Results[]
Monday, April 13, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 72 |
| Match Date | Monday, April 13, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Bloodborne - 52.97% 40 for - 15 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Bloodborne - 48.94% |
| User Votes |
Fire Emblem: Awakening - 4117 Bloodborne - 4929 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Fire Emblem: Awakening - 3476 Bloodborne - 6243 |
There were some very small rallies in this contest before this match happened, most notably during Celeste v Rayman and Hollow Knight v FF15, but this was the first match where there was a noticeable rally that made a serious difference in the match. The funniest part is Bloodborne probably would have won this match anyway, which is a reminder of this hilarity: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6117-best-game-ever-day-17-round-2-smash-bros-melee-vs-pokemon
That was a 55-45 match leading into the morning vote, and Melee was never in any danger of losing. Didn't matter. The fanbase went NO SIR NOT WINNING BY ENOUGH and rallied the troops to a 60-40 beating. It was a sign of things to come, though at the time we didn't think much of it. We just kind of laughed at the tourneycrabs and Reddit dorks for rallying the game in a match it was guaranteed to never truly be threatened in.
The same thing happened here with Awakening vs Bloodborne, though some may argue Awakening was an actual threat to win the match. We'll never know either way. After Awakening won the board vote, Bloodborne stormed back to back the lead before the freeze. Typically when something storms back pre-freeze, they're a lock to win the match. Typically. There are exceptions, but it's not the norm.
After a few updates where Bloodborne struggled to pull away, the fans took action and got the rally threads started on the Bloodborne subreddit. This allowed Bloodborne to go on a crazy pace in the match, because rally threads were up for the entire thing. This turned a potential 53-47 type match into a 58-42 beating where Fire Emblem never stood a chance. I don't think Awakening had much of a shot either way, but it really had no shot once rallying took off and Awakening wasn't able to keep up. I was one of the dopes that picked Awakening to win this match, because I didn't think the Souls clan would go up much from the 2015 numbers. "Whoops." But I wasn't mad or anything, because remember, Bloodborne is my favorite game in this bracket. Not Doom, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, or Smash Ultimate. Bloodborne. I say screw the bracket, Bloodborne deserves all the shine this match helped give it. I can tell you all from personal experience there was an uptick in online activity during and after this match happened, too. This game got a lot of love because of this contest, and to that I say good. It deserves every ounce of love that us fans give it <3
It also turns out that much like Melee five years ago, that first rally was a sign. It also meant that Fire Emblem was halfway ready to become turd of the contest. Seriously, what is up with that series constantly being overhyped, overvalued, and underdelivering in every single contest? We'll talk more about this when we get to Three Houses puking all over itself like some loser alcoholic, but Fire Emblem losing early in these things is getting ridiculous.
This match set up one hell of a hyped up clash between Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne, and the obvious fear was whether or not rallies would decide things. Only time would tell! This match also started up the trend of rally threads popping up all over Reddit during these matches, and yes I'm proud to have made and boosted a bunch of them myself. See I'm not a part of the anti-fun brigade that hangs out in the increasingly exclusionary Board 8 Discord for 16 hours a day pretending to be cool as my testosterone slowly drops to a level that makes reproduction impossible. Men are made in the gym and in the real world, not in chat rooms. Deal with it, losers.
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Ctes's Analysis[]
This match was another one that had the gurus almost equally split, but Fire Emblem: Awakening was the favorite before the contest began. After round 1 happened, it did not look as good at all and Bloodborne suddenly became the favorite. You had to believe Call of Duty: Black Ops was really bad to keep your faith in Awakening high. Especially because Three Houses didn’t look spectacular in round 1 either. While believing Black Ops is as bad as possible these days is pretty reasonable, Awakening was never really in this match.
Fire Emblem was a very easy target this contest. Both games didn’t get as far as the majority of the board thought and with what people think is too much Smash appearance, the series hasn’t really been as well looked at as it used to before it truly became mainstream. It seems however like Awakening wasn’t actually any worse than in 2015. The difference is at least minimal. I’m sure most people thought Awakening was better than Bloodborne in 2015 here and didn’t see that change with a big new Fire Emblem recently out, and while that looked stupid today, perhaps that wasn’t all wrong.
It’s Bloodborne that has risen a great amount. It was new back in 2015 and hadn’t truly found its ground yet, but the Soulsborne games have established themselves as some of the best this previous decade has to offer and they’re some of the first things you think of when you think of what game of the decade was. Bloodborne hasn’t quite achieved the status Dark Souls has, but that’s because Dark Souls came first. It seems pretty clear to me that Bloodborne is mostly preferred by the people that play all the Soulsborne games. This all redeems Awakening supports a bit I think, but good call to those that expected the Bloodborne rise.
