Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's run as Metacritic's best-rated game of 2025 has come to an end, and by two familiar faces to boot – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are once again hogging the top honors because a Switch 2 upgrade says they can.
If you look at Metacritic's best-rated category for the year, Tears of the Kingdom is currently taking the top spot with a score of 95, whereas Breath of the Wild is in second with 93 – the latter being the same score as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, funnily enough.
The duo of upgrade packs offers roughly the same to upgrade your experience on the Switch 2: higher resolution, improved frame rates, HDR support, and more. You've also got the Zelda Notes feature through the Nintendo Switch App that includes item sharing and access to a navigation tool to track Korok Seeds and Shrine locations.
While all of that has been enough to knock Clair Obscur down the pecking order, it is worth noting that neither Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom have got more than 13 reviews, whereas the J'RPG has 84 at the time of writing.
It's also more amusing than significant. While publishers are increasingly placing a lot of value in what a game's Metacritic score, the worst that's happening here is someone in a marketing department having to put an asterisk on a claim that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Metacritic's highest-rated game of the year.
Heck, it's also only June. Something else can come along and place itself over all three of 'em.
Regardless of what happens, though, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has cemented itself as one of the best releases of the year, and plenty can feel optimistic about its award prospects. As we lay out in our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review, that's some good game.
A vital piece of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's story literally came to the RPG's lead writer in a dream: "I realized, 'Oh actually, this story might work.'"
