Results[]
Round One
Friday, November 13, 2015Ulti's Analysis[]
Division | Division 5 |
---|---|
Match # | 36 |
Match Date | Friday, November 13, 2015 |
Oracle Expectations |
Final Fantasy IX - 48.12% 33 for - 63 against |
GameFAQs Prediction |
Final Fantasy IX - 39.04% |
I know a lot of people tune into the PCA for rants, political commentary, some bashing, the occasional off-the-wall writeup, and genuine passion. I appreciate it.
But once in awhile I just have to geek out about how good something is, and both FF9 and Kingdom Hearts 1 are just all-time, godtier-level games for me. When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was a massive Final Fantasy fanboy (I still am, in truth). When Squall first shows up to kick the hell out of you, I was completely hooked. Then Cloud and Yuffie and everyone else showed up, and Kingdom Hearts the game turned into a minor distraction between seeing Kingdom Hearts the Cameo. Not that the game is in any way bad, mind you. The original game was the best mix of platforming, Disney, action RPG, and bonus content. The plot was okay. Lots of good things going on, and it existed before things like Tetsuya Nomura being an idiot, Organization 13, and this hilarious series plot synopsis: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8cPyvE2GTjOMzE4MTVlZTctMjE5Yi00YzAzLWJjZTAtZTllODY2OTc2MTMx/edit?hl=en_US
Seriously, look at that and try defending this series' plot. But KH1 happened before all that garbage, and really was a classic. It holds a special place in my heart, and will always be "the game that showed us everything this series was supposed to be". 2 was good, but you could see the rabbit hole of nonsense opening up in that game.
Then there's FF9, which is an unbelievable game in its own right. Yes us fans are insane freaks. Yes the game's random battles are ungodly slow and every single enemy attack shouldn't have been named. Yes there are problems with character development because the game likes to hyper-focus on a new character before forgetting about them for 2 discs. We know all that. We don't care. FF9 the game is better than the problems it has. First off, the cast is great and even with weird character development it tells the story better than any other game in the series. Having scenes exist away from the main character was a great touch that more games need to copy.
The real selling point is gameplay. The whole thing is a tribute to FF4, and as we all know, the rule of JOB SYSTEM > no job system is law. Great extras, great cast, great plot, great everything. The thing I'm most passionate about is probably the artwork. I have the big FF9 art book, and seeing everything come to life after every single little detail was hand-drawn is unreal. The talent that some artists have is just unreal.
Come match time, even though I'm in love with both games, I was forced to choose. I chose FF9, because it's hard not to hold the garbage direction of the Kingdom Hearts series in contempt. FF9 was the clear underdog though, especially after KH2 smacked MGS4 all over the place. Much to my absolute shock, FF9 won the early vote and the match was tied 313-313 at the freeze. Then FF9 actually started building a lead after that and my jaw just dropped. Yeah I picked FF9 to win and I was rooting for it, but actually seeing do well was something else. You guys seeing this prediction percentage? People really had faith in Kingdom Hearts this contest.
It wouldn't last though, because just as quickly as FF9 built a 100 vote lead, Kingdom Hearts erased it. We all figured the match was over at this point, because Kingdom Hearts has an amazing day vote, and us FF9 fans know all too well that FF9's day vote is pure trash. Like it's just laughable how bad FF9's day vote is. We're talking Chrono Trigger levels of bad here. So when the match stayed tied for hours overnight, we were just kind of sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Then the dead zone hit. This is typically Square's best time, and though this was a Square mirror, Kingdom Hearts has trends that look more like Nintendo -- great morning vote, great ASV. FF9 took advantage of this weakness, and built up a 400 vote lead during the dead zone. Not that this would matter once the Kingdom Hearts day vote hit, right?
To say I'm shocked Kingdom Hearts lost the day vote doesn't even begin to describe it. Let me pull up some old matches here.
