Game of the Decade: 2010-2019 Contest Analysis Crew - Part 6

I think Skyrim is looking good here

just like I’ve thought all along

The Woke of us being beaten by Dark Souls brings a tear of joy to my eye.

I still doubt it has trouble with Dark Souls either. I like that I wasn't the only one to compare it to FFVII

a round after last of us has one of the worst board votes ever, it has one of the best? sure

Dark Souls over 60%. Maybe the backlash factor is actually real here. Though I expect TLoU rises during the night vote since the game is known to have a good Europe vote based on past matches.

transcience posted...

a round after last of us has one of the worst board votes ever, it has one of the best? sure

Dark Souls and Skyrim have both had awful board votes in every match

Oh no

Does this mean Mario Kart 8 is legit

yeah I know

nobody vote next round

Whatever redeems Uncharted 4 I'm happy with.

if this ends around 56%, it suggests that Nier would have a close match with MK8. that’s fun.

I’m not really opposed to Last of Us struggling with MGS5. Last of Us hasn’t been good in any match this year and doesn’t need some controversy factor to look bad. next we’ll blame RDR2’s loss on the same thing.

Last of Us looked great against Arkham City.

55% on a game that almost nobody picked isn’t great.

Well, I don't really think MGSV would go 55-60%+ on all the games it's projected to do based on this.

And this makes Yakuza 0 look really good if it's legit. TLOU hasn't been great but Dark Souls hasn't been this much better than it.

Nobody picked Arkham City because it was a clear step below. That doesn't make it weak - just that there was no reason to pick Arkham City. By your logic every expected 55-45 win is a disappointment.

Let's not revisionist history this. Last of Us had questionable matches in R1 and R2 but it had just got done clearing Oracle expectations against Batman, which had just got done clearing Oracle expectations against Bioshock Infinite. Collapsing this badly to the point of struggling with MGS5 - a game it was already much stronger than in 2015 and which also had reason to fall - was not remotely expected.

but it’s not out of line either. we’ve been vocally calling for its head for a month now. it doesn’t need a factor for an underperformance. the same goes for god of war.

transcience posted...

but it’s not out of line either. we’ve been vocally calling for its head for a month now. it doesn’t need a factor for an underperformance. the same goes for god of war.

We have been but it's outdoing our expectations by a lot.

But again, it's Yakuza 0 that makes this not look right. Are you taking it over Batman and Xenoblade 2 by comfortable margins?

transcience posted...

but it’s not out of line either. we’ve been vocally calling for its head for a month now. it doesn’t need a factor for an underperformance. the same goes for god of war.

I think we have been calling for its head because DS has looked like a monster, mostly.

But not this kind of monster.

I'm not sure about Yakuza. it's more popular than people make it out to be, but it's also up against a game that's good with antivotes. you can kinda think of MGS5 like GTA5 given the backlash to it.

I actually don't think Dark Souls is that much of a monster, but it can make me look bad next round.

Yeah, I don't think Dark Souls has been a monster either, which is all the more reason I'm skeptical of this.

Well after the next 23 hours, if these trends continue, Skyrim probably looks a good bit better than Dark Souls regardless. Dark Souls still has WRPG hierarchy factor though so I'm not counting it out yet.

KamikazePotato posted...

Let's not revisionist history this. Last of Us had questionable matches in R1 and R2 but it had just got done clearing Oracle expectations against Batman, which had just got done clearing Oracle expectations against Bioshock Infinite.

Batman cleared expectations against Infinite because its showing against Xenoblade 2 was perceived as a sign of weakness, which, combined with Xenoblade 1's strong showing against Three Houses, led to an overcorrection in the next round

that chain is pretty much entirely because we shifted our expectations of Batman, not because multiple games overperformed in succession

Leon, what does Dark Souls = Skyrim look like?

transcience posted...

