Results[]
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 4 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 104 |
| Match Date | Thursday, April 23, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Xenoblade Chronicles - 54.51% 45 for - 6 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Xenoblade Chronicles - 16.70% |
| User Votes |
Xenoblade Chronicles - 5686 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3859 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Xenoblade Chronicles - 5034 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3388 |
Xenoblade looked better than Fire Emblem for two rounds straight, and this is the match where it came time for Fire Emblem to get the asswhipping that was clearly coming. A lot of people would end up calling this match an SFF beating, and there may have been some of that, but I think something else was at play here.
We've seen the power of anti-voting in contests with vote totals this low. Just ask Draven, Sans, Undertale, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto, or Master Chief. When that stink is on you, watch out. Fire Emblem, and specifically Fire Emblem: Three Houses, getting added to that list might seem a bit out of place, but remember that the Smash Bros fanbase is largely made up of spoiled, whiny, insufferable idiots who somehow have the money for video games but can't ever afford water, soap, a gym membership, or deodorant.
To understand what happened to Fire Emblem here, we have to go back 14 years to May of 2006: https://www.smashbros.com/wii/en_us/
In 2006 Sakurai, the creator of Smash Bros, launched the DOJO. It was a masterful piece of marketing, and it was used to slowly spoil content and get people worked up into a frenzy for the upcoming Super Smash Bros Brawl. This has continued in Smash games all the way through today, and they've even added DLC characters, season passes, and incredibly well done videos on the internet outside of the DOJO environment to keep this hype going to a wide audience.
It's worked out beautifully. Smash Ultimate has sold something like 20 million copies, far and away the #1 fighting game ever. Part of this is due to the incredible hype videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMeYV8Gbpd4
On top of that, they do a wonderful job with these DLC character videos as well. Even costumes have people freaking out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmau-gRMr_U
"Ulti, didn't you call Smash people the worst fanbase in entertainment like two writeups ago?"
Yes, but there are plenty of good ones left. I specifically mean the losers who are incapable of playing any of those games for fun.
Anyway, all of the hype over the past 15 years has helped Smash become what it is today -- with one exception. Fire Emblem. It's been a long-standing belief that there are way, way too many Fire Emblem characters in those games, and that the characters they do pick are always main characters that all get made to play the exact same way. Sword, disjointed hitbox, keep people from getting in, rinse and repeat. It's been the same gameplay for 20 years, and the old joke is that all of the Fire Emblem characters are just different versions of Marth. I wish I could say these people are wrong, but they're completely right on this one.
And yet with all of that, nothing prepared people for the absolute shitstorm that would come from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aqVlLlKkcg
Smash fans get hyped for ANYTHING, but see how that video has 40% dislikes? These people lost their damn minds over this reveal, so of course Three Houses was going to fold like an accordion the second it faced anything decent. Was this match SFF? Maybe. But there was 100% confirmation of anti-voting going on. Three Houses looked like garbage all contest long, and finally it went up against a game in Xenoblade that could take full advantage.
The true shame here is twofold. One, Xenoblade didn't get the credit it deserved here for going on a deep contest run. It was more blame being thrown at Fire Emblem than anything else, which is a shame. Xenoblade deserves to get some love here. And two, Smash Bros aside, Three Houses did absolutely nothing wrong. It's a wonderful game, and got such a raw deal here. You take Fire Emblem, a series known for choking as-is, and add anti-votes to the mix? Watch out.
This match all but cemented Fire Emblem as Turd of the Contest, and set up an awesome match for the Division 4 final in Persona 4 Golden versus Xenoblade Chronicles. And by the way, I knew Three Houses would choke. You can go check my guru bracket. Smash fans were going to bury this game first chance they got.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Only the people insisting on sticking to their bracket, or the people having a lot of faith in a specific type of Nintendo hierarchy thought Fire Emblem: Three Houses still stood a chance in this match. The board 8 favorite to make top 8 lost big time today and mass eliminated gurus. Despite Xenoblade Chronicles looking vastly superior for two straight rounds, oracles still thought it would win by significantly less. Xenoblade went from just being praised and given a chance to go far to people now supporting the idea of it actually being a top 8 game here and not just being fortunate to get there because of being in an easy division. That claim is also helped by Xenoblade being a board 8 darling, but this really did seem like a performance of that caliber.