Alucard had a lead in this match two hours in: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2103-gear-division-round-2-alucard-vs-sora
Kuja had a 450 vote lead before the morning vote: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2004-triforce-division-round-1-kuja-vs-master-hand
Castlevania had a 1200 vote lead heading into the morning vote: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2444-snake-division-semifinal-castlevania-vs-kindgom-hearts
RE4 had a 1200 vote lead for first place and almost lost it in this poll, and if it were a 1v1 poll it very well might have lost: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3472-division-7-round-1-gears-of-war-k-hearts-2-re4-sotc
Same thing almost happening in round 2 of that contest: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3491-division-7-round-2-re4-k-hearts-2-zelda-tp-half-life-2
It even cannibalizes itself! This was a tie match for a couple hours, then the ASV happened: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4172-southeast-division-round-3-kingdom-hearts-ii-vs-kingdom
Dante/Vergil came back from down 500, but forgot about DAT MORNING VOTE: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4557-northwest-division-round-2-dante-vs-vergil-sora-vs-riku
This was a 1500 vote lead at one point: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4565-northwest-division-final-squall-vs-seifer-sora-vs-riku
Zidane probably wins this if it was a night match: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3803-mushroom-division-round-2-zidane-tribal-vs-ike
Other stuff might exist, but you get the idea. Kingdom Hearts has a legendary day vote, and FF9, uh... doesn't. Being down 400 against FF9 with the morning vote coming is nothing. So for Final Fantasy 9 to win the morning vote and build a 1000 vote lead, then stall the ASV was nothing short of miraculous. I don't care is this is AntiTrendsFAQs, FF9 pulling this off was an early Christmas miracle and one of the coolest things that happened in this entire contest.
I love you Kingdom Hearts, but I love Final Fantasy 9. It deserved this. A lot of theories were thrown around about why FF9 pulled it off, with the most logical of them being that the 90s-era games were on a whole new level of respect in this contest (a theory backed up by how this contest's results shaped out). Yes I know FF9 came out in 2000, shut up. This match actually took place on the game's 15th birthday, so it pulling off the most improbable of contest trends was quite the birthday present!
This set up an FF9/Okami match, in which I was rooting for FF9 but was worried it might lose. Turns out that was a needless concern.
Ctes's Analysis[]
This was a big match because the winner would undoubtfully reach round 3. Both games could surely beat the rest of the division with ease except of course for Ocarina of Time. Initially when I saw this match, I thought that surely would a Final Fantasy game beat a Kingdom Hearts game and rightfully so too. I mean, Kingdom Hearts is just a cheesy and easy kind of Final Fantasy with Disney characters, so while they may be close in strength, it'd be natural for me to Kingdom Hearts underperform against a Final Fantasy title, but then I looked up some past polls and saw that Kingdom Hearts in fact holds up incredibly against Final Fantasy. You'd expect it to underperform, but it doesn't. It put up quite impressive performances against Final Fantasy X in 2009 before losing to that and Melee, but it's not only in contests. Earlier this year we had a poll asking which schedules release people was looking forward to the most and Kingdom Hearts III easily beat Final Fantasy XIV. Of course that's different, but it shows that the above reason to support FFIX here doesn't hold water.
That didn't mean FFIX couldn't win, but Kingdom Hearts should be considered too. I gotta admit though, I'm very surprised by how many people actually did that. FFIX is a #4 seed while Kingdom Hearts is a #13 seed and yet only 39% of brackets favored FFIX? FFIX was even the board favorite, it's quite unlike the casuals to pick against seeding unless it's like World of Warcraft against some obscure JRPG. But this is Final Fantasy they're picking against! Maybe not the most successful of them but a Final Fantasy regardless. In the end I picked Kingdom Hearts myself. In GotD, Kingdom Hearts looked a little bit stronger at least in raw x-stats, but it gets difficult to judge when they're on opposite sites if the brackets and most late Brawl and Majora matches might be inflated a bit. This contest, Majora looked to be completely equal to itself in 2010, but Brawl could still give some wrong results, like if you believe Twilight Princess overperformed against it. Also, FFIX lost to FFX in a SSF beating. They were probably roughly on par, so we knew this would be close. Looking at how well Kingdom Hearts helds up against Final Fantasy actually made me consider if it's the other way around, Final Fantasy underperforms against Kingdom Hearts. The latter has Final Fantasy and Disney, so just maybe, and then I sided with Kingdom Hearts.