Leon, what does Dark Souls = Skyrim look like?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – 50.00%
Dark Souls - 50.00%
Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver Version – 41.96%
NieR: Automata – 40.39%
The Last of Us - 39.23%
Mario Kart 8 – 39.10%
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - 36.71%
Batman: Arkham City - 35.12%
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – 32.18%
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 31.99%
Yakuza 0 - 31.39%
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – 31.00%
Diablo III - 28.81%
BioShock Infinite - 28.22%
Bayonetta 2 – 25.52%
Divinity: Original Sin II – 25.26%
Journey – 25.02%
Rayman Legends – 23.52%
Celeste – 23.31%
Rocket League - 22.66%
Dragon Ball FighterZ - 21.91%
Dead Cells - 20.18%
Terraria - 18.25%
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 17.86%
Crypt of the NecroDancer – 17.65%
Hotline Miami - 17.01%
Fate/Grand Order – 16.91%
Subnautica – 16.00%
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – 15.55%
Night in the Woods – 15.14%
Crusader Kings II - 14.24%
The Witness - 14.19%

so last of us vs. mario kart 8, eh

pretty funny that's the lynchpin given the uncharted 4 match

Eh, I don't take this match at face value. I'd rather compare MGSV to MK8 and UC4.

Fun with numbers: using a static Journey and a static Hearthstone, Skyrim is projected to score 59.15% on HGSS, which it might actually reach at this rate. Rarely do you find such accurate extrapolation over a 4.5-year span involving two pieces of inherently swingy and non-transitive fodder. Even more interestingly, adjusting for rallies by giving HGSS 53% on Nier and Nier 70% on Divinity projects 56.42% for Skyrim using the same static Journey and static Hearthstone assumptions. In other words, either Hearthstone's weakened since 2015 even though it was better-positioned to get apathy votes this contest or Journey's improved even though it was also up against an antivote magnet back then.

On the other side of today's matches, Dark Souls is also projected to beat The Last of Us with about 59%, based on the totally different assumption that is setting MGSV equal to Arkham City this contest. It's not an assumption I'm personally inclined to give much credit to, though. Arkham City's 35% on FFX in 2015 was probably about on par with MGSV's 45% on Dark Souls back then, and while voters may have stopped caring about Arkham City since then, I'd certainly take that over what's happened to MGSV in the past 4.5 years. Dark Souls outperforming that generous assumption strongly implies that the TLoU 2 leaks caused a significant percentage swing, probably on the order of 5% or more.

Previous Results: Witcher smacks down another western game, so there's a trend. Persona 5 does fine against Portal 2.

Crew Predictions: 111/118

Next Round Thoughts: Still think P5 is going into this match as the underdog, but it does look like it'll have a shot at least.

Crew Prediction Challenge:

Moltar: 110
Kleenex: 110
Leonhart: 105
transience: 104
Guest: 95

Crew Accuracy Challenge: transience gets the point for Witcher, and Moltar gets the point for Persona.

Moltar: 33
transience: 25
Kleenex: 19
Leonhart: 19
Guest: 18 (spooky96, Hbthebattle (3), Black Turtle, ctes (2), MetalmindStats (2), MechanicalWall (2), Kotetsu, pjbasis, Nintendogs, SuperNiceDog, FFDragon, Sir Chris, DoctorJimmy)

MetalmindStats posted...

Fun with numbers: using a static Journey and a static Hearthstone, Skyrim is projected to score 59.15% on HGSS, which it might actually reach at this rate. Rarely do you find such accurate extrapolation over a 4.5-year span involving two pieces of inherently swingy and non-transitive fodder. Even more interestingly, adjusting for rallies by giving HGSS 53% on Nier and Nier 70% on Divinity projects 56.42% for Skyrim using the same static Journey and static Hearthstone assumptions. In other words, either Hearthstone's weakened since 2015 even though it was better-positioned to get apathy votes this contest or Journey's improved even though it was also up against an antivote magnet back then.

On the other side of today's matches, Dark Souls is also projected to beat The Last of Us with about 59%, based on the totally different assumption that is setting MGSV equal to Arkham City this contest. It's not an assumption I'm personally inclined to give much credit to, though. Arkham City's 35% on FFX in 2015 was probably about on par with MGSV's 45% on Dark Souls back then, and while voters may have stopped caring about Arkham City since then, I'd certainly take that over what's happened to MGSV in the past 4.5 years. Dark Souls outperforming that generous assumption strongly implies that the TLoU 2 leaks caused a significant percentage swing, probably on the order of 5% or more.

