This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round of 256!

Each game is seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools. Every game in the Upper Bracket has defeated multiple other games in 1-on-1 polls to get to this point. These are still the best of the best.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

I could see this one being close, and I hope it is! Persona 4 is by many accounts the apex of an excellent and influential RPG series.

I'm a huge fan of Dark Souls: Hyrule, so I have to give it the edge here. Everything about the game just gels together so well: weapon durability system is excellent, exploration, discovering new and strange areas of the world, horsies, hunting down and tackling discrete puzzles in the temples, and the best Zelda in the series.

I have to give the nod to Persona 4, here, even though I didn’t quite finish it for reasons I can’t explain. I loved it…

BotW. No contest.

Even though I like the P3-5 subset, I can't in good faith vote for P4 here.

Not only has it been done mechanically better in the Golden revision and 5, its plot is the weakest of the three games and many of the arcs and minor characters feel even more awkward nowadays than they did at release. A lot of the plot's appeal depends on a major twist that isn't as satisfying in retrospect (Golden did foreshadowing better IIRC, but also made a lot of P4's anime excesses worse). It also locks the good ending path behind a baffling series of vague decisions, admittedly at an obviously key point in the game that tells you to save beforehand... but that was a poor idea in P1 and continues to be poor here. P3 made the right path obvious, where P4's is basically "disagree with Yosuke a lot" (although TBF, that's generally a good policy).

Also, I haven't played BOTW but all indications are I would like it if I played it.

If this were Persona 4: Golden it would be a much tougher vote. But it isn't, so it's not.