Results[]
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 18 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, March 31, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 68.59% 66 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 70.35% |
| User Votes |
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 5439 Bayonetta - 3067 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 4316 Bayonetta - 2598 |
This entire match was criminal.
Let's start with the winner. Yes, it was obvious Link Between Worlds was going to win. We can debate percentages all day, but who cares? It was being fed to Smash next round, and one of the biggest what-ifs this year was what if Link Between Worlds was in the bottom half somewhere? A case could even be made that Link Between Worlds is the best Zelda game, and to see it be handed such a guaranteed path and early exit just sucked. I'm not one for using the 3D on the 3DS, but this game used it in the best way possible and I cannot say enough good things about it. Not only that, but FINALLY we get a damn Zelda game with no limits on items. It's all MP. Go play with your bombs. Go fire some arrows. Go mix and match everything and see what you can come up with. It was a beautiful breath of fresh air.
That said, Bayonetta was royally and indefensibly screwed over by this bracket placement. Did you guys know that this was the first ever contest match for this game? Bayonetta 2 made the field in 2015, but not this one somehow. Given all the love from Smash and Bayonetta the character going on a really cool run two years ago, this was the contest for her game to finally shine. And she draws Zelda in round 1, of all things. A lesser Zelda game, but a Zelda game nonetheless. We couldn't swap 9 seeds and put X COM 2 here or something? This was by far the dumbest round 1 loss of the entire contest, and Bayonetta really did not deserve this. Atrocious soundtrack aside, and good lord is it bad, I put this right there with Devil May Cry 3 as best pure action game ever made.
I was not alone in being really annoyed by this match, either. There were a whole of topics on the board about it that day, and good. Allen did a great job this contest, but this match was a total botch.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Here’s a battle of two games contending for the title of “who got screwed over by bracket placement the most?” One of them is a previous Game of the Year winner and a Zelda game on top of that. I’m not doubting Allen screwed that one over on purpose. Bayonetta I’m not as sure if it was intended, but it sure happened. It’s easily the most unfortunate franchise in the bracket, because both games could be worth something and they got to face A Link Between Worlds and Automata respectively. The Mario also has a case going of it, especially with how good both games look in the x-stats, but at least Mario got to be in a debatable match. Not a single serious person could see Bayonetta winning. I’m not sure why Allen bothered to include both games when he so clearly wanted to represent as many franchises as possible when he would just fed them both to top games anyway, but maybe it was random.
Seriously though, Bayonetta wins against a lot of the #8 seeds if not all of them. The one I’d hesitate to pick Bayonetta against is Mass Effect 3 and I probably still would honestly. This isn’t even the first time Bayonetta has had the most ridiculous luck. The previous contest saw only the second game make the field despite being a Wii U exclusive at the time. Then the first game gets the worst possible draw relative to the seeding this time around. It’s a shame we couldn’t give it a victory somewhere. It would lose to any #1 seed anyways. Yes, most likely also GTAV though I’m sure that would have some people pulling the upset. If Bayonetta 3 has had another update next games contest that is not just Nintendo telling us they’re aware of it existing, then perhaps the games will have even better chances of winning a round 1 match than it already had. Hopefully it has been released and well regarded, so it’s something to fear in the future. At least the character has been allowed to show off before, most notably exposing Riku of being terrible these days.
A Link Between Worlds also has just about no luck in contests, but this time it got in and got to win a match. You’d also have to seriously rig the bracket for it not to win a match, however. Or we could’ve nominated it more I suppose. It got a tough an opponent as it could basically and still won with ease. It actually underperformed about 5% relative to what the oracles expected of it though. It might not be as good as it would’ve been back when it was new. Everyone liked it, but it’s rather forgettable. For a while it was not because it was the first Zelda game in quite a few everyone seemed to like. Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass were not too popular. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask were, but they have their haters too. It was also a return to 2D and more importantly a return to Zelda being non-linear. The reason it didn’t make it into the 2015 contest was most likely that while everyone liked it, it’s no one’s favorite.
Then Breath of the Wild came and we forgot about it completely, unfortunately. I think the main reason it got into this contest above Skyward Sword other than Skyward Sword not being popular is that it was snubbed last time and board 8 thought it deserved to get into a contest. Board 8 influences nominations a lot these days, I could see that having made a strong push. I’d also argue it would be a shame not to have all 10 Game of the Year winners make it into a Game of the Decade contest, but Smash 4 already made that not happen, so it probably wasn’t its main drive. When all that is said and we can agree A Link Between Worlds probably isn’t as good as it would’ve been in 2015, I also think Bayonetta is just legit and that this match had no SFF, which I’m sure some were expecting.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
If there was any more need of evidence of a paradigm shift on this site, this was it. Bayonetta may have been an XBox 360/PS3 game when it first came out, but the character was largely considered pseudo-Nintendo after the sequel was a Wii U exclusive and the original was ported to Wii U at the same time, and then Bayonetta was added to Smash 4 back when third-party characters were still relatively rare in Smash. Given the general opinion of the Wii U, you might even consider the possibility that 3DS would trump Wii U despite the longtime mental block this site has had about handhelds (see: Link's Awakening as a slight Guru underdog to Mega Man X to advance out of R1 behind FFVI in 2009), but there was never any doubt that A Link Between Worlds would win. It's a Zelda game, after all, and one that got GotY in 2013, though it was far from dominating in doing so, only narrowly squeaking past Pokémon X/Y for 3DS game of the year and then getting LFF'd in the poll of all winners not only by the Wii U winner, Super Mario 3D World, but also by the fact that the winner of the "Download-Only" category was a fellow 3DS game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. This led to it narrowly finishing behind GTA V for third place in the poll of all winners, comfortably behind The Last of Us, before powering ahead in the final poll of the top three finishers to take the top spot. Because while it's clearly its own game, A Link Between Worlds will feel very familiar to anyone who's played A Link to the Past, and given how nostalgia-driven this site has been in the past, especially for Super Nintendo games, that should've been a very good thing.
And while A Link Between Worlds did win comfortably, it wasn't even a doubling, which given the way the contest had gone so far was a very weak win indeed. Over half the matches through five days had ended with a doubling or worse! And this wasn't even an action/RPG hybrid like the games that had been doing well on previous days. This was a full-fledged hack-and-slash that was avoiding the doubling by, essentially, A Link to the Past 2. While it was obvious by its absence from 2015 that ALBW was categorically not held in the same regard as its spiritual precursor, this was an embarrassing performance that, of course, would be completely meaningless because it was expected to be hopelessly outmatched in Round 2 anyway.
Of course, if anyone had been thinking quickly enough, they would've realized that this was a major hint as to the outcome of the most debated match of R1, which was due up the very next day. But who reacts that quickly, especially when the actual match outcomes were all so obvious that it was fairly safe to ignore the match once you'd voted in it?
Safer777's Analysis[]
Everyone agrees that Bayonetta got wasted here. The game has power along with it's main character. Couldn't we have a bad indie game here instead of Bayonetta? Damn. We have a Zelda game on this site so you have to know how it goes there. I don't know if ALBW is strong since it is a portable game and these are traditionaly weak and not only that but it faces SSBU on the next round so that means that we will never know if it has real power or not. Obviously we can't have good bracket placement for every game/character in the contest but come on man, this seeding and bracket placement for both of these games was bad.
So for the match. Well BTW did as most said. I mean it didn't even double Bayonetta. As I said above if only the bracket placement is different. Wasted matches. The Prediction Percentage is kinda low for a Zelda game on the 1st round too. Guess people thought that Bayonetta could do it?