The match was in no way boring. Considering our low votals, the amount of good matches we've had might be a bit disappointing, this one at least delivered for a while. For the first five minutes, it was very even and then at the freeze, they completely tied with 313 votes each, which is one of the coolest updates of the contest. Ties in general are epic, but at the freeze? Everyone knew we had a match. The next few updates promised good things for FFIX, but it couldn't put the lead above 100 and quickly lost it again. It took longer for Kingdom Hearts to cut the lead down than it took for FFIX to build it, but it happened. FFIX won the If It Were Up To Board 8 contest, so it made sense for FFIX to do well with the early vote. We didn't know this yet of course, but you don't have to be too active to know our board loves the game. When Kingdom Hearts took the lead I felt like that might be it.
But it wasn't. The match stood still for too long. Kingdom Hearts kept the lead for a while, but was completely unable to take the lead over 20 votes, in fact, it topped at 16. An hour later FFIX took it back again, but this time, also FFIX was unable to push the lead above the 20 votes. Then Kingdom Hearts took it back and we repeat once again. It's weird we didn't have more lead changes than we had considering how close it was during this time really. It seemed that whenever one of them took the lead, it really took something for the other one to take it back. FFIX did take it back again for what would be the rest of the match, but we didn't know this yet. After the lead change, it only took it one more update to take the lead above what it had been for any side since FFIX dropped its initial lead and it would continue to build that lead. Kingdom Hearts won updates, but things were looking positive in favor of FFIX.
The match was currently in the deadzone. While most trends are gone with smartphones and everything, geography still exists. There was hope for Kingdom Hearts when the US woke up. The deadzone should favor FFIX if any of them, which also turned out to be true. The thing was, the rest of the day also favored FFIX just a lot less than the deadzone. Kingdom Hearts consistently won updates, but failed to make a real attempt at this for the rest of the match. As the US woke up, FFIX slowed down a lot, but in the pic picture, the lead was still growing. It slowed down a lot more the further into the morning and day we got and at times the match practically stood still, but stalling was the best Kingdom Hearts could do and it wouldn't be enough. At this point, the final result was obvious, if Kingdom Hearts couldn't push more with the morning vote, well, it wouldn't pull this off. What it did however pull off, was insane stalling. Almost 14 hours into the match, FFIX broke the 900 vote barrier and it never took a real shot at 1000. Everytime it tried getting up there, Kingdom Hearts pushed it down to roughly 900 again proving that FFIX needed that deadzone. The final hours actually favored Kingdom Hearts a bit, naturally, as Europe went to sleep. This match is the perfect example of the trends we still have, which are purely geographical.
So Final Fantasy IX won in the end, but I still don't feel bad for picking Kingdom Hearts. Not only was it a close match, I also think that five years ago, the last time we had such a contest, it would've been different. I believe in a FFIX boost. It's not that much, but it was what was needed. It's small enough that KHII might've very well won this match, but it's big enough for FFIX to win. The real hint at this would be the 2013 contest, which saw the crazy Vivi>Mario upset. And while people are good at completely ignoring Ganondorf, aka the worst possible third entrant for Mario, in the poll as well as pointing out turds more than stars, that still showed good things for FFIX. The game had received some kind of cult status or whatever. For many years, FFVII was the big PS1 Final Fantasy which is obviously still the case in the big picture, then FFVIII had a few people throwing support in its favor. FFIX came out, but with no particularly interesting characters, it was overshadowed by the other games, coming late on the PS1, and also FFX coming for the PS2 not too soon afterward. Vivi being the strongest character here pretty much proves that, because you know looking like a regular Black Mage has been a boost for him to begin with. Zidane has never been notable on this site.
Recently though, Final Fantasy IX have made some kind of breakthrough in people's minds. Escaped its status as the overlooked game. It looked on par with FFIX this contest and got beaten by it easily last time. It's nice, it's a good game, though when something comes out of the shadows as some kind of “underdog” it tends to get overrated, but hey, good game! I like it better than Kingdom Hearts as least, which is fun gameplay, but easy. And the story? That's not something to be too proud about. It's a shame I picked incorrectly, but I liked the result. Perhaps if Kingdom Hearts III has been closer, this could've gone the other way around. You gotta give props to Kingdom Hearts for being so consistent over so many years though, not many games do that. A bunch of games pre-2000s look stronger now, but so many games from this current century experience a downfall and while Kingdom Hearts is from 2002 and thus very early into the century, completely avoided that downfall is impressive and deserved to be mentioned as it goes out in an early unfortunate matchup.