LogInWell, it was, but it actually wasn't.
In what can only be described as a desperate attempt to cling to the few remaining scraps of relevancy they still possess, several gaming media outlets have recently pushed nearly identical stories claiming that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been "dethroned" as Metacritic's best 2025 title by Nintendo Switch 2's ports of the last two The Legend of Zelda installments, with the repeated use of the same phrasing closely mirroring Dragon Age: The Veilguard's "return to form" kerfuffle, raising some eyebrows online.
With Expedition 33 previously becoming the highest-rated game on Metacritic of all time, with a user score of 9.8 on PC and 9.7 on consoles, one could easily, yet mistakenly, assume it was this prestigious record that got beaten by the Switch 2 versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. So, was Clair Obscur actually "dethroned"? Well, yes, but actually no.
As of this writing, Sandfall Interactive's magnum opus is still comfortably holding onto its title as the highest-rated game on the aggregator, maintaining the same 9.7-9.8 user scores mentioned above. The only area where Switch 2's Zeldas outperform Clair Obscur is in gaming journalists' scores, but even that so-called "dethroning" is only technically correct.
Barring the fact that counting BotW and TotK as 2025 releases is questionable in and of itself, what's even more important is that those versions have only 12 and 10 critic reviews, respectively, while Expedition 33's score is based on 84 critic reviews, making it hardly fair to compare Zelda's 94 and 95 to Clair Obscur's 93.
Furthermore, when it comes to the scores that actually matter in this day and age – user scores – Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom aren't even remotely close, not just to Sandfall's title, but to the year's top 10 highest-rated games overall. With user scores of 7.7 and 7.2, they currently sit at 90th and 91st place for the year – much closer to the bottom of the list than the top.
With that in mind, calling Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 "dethroned" feels disingenuous, and with gaming outlets knowing full well that many people don't read past the headline, it either seems like an attempt to run defense for Nintendo and its expensive ports or to suggest that journalists' scores matter more than those from actual players – and honestly, I'm not sure which is worse.
And what's your take on all this? Do you think it's fair to say Expedition 33 was "dethroned" by the Zelda titles? What do you make of the near-identical phrasing across so many articles? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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