Amid Universal Critic and User Acclaim, Turn-Based Haters Are Trying to Review-Bomb Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
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Just a few days ago, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released, and to the surprise of many, the turn-based RPG turned out to be a massive critical hit garnering scores that made it the best-reviewed game of 2025 so far.
Also, the RPG’s user review scores have been amazingly high—higher than even the game’s aggregated reviews from publications. However, it seems the game’s success has also managed to attract several haters, which is normal nowadays.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Getting Review-Bombed by Trolls Who Hate Turn-Based Games
While the old-school RPG has managed to achieve an amazing 92 average on Metacritic, and 91 on Open Critic, what might even be more impressive is its user review score. Over on Metacritic, the game has an astounding 9.7 average across over 3,300 user reviews! While the majority of the user reviews are overwhelmingly positive, there’s also a large number of super-negative reviews that gave it a score of zero (0), 1 and so on.
Some of the main complaints why the game got a super-low score? “Turn-based garbage,” according to one user who gave it a score of 0/10. Some are a bit more generous (though not much) as they call it “super boring turn-based gameplay.”
It doesn’t end there, one of the reviews cite they don’t understand the high ratings and that developer Sandfall Interactive used turn-based gameplay as a “lazy crutch so as to not spend money on gameplay,” which makes zero sense, but I guess this person knows more about video game budgets than we do. The same reviewer then says outside of the music and plot, “everything else is outright garbage” and the graphics are “soap.”
Other reviews call the gameplay “dated”, ” pretentious” with some even claiming that people who can only handle and play turn-based combat games are taking the time to review the game, hence why it’s getting a lopsided number of favorable reviews.
So far, there are 65 negative user reviews, even more than the “Mixed” reviews, which have just 47 ratings. I have no clue if this will climb up, but they have a long way to go, as the game has 3,3oo+ positive reviews, which translates to 97*% of the total reviews. Based on the trend, the hate train is just getting started, so there is a chance that negative review number will climb up.
While I understand people do not like a certain game, giving it a 0 or 1 score is a bit much, right? I’m honestly not surprised that this happened, as there are a lot of people nowadays who just hate when something good happens and rush to tear it down. What do they get from it? Search me, but that’s reality.
As someone who’s personally playing the game now, I greatly like it. Sure, turn-based gameplay is not for everyone, but Sandfall managed to find a way to make it more dynamic and fresh. Even if you don’t like it, a score of 1 should be for the really bad games.
So far, the negative reviews have not affected the game one bit, as the largest report from Sandfall confirms the game has now sold over one million copies, and is doing amazing numbers on Steam.
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So 65 people out of 3300+ is a “large number” to you? Less than 2% of reviewers gave it a 1 or 0, and your idea is to give them a bigger platform to egg them on? I don’t know if this article was your idea or your boss’, but if it was yours you should be a little ashamed of the effort you put in here. Real journalism used to be going out and finding information or interviewing someone. You just read hate posts from a very small minority of people and said “Ooh yeah that’s the story here!” 0/10 article
It’s Sony fanboys hating that an Microsoft/Xbox game is doing better than anything Sony has released. They should be happy Xbox is giving them games since they have barely anything in 2025 first party from PS5.
I don’t think this can be classed as ‘review bombing’, to be honest. People are allowed to dislike a game based on their own gameplay preferences, regardless of how much others like the game. This is simply people expressing their personal opinions, which is allowed, last time I checked. A single game will never please everyone, and the turn-based combat definitely won’t, because some people just aren’t into that. It’s okay not to hop aboard the hype train, sometimes.
only apes messages there.