I just don't believe Hearthstone can be used for any kind of accurate extrapolation.

The xstats stop working at big blowouts and its stat is based on a 90% result.

damn

so much for being worried about Skyrim next round

Skyrim finally does well and it looks like Automata would lose to Mario Kart 8.

looks like the assumed semifinal has gone from being Galaxy 2 vs. MK8 to Galaxy 2 vs. Pokemon.

I mean it's the same question!

HG/SS was never going to be as strong as G/S/C. It's not in the same situation as P4G.

totally agree. I think I compared it earlier to a modern Pokemon game as a reason it would lose to Nier.

right reasoning, but Nier just wasn’t quite strong enough.

Yeah, that was my reasoning, too.

Mario Kart 8 is the game that's surpassing all my expectations here.

Round 5 – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs. Mass Effect 2

Moltar’s Analysis

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Round 1 – 85.02% vs. The Outer Worlds
Round 2 – 84.86% vs. Halo: Reach
Round 3 – 80.25% vs. Final Fantasy XV
Round 4 – 70.22% vs. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Mass Effect 2
Round 1 – 62.94% vs. Resident Evil 7: biohazard
Round 2 – 66.88% vs. Fallout 4
Round 3 – 55.12% vs. Horizon Zero Dawn
Round 4 – 52.47% vs. Resident Evil 2

Zelda...actually showed weakness last round? Does Mass Effect 2 have a chance here?!?!?

Well, there’s basically two ways we can look at BotW here since round 3 Zelda and round 4 Zelda look like two completely different beasts. Which performance is the more legit one, 80% on FFXV or 70% on DQ11?

If it’s scenario 1, then maybe DQ11’s half of the division is just much better than we all thought. That would mean that Zelda tries for 70% here against ME2 (which is actually what LttP would be projected to get on it in 2015).

Thinking about that though...and I don’t know if I’m taking DQ over stuff like RE2 and Bloodborne...maybe Horizon? That leads me to believe that it just overperformed on FFXV because of reasons (I’ll also accept that FFXV is just really bad now). So let’s just ignore that result for now.

If DQ is around Horizon’s level in strength, then Zelda should be able to get around 67% here. That sounds pretty solid to me.

Moltar’s Bracket: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Moltar’s Prediction: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 67%

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transience’s Analysis

This match is about as uninteresting as a quarterfinal can get, but I'm still interested to see the margin. The FFXV match made it look like Breath of the Wild might be a top 5 game until DQXI came along and looked kinda legit, holding it to 70%. Either DQ is legit or FFXV is trash?

I think I'm leaning towards the latter - mostly because of Hollow Knight. Every single goddamn 2d indie game has been exposed at some point. I won't list every game, but Celeste and VVVVVV got exposed in round 1, Super Meat Boy in round 2, and now Hollow Knight in round 3. It feels kind of inevitable. Even Shovel Knight got exposed when Mario went down. (Unless you believe in rSFF! It's a thing! Smash sucks! huahuahuaahhhhhhhhhhh)

So, Mass Effect 2 isn't super strong or anything, but it should still be better than DQ11. It held off RE2 by a comfortable margin and did what it was supposed to do. It didn't underwhelm, though it was a little wobbly at times getting there. Maybe it can avoid the doubling? A good showing would be getting to 37%, but I still think Zelda is strong enough to put down a potential top 10 game with a near doubling.

transience's prediction: Zelda: Breath of the Wild with 65.14%
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Leonhart’s Analysis

I was originally ready to go sky high for Breath of the Wild here, but after struggling to hit 70% on Dragon Quest XI, I’m having to rethink that. Between that and 80% on Final Fantasy XV, something isn’t adding up. I have a hard time thinking DQXI would double FFXV without SFF (which is what those two results suggest), so either Zelda overperformed against FFXV or underperformed against DQXI. I’d wager it’s more likely it overperformed, so I’m going to be operating with that assumption in mind.

Mass Effect 2 had a good win against Resident Evil 2 that wasn’t really in doubt beyond the first hour despite the relatively close margin. It’s my favorite game left, and it was probably the most satisfying division winner to get right because of how many people doubted its ability to win for one reason or another. I was always convinced it was going to get the job done, even after that weird round 1 performance against Resident Evil 7.

