This doesn't follow at all. The game received _excellent_ reviews prior to release. It's currently the second best reviewed PC game of the year on metacritic [1] (an aggregator with some problems but I don't think this is controversial).
Exactly contrary to your point, both Clair Obscur and Blue Prince (#1) got excellent reviews in the days leading up to release leading to people on e.g. Reddit saying "this game came out of nowhere and it has amazing reviews, I'm excited".
https://www.metacritic.com/browse/game/pc/all/all-time/metas...