# (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 _source: (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 (revid 83777)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first major case of SFF this contest, and Marston took it right on the nose. This wasn't some legendarily hilarious case of SFF like Link \> Ganondorf in 2004, but it was still brutal to look at. Don't try telling me this isn't SFF, either, because if you look at the final stats Marston is in no way as weak as those stats would suggest. Red Dead Redemption is way too big of a series, even on this site, for the dude to be like bottom 10 in the LOL x stats. His game almost doubled Bayonetta a mere 3 years ago, and then it broke 40% on Shadow of the Colossus. That's pretty respectable. Not crazy strong, but respectable. Then there's that whole Red Dead Redemption 2 thing, which is so huge even South Park did a bit on it. You know what the prime recipe for SFF is? It isn't sharing a fanbase. Mega Man and Zero share a fanbase. Zero got 44% in that match. SFF happens when you share almost the exact same fanbase and one character is clearly stronger than the other. Kratos and John Marston are both casualbait, strong, male, badass tough guys from major, popular series that had recent blockbusters. But Kratos is clearly out of Marston's league, thanks to a much longer history with the gaming audience. That is exactly how you get matches like this. It's also how you get things like Snake \> Tanner and The Legend of Zelda \> Adventure. Take two entities in a popularity contest where one is clearly already stronger than the other and it gets ugly quickly. That's what happened here. Rivalry Rumble aside, did you know Kratos had never broken 61% in a poll before this match? Not once. You don't go from that to 73% by accident when another popular character is involved. This was SFF, plain as day. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** To set up this match we need to look at God of War's history on GameFAQs. That series used to be really good, and I think a lot of people forget that on this board. All three of the original trilogy games got into the Game of the Year finals, with two of them in the top three. It looked quite good in 2009 and really good in 2010, coming very close to peak Half-Life 2. Kratos kind of followed its fortunes, looking better than ever until a great performance against Charizard in 2010 (however strong you think he really is). Then 2013 happened. Kratos looked absolutely dreadful, struggling to double Travis and Recette then getting just annihilated by Mega Man X and losing to Jill. This follows how people thought of the series. In 2013 constant releases and Ascension had almost killed the series. 2013 Kratos would struggle with Marston, who looked alright against Zelda in 2013 and is helped by the fact that RDR2 releases four days after this match. But then we come to the match and Kratos lets loose, starting big and getting bigger as the match went on before stabilising over 73%. It was almost as big a victory as Yoshi's over Shantae. **What could this mean?:** This was a dominant performance by Kratos, and I have to imagine it was legit strength. There is talk of SFF but I don't see why there would be more here than Yoshi vs. Shantae or even Pikachu vs. Scorpion, the two are fairly different, one is multiplatform, and is well-loved. Additionally I'm not sure if Marston has fallen to the bottom or anything, RDR is still floating around the top 30 on this site and RDR2 is very hyped. Marston even had his RDR2 art in the match pic I think. So this was a really good showing for Kratos, and if he wasn't running into Pikachu next round he could really run rampant. Going off 2013 an upset is possible, and I'm not expecting it but I would definitely like to see it. It makes sense that Kratos would look this good - God of War 2018 is the Breath of the Wild of the series. It's not just revived the series either, but it has also redeemed Kratos as a character. I think this is the strongest he's ever been and I wish he was in any other division. Hopefully he will give us a good show in his next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Here is what I don't get about this match. Of course Kratos would win. But this much? When this match happened RDR 2 was days away from release and I thought Marston would have some power based on the hype. Seriously the hype was huge. But seriously? I know GOW 4 came out in this year but man Kratos either gained really much power from that game or Marston is really weak? Or SFF? Who knows. This proves that strong games don't equal strong characters. RDR is a popular game and it is the best Western game ever made. Man too bad for Marston. I really like him. Also this is the biggest win for Kratos ever too! Damn! Also I think Kratos has to be the strongest Western character too. Still nice win for Kratos. ## Tsunami's Analysis I guess this is an SFF match as well? These percentages are very similar, so even if Kratos SFFs Marston just as much as Yoshi SFFs Shantae, you're still left needing a *lot* of rSFF in Yoshi-Pikachu to explain this one away. Also, I may not know a thing about Red Dead Redemption, but if it's the same genre as God of War, well, if it's a fodder match, I'd invoke genre hierarchy to give Shantae the advantage even before TJF. Remember, this is GameFAQs. M-rated games aren't popular here at all. Also apparently there was supposed to be hype for a game that I could've sworn had already come out a long time ago...I think it's because Red Dead *Redemption* was already a sequel to begin with. It became the most popular entry in the series so they kind of renamed the series, kind of like how Metal Gear *Solid* was originally a clever play on the [Third is 3D](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThirdIs3D) trope, refusing to explicitly call it "Metal Gear 3D" even though it was the third game in the series and the first in 3D, except the first two games were on a fairly obscure system that was never released outside of Japan (and the first game got butchered so badly when being ported to the NES that the NES version was eventually deemed non-canon), so it became as good as a franchise reboot and the next game was called Metal Gear Solid 2. Whatever. Not important. 2000s \> 2010s in the hierarchy, especially with so many other factors being identical.