As a result, I want to predict Mass Effect 2 to do really well here and I’m trying to figure out what’s a reasonable expectation. At the very least, I’d take it to beat Dragon Quest XI, but perhaps I’m wrong about that! That 60/40 smackdown at the hands of Metal Gear Solid 3 in 2015 is the main thing that gives me pause here, but that feels like an aberration now. I might as well shoot for the low prediction to give myself a chance at the accuracy point if Zelda underwhelms again!

Leonhart’s Vote: Mass Effect 2

Leonhart’s Prediction: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with 63.25%

Kleenex’s Analysis

On to the quarterfinals! At first I thought it was kind of ridiculous we were still doing two matches a day at this point in the bracket, but after looking at today’s matches...I guess it kind of makes sense. The upper half of the bracket is done, there’s no upsets happening here, and there’s not going to be much to see. Mass Effect 2 got lucky to make it out of division 2 alive, and even though Zelda “disappointed” last round, Mass Effect is still going to get crushed. Breath of the Wild is just on a totally different level from these games. It has a clear path to the finals, and the only thing worth debating is how much it’s going to kill its opponents along the way.

Kleenex’s Prediction: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with 64.50%

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Guest’s Analysis – TsunamiXXVIII

Mass Effect 2 struggled in each of the past two rounds, and while struggling against RE2 is understandable since it's a remake of a 1998 game, it's still not a great look when Breath of the Wild broke 80% in each of the first three rounds, and Horizon Zero Dawn isn't the known quantity that RE2 is. Just the opposite; our only past Contest data on it was the main character losing to an Overwatch character in Round 1 in 2018. That said, Breath of the Wild's percentage dropped by over 10% from Round 3 to Round 4, despite going up against what should by all rights have been a weaker opponent. Seriously: Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest. Which of these is the stronger series in the US? Now, recent Final Fantasy games have been far from popular here, and it could be argued that name recognition is largely what buoys them up these days, something that doesn't work when they're facing a Zelda game. But that gap seems too wide to be attributable to that alone. I think AntiFavoriteFAQs is at work once again. Final Fantasy is the one series that can't benefit from the Link/Legend of Zelda Always Wins factor, because "Final Fantasy Always Wins". That incorrect perception seems to have finally faded, but it's easy enough to understand where it came from. We've had a lot more Character Battles than Games Contests, and even though most Legend of Zelda games technically have a different Link and Zelda, they're necessarily classified as the same entity for Contest purposes, which means that the entire series has produced a grand total of seven entrants in Character Battles, two of which are turbofodder despite their association with our #1 series. Final Fantasy VII alone has had 9, and each numbered Final Fantasy game is its own continuity with its own set of characters. I haven't done the math on it yet, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Final Fantasy really is the winningest series in contest history despite the lack of championships just from the sheer volume of entrants combined with having some very elite characters and games at the top of its card. So if a Dragon Quest game can almost break 30% on BotW, what can Mass Effect 2 do? I'm going to assume that despite the usual "older is better" formula here, the games we've seen in this contest are stronger than their older counterparts. If we set DQXI as being 60-40 on DQVIII, it comes out as Breath of the Wild with 67.65%. If we instead use MH:W 60-40 MH4U, it...comes out as an even higher percentage for BotW? Wait, what?

...So apparently the 2015 X-Stats say MH4U > DQVIII. I knew they were bad, but that's incredibly silly, because from what I've heard, MH:W did more for the Monster Hunter series than DQXI did for the Dragon Quest series; I'd assume that if MH4U really beats DQVIII, then World should've beaten XI outright. Well, I was planning on going with some sort of not-doubling, but these X-Stats, untrustworthy as they are, suggest that's foolish. Or do they? Truth be told, when you consider that RE2 Remake should theoretically be stronger than original RE2, Mass Effect 2 might have overperformed; that was only a 53-47 even in the 2015 X-Stats. Yeah, let's do this:

Breath of the Wild with 65.67%

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Crew Consensus: Shepard’s mission ends here.

Low prediction success

a bit of an overreaction, but if BOTW can only barely get above 60% then I'm not convinced it's an undoubted lock to win the contest. I feel like Witcher would get in the high 50s.