The match wasn’t ever really in doubt. Awakening won the board vote but lost the lead before the freeze and Bloodborne never really looked back. The Soulsborne games haven’t had good board votes at any point and we love Fire Emblem here, so it’s to be expected. Worth noting is that Awakening was a bit above 45% for a while until a Bloodborne rally kicked in. It was pretty clearly the most successful rally of the contest so far and pushed Bloodborne up to where it was now and also clearly affected the other matches going on. Being capable of brining an effective rally to the table even when ahead suddenly made it very possible that Bloodborne could go further than round 3. The Bloodborne fans are very passionate about their game!
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a game needlessly rallying when already winning a match. The rally topic was put up right away, but it didn’t gain traction until later in the match. Super Smash Bros. Melee is known for doing this back in 2015 against Pokemon Gold and Silver. Melee went on to kill GameFAQs favorite Chrono Trigger with its rallying powers, which frustrated the board a lot since Chrono Trigger looked good enough to beat Ocarina of Time that year. Melee would then continue to rally past Final Fantasy VII before losing a battle of rallies against Undertale. That did not make it very popular with our board, as it took away a bunch of matches we looked forward to and trivialized them instead. You can see where I’m going with this. Bloodborne took villain status in the eyes of many and feared to win matches it wasn’t supposed to because of it, though it wasn’t nearly big enough for anyone to fear it would get past Breath of the Wild should it get that far.
Safer777's Analysis[]
When I was making my bracket I didn't even thought about that. Easy FE victory. We are talking about FE series which is a core Nintendo franchise, has like 10 characters in Smash AND it was the game that saved the FE series. On the other hand we had one of these get good games which are damn hard AND it is a PS4 exlusive too! Sure FEA was on a portable console but still. Also this is the first match on this contest where we had a successful rally! Yeah it finally happened! It was for Bloodborne and it brought around 1500 extra votes. But as you can see Bloodborne would have won without this rally too. Yeah Bloodborne is legit and I was wrong it seems.
So for the match. I am not sure why Bloodborne won. Are these kind of games that popular here? Sure we are on a gaming site and we are hardcore I guess but still? I mean FEA? The game that saved...yeah you know. So not sure. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I guess people just don't like the FE franchise as I thought. What else could it be? Maybe people really like the get good games a lot?
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Oh, hey, something that the lol X-Stats wouldn't have predicted! Two write-ups ago, I said that Borderlands 2 was presumed to be a stronger opponent than either RE2 or Bloodborne faced, then looked up the X-Stats for Borderlands 2-FE:A and found that according to 2015, that wasn't the case. Only problem is, the 2015 X-Stats not only have FE:A ahead of Bloodborne, but they also have Borderlands 2 ahead of Bloodborne! Narrowly, of course; something like winning with 50.21%. Apparently FE:A's a lot weaker than it was in 2015, which kind of makes sense because the backlash against FE:A from the hardcore series fans only got worse when the next game was everything wrong with Awakening turned up to 11. It's funny; Awakening was meant to be a big series of shoutouts to the entire series thus far, and then Fates ended up just being one long ode to Awakening, except it was far worse than Awakening ever was because the mechanics that made sense in Awakening were just kind of bolted onto Fates for the sake of keeping them. About the most encouraging thing about the series is that Echoes was still fairly loyal to Gaiden, because Genealogy is next up to get a remake and even though that's the game that Awakening was referencing with the child mechanic, it could get really ugly if they try to make it too much like Awakening/Fates.
Oh, right, Bloodborne. There's absolutely no good way to determine the strength of any of these games; it seems that the Undertale Effect was a lot harder to untangle than we thought. Still, Bloodborne put up a better percentage on FE:A than RE2 did on Doom. If we take that underperformance as a sign that contrary to popular belief, the RE2 remake isn't as strong as the original, well, RE2 isn't even projected to break 56% on Bloodborne by the 2015 X-Stats. The turnaround it made on FE:A, it's by enough that it should be able to get past RE2 as well. Remind me again where all these games actually were in 2015's bracket?
Okay, RE2 was on the opposite side from the rest of them, so its numbers are filtered through two Undertale matches including the final. And Bloodborne is stuck behind a bunch of SFF matches--it was in the division that had a ALTTP-MM final for the right to lose to OoT the next round. Yeah, these numbers are useless.