It kinda goes default with having the 3rd most acclaimed metroidvania CV.
I... don't think it's the third most acclaimed castleroid.Granted, MetaCritic is far from perfect but it's the closest thing to a objective broad spectrum test of this type of data.
By that rating, we have:
SOTN (duh) with a 93% favorable
Circle of the Moon with a 91% favorable (really wouldn't have called that one, but oh well)
Aria of Sorrow, also with a 91%
Even if we discard one of the two 91's, we're still left with Dawn of Sorrow in third place at an 89%. People liked this stuff.
Discounting rereleases, Order of Ecclesia is at 6th place on that list with an 85, tying with Portrait of Ruin (good critical reviews should be blamed for that one).
So let's get creative, and adjust Portrait's standing in favor of Ecclesia, because, honestly,
we should. It's not bad (and anyone who says it is has forgotten what a truly bad game looks and plays like) but it's a long,
long way from "beating Order of Ecclesia" level good. Even in that version of the list, Ecclesia BARELY cracks the top 5. Not bad at all, but still not enough to really say "third most acclaimed Metroidvania". Fortunately, we're discounting non-Metroidvanias from this list, and that means that, though it barely scrapes by, now that it's done so, it's secure.
If we allowed the classic games in though... that whole list changes.
I refer you again to my earlier comment:
Argued by whom?
...
I am saying that you seem to be pulling from a completely different pile than I am, so I am genuinely curious as to how you came to the conclusions you did.
We like OOE a lot on this forum (well, most of us do), and if this forum is your primary point of contact with the fandom, you'd come away with the impression that it's a pretty beloved game.
BUT!
A bunch of people actually
disliked OoE because they thought it was too hard, or Shanoa's emotional character arc too subtle. Granted, this was in a pre-Dark Souls world, but that's the way that particular cookie crumbles.
Never forget that this forum is hardly indicative of the fandom at large. We're actually kind of strange outliers, for the most part. Find fans on Twitter or Google+, hell, even on Facebook, and opinions are wildly and chaotically more different than the stuff folks on this forum have an uncommon amount of agreement on.
So I don't see how "it kind goes default" because I can't find sufficient evidence to back up your claim that Ecclesia is "the 3rd most acclaimed metroidvania CV". Right now, I figure you're speaking/writing in fandom hyperbole and exaggerations. This doesn't make you bad (we
all do it) but when you make that crazily specific and testable a claim, yeah,
I'm gonna factcheck the hell out of it.
Addendum: OoE DOES crack the top three on more specialized gaming sites in just under half of the other sites I checked, but I went with Metacritic as it uses impartial listings that are much more free of bias because it only considers the raw numbers; most useful when one is trying to test against specific numbers.