I mean, ME2 should theoretically beat Galaxy 2 with a bit of room to spare!

MGS 3 can get 61% on ME2.

If BotW can barely clear 60% on ME2, Witcher 3 should be the easy favorite to win the whole contest.

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Round 5 – Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs. Xenoblade Chronicles

Moltar’s Analysis

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Round 1 – 82.98% vs. Tekken 7
Round 2 – 64.06% vs. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Round 3 – 63.61% vs. Marvel’s Spider-Man
Round 4 – 55.94% vs. Super Mario Odyssey

Xenoblade Chronicles
Round 1 – 78.43% vs. Splatoon 2
Round 2 – 73.32% vs. Overwatch
Round 3 – 59.64% vs. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Round 4 – 50.21% vs. Persona 4 Golden

Uh so we saw Smash take out Zelda and Mario, so you’re not gonna convince me that Xenoblade is going to get off for free here. There’s already an old Wii poll where Brawl smashed Xenoblade. This SFF beatdown is inevitable.

I guess the only debate is the severity of the SFF we’re going to see here. I think this could be pretty ugly since Xenoblade’s fanbase relies more on Smash fans than Zelda’s or Mario’s. Zelda, Mario, and Smash are huge so they’ve got plenty of people to draw from, even though there’s going to be overlap. Xenoblade is a much smaller fanbase that’s more likely to be in a subset of one of those groups.

In turn, this could also mean that Xenoblade itself has more die-hard supporters than something like Link Between Worlds. They’re going to support Xenoblade no matter what, even though they don’t have the sheer numbers to topple a Nintendo behemoth like Smash. Maybe that balances out into some sort of average SFFing? Sure let’s go with that.

Moltar’s Bracket: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Moltar’s Prediction: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 63%

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transience’s Analysis

Xenoblade feels kinda like Metroid in that it's an RPG and it's a Nintendo game, so it draws from the best of both worlds. But, when facing true Nintendo, it might just collapse. I think our RPG roots might hold it together reasonably well here but ultimately Smash is in another league. This might get ugly or Xenoblade could hang tight -- it's hard to say how much of the audience is from the Square side of the house, and how much is from Nintendo. Mario RPG might be another good comparison.

I wish Persona 4 were here since its allegiance is a little more defined apart from Smash (unless you think Joker suddenly makes Persona a Nintendo franchise don't get me started). I've actually been thinking that P4G had a mini version of the Starcraft 2004 run. Every match (outside of the first round, but let's face it, this contest shouldn't have had a round 1) was incredibly tight, and it started out like a plucky underdog, trying to take down evil western games like Red Dead and GTA. It's like what Starcraft did with Halo and Kingdom Hearts. But then Starcraft went up against Wind Waker and all hell broke loose as it clawed back with an improbable rally. That was basically the Xenoblade match except it couldn't quite close the door. The stats even remind me of division 128 from 2004, where everyone decent (ha ha Fire Emblem) is right at the same stat value.

Anyway, Xenoblade will do OK but will make the division look a little bit worse in the process. As I've said repeatedly, I don't really believe Smash is that strong but Xenoblade isn't the game to take advantage of it.

transience's prediction: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with 62.44%

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Leonhart’s Analysis

Well, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate won its division with ease just like we predicted all along, right? It came up just short of an utter destruction on Super Mario Odyssey, but it should blow past that here. This is probably the least interesting quarterfinal match because of the potential for SFF and because Xenoblade really has no argument for keeping it close, especially after its narrow escape against Persona 4 Golden. At least there’s a reason to be interested in how high Zelda and Witcher 3 go in preparation for their seemingly imminent finals showdown, but we already know whatever Smash does here is irrelevant and probably worthless in terms of X-Stats on top of that. It’s hard to gin up any sort of excitement for this one.

That being said, I do think Xenoblade will hold up pretty well. It’s different enough from your average Nintendo game and the fanbase is extremely dedicated, so I don’t think you’ll see a lot of disproportionate overlap here. I’m just not sure what to expect from Smash Ultimate here. It’s probably not been quite as strong as many of us expected, but it’s still probably the third or fourth strongest game here. Xenoblade has had a good run and it might be borderline top ten for this contest, but I’m not sure how big of a margin that means here.

