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The story
A thread on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Gehabu) board is asking whether the French-made RPG “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” released in 2025, was really as good as its reviews claimed now that some time has passed since launch. The thread starter raised suspicions of review manipulation in the game industry, pointing to concrete gaps between Metascore and user scores for Nintendo and Sony titles. Meanwhile, the thread split hard between posters defending it as “genuinely good once you actually play it,” critics arguing the battle system looks recycled from existing games, and pushback against the game’s “self-proclaimed indie” status.
What people said
That's why you look at the overall trend.
For "Chony" (a derisive nickname for Sony), it's always Metascore > user score.
It's obvious Chony is manipulating the media, lol.
Nintendo
Ocarina of Time
Metascore 9.6 User 9.6
Sports Resort
Metascore 79 User 8.4
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave
Metascore 89 User 8.5
Poko-a-Pokemon
Metascore 88 User 9.0
Xenoblade 2 Switch2
Metascore 86 User 8.9
Splatoon Raiders
Metascore 82 User 9.2
Sony
Ghost of Yotei: Echoes of Sekigahara
Metascore 84 User 6.7
Marvel's Wolverine
Metascore 75 User 6.7
Marvel Tokon
Metascore 85 User 7.5
SAROS
Metascore 87 User 7.6
MLB The Show 26
Metascore 73 User 2.4
The score felt gross — way too much favoritism.
You haven't even played it, have you?
At least play it before you talk.
Including the sequel, I never want to touch it again.
Guess they've never heard of Star Ocean 3 (SO3)?
Yeah, it felt like a tri-Ace game with all the otaku flavor stripped out.
She named Arc the Lad II as her favorite RPG, which bumped her up in my estimation.
And it's not even an evolution of that style, it's a straight copy-paste.
Even copy-pasted from an indie solo project called "Only Up."
The map colors looked off, and sure enough, turns out they just dumped it on AI (not that using AI is bad in itself, they're just bad at it).
Also, apparently trying to imitate FF, the cutscene-drama moments are copy-pasted too and don't mean anything.
> Looking at the battle screens, it's mobile-gacha-game aesthetics plus FF8.
> And it's not even an evolution of that style, it's a straight copy-paste.
Where exactly are you looking that makes you think this is a copy-paste of FF8's battle system???
Palworld was deliberately provocative with the original in mind, but Expedition 33 isn't doing anything like that.
Uh, should I just flag this one in red? (a reference to marking suspicious posts/IDs)
Re: #42
Yeah, this one's not Japanese after all — guess I'll flag it red too.
🐷: "Shady! Shady!" ← …huh?
[Sad News] "Barrier-san" doesn't even know the word "shady" [tag: Akkatsu]
Nobody plays a story-driven RPG that just ends once you clear it for months on end.
There's no point making a reasonable argument like that to the "pigs" — they just want to trash a good game that snubbed the Switch 2 and that they can't even play.
The reason it got criticized was because it called itself "indie."
It's not indie at all.
Not just Sony — I suspect all three major game companies (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) are doing it.
At the end of the day, rankings, reviews, awards, view counts, and likes can all be bought with money.
If you overdo it though, newcomers stop showing up.
The manga industry isn't a One Piece monopoly either — Demon Slayer came along too.
Using One Piece and Demon Slayer as your "evidence" is way too dumb lol.
That's the same as saying "It's not a Mario monopoly either — Animal Crossing came along."
It had a proper map, a vehicle, even hidden dungeons — everything that's been missing from recent RPGs.
Personally, I liked that there was player skill involved beyond just leveling.
"Grind for a while and you can progress" is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.
Same goes for farming monsters just to assemble weapons and armor — can't be bothered with that.
A vehicle? Don't tell me you mean the boat.
By that logic, Dragon Quest II had a "vehicle" too.
You've been sticking to it and running a smear campaign nonstop — what on earth is driving you guys to do that? lol
It's just that a game good enough to sweep the GOTY awards snubbed the Switch 2, and that stings.
In the back half you can one-shot enemies with a pre-emptive strike, so you stop needing to parry.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
“Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” is a turn-based RPG developed by France’s Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive, which earned high praise at various 2025 game awards. Even at launch, there were doubts about treating a production of this scale as an “indie title,” and the suggestion that France’s domestic game-industry support programs may have given it a financial edge is one point that resurfaced in this thread. Where the thread split was over whether to view the gap between Metascore and user scores as “evidence of manipulation,” or simply as a sign that it isn’t the type of game people keep playing for the long haul. Story-driven RPGs that end once cleared are hard to compare directly, in concurrent-player terms, against long-running titles like monster-hunting games, and some pushed back against treating a drop in the player base as instant proof the game had “lost steam.” It’s worth noting that no hard evidence of actual review manipulation was presented in the thread — this remains speculation.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Gehabu)) thread “Looking back now, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 really was a shady game in a lot of ways, huh.”
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