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BEL2026 Video Game Madness - Midwest Region 2nd Round: 7 Resident Evil Village vs. 2 Persona 5 Royal
2026 Video Game Madness - Midwest Region 2nd Round
Midwest Region Round of 32 Matchup Preview: 7 Resident Evil Village vs. 2 Persona 5 Royal
The Game That Defined 2021 Against the Highest-Rated Game of 2020
Resident Evil Village beat Forza Horizon 5 in overtime, and the result produced one of the more debated outcomes of the Midwest's Round of 64.
Forza Horizon 5 was the 10 seed in the Midwest bracket carrying a 92 Metacritic score, one of the highest 10-seed scores in VGM history and a number that reflects genuine critical consensus about a game that is exceptional at exactly what it attempts to be. It was the 2021 Metacritic Game of the Year. It attracted over ten million players in its first week alone, breaking records for an Xbox exclusive. It is set in a recreation of Mexico spanning eleven distinct biomes and filled with the particular joy of a driving game that has always understood the difference between simulating driving and making driving feel extraordinary. Its fanbase is large and it voted in overtime.
Resident Evil Village won anyway. The seeding tiebreaker in overtime went to Forza Horizon 5, and Village still won. That is not a result that can be explained by anything other than a specific and motivated fanbase that wanted it more in the moment that mattered. Lady Dimitrescu. The Castle Dimitrescu section. The nine-foot-tall vampire aristocrat who became one of the most recognized character designs in gaming before the game had even launched. The horror-action balance that the Resident Evil series had been calibrating toward for years and finally landed in exactly the right place. The people who loved Village came to vote for it with an intensity that outlasted a 92-rated racing game in overtime.
Village advances now to face Persona 5 Royal, and the Midwest's 7 vs 2 matchup is one of the more fascinating second-round stories the bracket has produced.
Persona 5 Royal is the highest-rated game of 2020, and that sentence carries a lot of weight when you consider what 2020 looked like. The Last of Us Part II came out that year. Hades came out that year. Half-Life: Alyx came out that year. All three of those games are in this tournament. Persona 5 Royal scored higher than all of them with a 95 on Metacritic.
Royal is the expanded version of Persona 5, the 2017 JRPG that scored a 93 and changed how a generation of players thought about the genre. Royal added a new playable character, two new confidants, a restructured third semester that adds a substantial new story arc, revised Palaces, new music, new mechanics, and an ending that recontextualizes everything that came before it. It scored higher than the original because it is genuinely better. Not just more content but better. The additions improve the game rather than simply extending it.
The game follows Joker, a transfer student falsely accused of a crime who discovers the ability to enter the Metaverse and awakens to his Persona, a supernatural manifestation of his rebellious spirit. He and his friends form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. The premise is outlandish and the execution is meticulous. Persona 5 Royal knows exactly how long it wants to be, which characters it wants you to love, and which ideas it wants to leave you with, and it achieves all of those things with the confidence of a creative team at the peak of its powers.
The Persona fanbase is one of the most organized and present voting communities in this tournament. They showed up here for Royal with a 3-1 win over Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a game with a fiercely loyal fanbase of its own. The 2 seed in the Midwest has arrived in the Round of 32 with every expectation of advancing further.
A 7 seed that survived overtime against a higher-scored 10 seed, against a 2 seed that has one of the most organized fanbases in the tournament. Village will need the same intensity that carried it through overtime against Forza, and it will need it against an opponent that has shown no sign of being stoppable by anything the Midwest has offered so far.
The Midwest bracket continues March 21. 12PM.