Leonhart’s Vote: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Leonhart’s Prediction: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with 60.06%

Kleenex’s Analysis

Much like the first match today, there’s not much room for error here. Smash Bros. is on another tier from Xenoblade, and while XC did a great job to win its division, it has no chance here. I don’t actually know how well smash ends up doing (and it doesn’t really matter, honestly), but it’ll win cleanly. There’s some talk about this being an SFF match and...I guess? I dunno, I don’t really see these two really having that much overlap other than the fact that they were both on Nintendo systems, but whatever. Smash Bros. could go pretty big here, but I think it’s more due to the fact that division 4 was just kinda weak. Regardless, congrats to Smash Bros, enjoy your beatdown next round.

Kleenex’s Prediction: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with 59.75%

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Guest’s Analysis – ctes

The result today is unfortunately obvious. I would have loved to see Xenoblade going against a different division winner except of course Zelda. I wouldn’t believe it to the favorite in any, you need to believe Persona 4 had a good bandwagon and/or that its rally did a lot for it to be. It would just be fun to see how strong it actually is. We will not have a good idea at all when it gets Smash which then gets Zelda.

Though I do wonder how tough it will be here. For one thing, could Xenoblade catch a bandwagon by now? It went into this round with such a low prediction percentage. Also, is its overlap with Smash as great as Mario? It’s obviously weaker than Odyssey indirectly, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if the combination of bandwagon and slightly less fan overlap gave it a better percentage against Smash than Odyssey had and its tempting to go for the idea. A Match that immediately comes to mind is Charizard doing a lot better than he was supposed to against Mario back in 2010.

However, I think the gap between Odyssey and Xenoblade is too great naturally. I wanted to see how strong it is, but my prediction is that it doesn’t get close to reach top 8 in a more balanced bracket as people were starting to think last round. Xenoblade had some solid opponents to look better than it is. A SFF beatdown of a fellow Nintendo game which is respected but not heavily cared about by anybody here. A beatdown of Overwatch, which could easily be really bad and it had gone against Death Stranding the round before which the same thing goes for. Then a likely SFF beatdown of Three Houses, which looked bad as well up until that point. There were times where we were discussing if Ori was the strongest indie game because it didn’t embarrass itself in round 2 like everything else did. I’m thinking it looks like Three Houses is just bad and Dragon Age very bad. The doubling of South Park is probably quite awful. So I’d guess Xenoblade is probably just a little bit better than GTAV, which is good for it but not on the top levels it looked at. The difference in that and Super Mario RPG then looks pretty believable to me.

Alright, so with some SFF expected and some bandwagon expected and thinking Xenoblade is not much better than its result last round indicates, where does that put it? Smash hasn’t exactly looked like its particularly good at blowouts.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 59.11%
Xenoblade Chronicles – 40.89%

This looks right. I don’t believe Xenoblade to be much better than A Link Between World really, but there’s probably less SFF and a bit of a bandwagon now.

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Crew Consensus: Shulk confirmed low tier.

Wow I thought I was going low and still managed to box in Kleenex!

I hope Xenoblade gets this much percent…

I think Ultimate gets the doubling easily and could shoot for something like 69%

Prove me wrong Xenoblade (please)

wow, we went really low! I expected people to go in the high 60s

ZeldaTPLink posted...

I just don't believe Hearthstone can be used for any kind of accurate extrapolation.

Yeah, I did note that it was inherently swingy and non-transitive for a reason. Still, the fact that Skyrim is outperforming even its most generous prediction assuming a static Hearthstone at the very least proves that something happened to Bayonetta 2 between contests, most likely Platinum SFF.

Also, I'm surprised most of the Crew's expecting BotW to miss a doubling here. Is Mass Effect 2 really that much stronger than DQXI?

Not gonna be much SFF here. What we see is going to be only a couple percent below XBC's natural strength, at most.

Though the comparison between XBC and LBW is interesting. Who do people take in that match?

I think there's going to be a good amount of SFF here. Nintendo games don't need to be the same genre to lay the smackdown on each other (just ask Ultimate's very last opponent), and Xenoblade has the added 'bonus' of being a game that owes part of its fortunes to Smash Bros advertising.