It’s hard to judge. This match could very easily have some SFF influencing the result, but while we have a lot of data on how some of the biggest Nintendo series, Zelda, Mario, Smash and Metroid, affect each other, we have nothing when it comes to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Pokemon seemingly not being hurt by Nintendo SFF as much proves that it’s not necessarily a hierarchy question. The easiest way to compare these two is exactly what made Three Houses the overwhelming board favorite to begin with. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening shared an opponent in 2015 and lost by basically the same amount. Three Houses was expected to be a good bit stronger than Awakening as it was the bigger release and the console game.
I’m having my doubts about that though. Awakening was a long-awaited breakthrough for the franchise and saved it certain death and it came out in what was arguably the biggest year of the 3DS. Three Houses however did not have that savoir role. Instead it got a villain’s role by providing a character as the final character of the first Smash Ultimate fighters pass which otherwise consisted of only third-party stuff. A blue haired swordsman on top of it. I don’t really think there’s much of a difference in strength between Awakening and Three Houses, and I’m not even sure Three Houses is the stronger one. If you think it is, it’s definitely not a belief you should think is certain.
There’s simply a limit of how much I think Xenoblade can have boosted as well. It had its Smash exposure and the definite edition was still on the horizon. Time and a bit more exposure could definitely help the game, I absolutely think it’s stronger and I really love that it is, but there has to be a limit. I believe it had some good opponents in the first three rounds to look good against. It would go to the division finals as the major favorite.
Three Houses was probably SFF’d a bit, but most of all we just overestimated it a lot this contest. It’s popular opinion that Fire Emblem is the turd of the contest, but they lost to two of the games that boosted the absolute most between contests and when we look at the end of the contest, Awakening doesn’t look particularly worse and Three Houses just isn’t as much stronger than it as we thought it would be.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So XC is not only legit but maybe star of the contest. I mean people barely had it reaching Round 3 and now it seems that it will win the whole division. Who could have thought of that? I do wonder why. I know there will be a remake of this game for Switch soon but still this franchise never did any good in contests. But now man it does so well. I don't really know why. Maybe some fans can explain it? On the other hand we have FETH. This game made amazing sales for a FE game, got a character from it in Smash in like 6 months where no other game has done it, DLC is keep coming out, the game is constantly on Top 3 of the Switch board and the hype is still going on strong and people say it is the best FE game of all time too. 3 Routes BUT you don't need DLC to play all of them unlike Fates, all are just in the game and you can play any route when you feel like it!
So for the match. XC won easily. So what happened? I don't know. XC even overperform, the crew had it on average 56 and it even managed to score above 60 for a while. So once again I am not sure. FE is really popular now, everyone knows about it. The one thing that I see people say is that it is a SRPG and these never do well against the traditional JRPG's. Could this be it? Maybe? But still so bad? I mean pretty sure before the contest FE3H was the favorite to win the division. So yeah. FE sucked in this contest and it should have done good since as I said the hype is still going on strong. So damn. Well congrats to XC for coming this far and maybe even winning the divsion which barely anybody expected. I mean look at the prediction percentage! Almost similar to the previous match!
Tsunami's Analysis[]
At 16.7%, the prediction percentage on this match wasn't much better than the previous one, but surprisingly enough for a 1 in 6, it's harder to conclusively call this an upset. Yes, it was less than half its prediction percentage last round, and yes, FE3H had a better R2 prediction percentage to begin with. Xenoblade was barely picked to advance to this round by half the voters that picked it in Round 1 at all, so it had a pretty low percentage going in here. Unlike the last match, however, everyone on Board 8 knew going in that their brackets were screwed--Three Heroes had 73.24% of Guru brackets, a far better percentage than GTA V had, but those same 51 Oracles that had ruled 30-21 in favor of GTA V were 45-6in favor of Xenoblade in this match. The "Nintendo domination" was just a myth. And yes, I know Xenoblade is considered pseudo-Nintendo in its own right. Doesn't matter. Fire Emblem is seemingly Nintendo's biggest rising star right now, but this match showed just how steep a climb it has to make.
It should of course be noted that Persona 4 finished ahead of XBC in 2015 straight-up. If you use GTA V's strength as a barometer, the results are even more stark. GTA V outright breaks 60% on Awakening in 2015, and the general consensus after this match was that contrary to our expectations, Three Houses wasn't any stronger than Awakening. If that's the case, Golden's got this in the bag. I'd be a lot happier about this if my bracket wasn't already shot from mistakes elsewhere, because that's one surprise run that I actually called correctly!