, I completely forgot Lloyd had even made this bracket until I was actually doing the PCA this year. That's how forgettable some of these round one matches are, and it's sad because Tales of Symphonia basically took this site over for a few months back in the day. Can you believe that was 15 years ago, by the way? God I'm old. That was one of the 10 games I picked after winning Spring 2004. I can't remember them all offhand, but I remember that one game for HaRRicH, a game for Aeon Azuran, Tales of Symphonia, and Chrono Cross. Tales by itself made the whole thing worth it. I love that style of game where you're actually a part of the action instead of just "press attack x47, cure, cast a spell for fun, repeat".
As for Ryu, he is my most hated character in all of Street Fighter but he's winning me over due to -- surprise surprise -- Smash Bros. He finally made it into a game where he doesn't shotospam for 10 minutes at a time, and it's a huge breath of fresh air. The guy is damn satisfying to use, and you feel the weight of his man mode kicks on people. Heaven help you if he lands a perfect shoryuken, too. I feel like this is what he's supposed to be in Street Fighter but he just falls flat when he plays identically in every single game. He even sucks in MvC3 and the other crossover games. But in Smash he really works. Dunno why.
But yeah this match was an expected blowout and told us nothing about whether or not Ryu could beat Sephiroth. Moving on.
Safer777's Analysis[]
Well Ruy is the most popular fighting game character here. He is good enough in these things. He has always in all 10 contests managed to reach at least the 2nd round. As for Lloyd he is in one of the Tales games. And Tales games don't do well here. So of course Ryu won easily. He almost reached 70% too. So what else to say. Supposedly Ruy has a chance to even beat Sephiroth now but we will see about that. Ryu is an icon. Icons deserve to win matches! Oh and also he is in Smash? Of course he is in there.
Also people told me that Ryu is a non NN'er that has faced the most different NN'ers too! He always loses to them of course but this prooves what a fighter he is.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Oh hey, Tales doing Tales things again. I am pleased that Tales didn't get to fodder up this contest too much. I am also pleased that Ryu got a chance to do Ryu things. He was consistently one of the strongest non-Noble Niners in the earliest days of the contests, though he hasn't quite been the same since his loss to Bowser in 2005.
After the Lineal Noble Nine had first been proposed, I made a thought experiment as to what if the then-arbitrary cutoff for the elite tier had been placed at something other than 9 (which ultimately ended up being the perfect number, but that's with hindsight; the Noble Nine had been crowned long before 2006 proved that Nine was the correct number, no more and no less). Ryu ended up taking back his own spot twice, once when he avenged his 2005 loss to Bowser in round 1 in 2007 and once when he advanced in second place behind Auron in Round 2 in 2007, only for Cloud to SFF Auron the next round and allow Ryu to advance in second place again. Someone else commented that this was a very Ryu thing to do.
There is one Noble Niner who owns a spot in the Lineal Nine that they previously owned, but it's not their original spot and they didn't take it directly from the character they lost it to. After losing his original spot to Vincent in 2007, Crono took Sonic's former spot by defeating L-Block in 2008. After losing that spot to Missingno in 2010, the spot changed hands three times in as many rounds in 2013, ultimately landing with Mega Man (who still hadn't recovered from losing to WCC in 2008), who Crono beat this year (though not before taking Mega Man's original spot from Bowser in Round 1 of Legends only to give it to Cloud in Round 2.)