No início deste mês passado de janeiro, joguei Hogwarts Legacy, um jogo ambientado no universo de Harry Potter que, obviamente, não poderia deixar de jogar. Infelizmente, só pude jogar agora em 2024 por alguns problemas pessoais.

Esse jogo em questão foi muito aguardado por mim e também por toda a comunidade gamer, que estava ansiosa por um jogo novo no universo de Harry Potter. Embora não esteja isento de falhas, Hogwarts Legacy é um jogo que já adianto a todos que é um jogaço, seja pelo seu mundo aberto, rico em diversos pontos, quanto pela experiência de interagir com esse mundo mágico de Harry Potter com uma tecnologia mais atual. Porém, se na parte estética ele é incrível, na sua parte técnica a história é outra; tive muitos problemas, seja por quedas de frames ou até mesmo por problemas com carregamento de texturas, cenários, e etc. Inclusive, o começo da minha jogatina foi no computador, porém o jogo estava tão ruim que resolvi pegar o jogo no console e jogar no meu Series S mesmo, e aí sim, apesar de ainda ter um problema ou outro similar ao PC, como o problema dos carregamentos de cenários e texturas, ainda sim a experiência se demonstrou bem mais sólida que a experiência no PC.

Hogwarts Legacy conta uma história diferente dos livros ou filmes de Harry Potter, apesar de se passar no mesmo universo. Aqui, construímos nosso próprio personagem para se juntar ao mundo bruxo, como um estudante do quinto ano na Escola de Magia e Bruxaria de Hogwarts. De acordo com a lore do universo, os indivíduos normalmente recebem sua carta de aceitação quando têm onze anos, mas um indivíduo pode ingressar tardiamente em raras ocasiões. Esta foi uma maneira usada no jogo para apresentar o nosso personagem.

Além de descobrir sua conexão com a magia mais tarde na vida, o protagonista também possui habilidades mágicas antigas e extremamente raras. Isso não apenas abre oportunidades adicionais, mas explica por que eles são lançados no meio de um conflito que se estende muito além de apenas aulas.

No geral, Hogwarts Legacy é muito equilibrado, tanto para quem nunca nem viu nada de Harry Potter quanto para quem já ama de carteirinha esse universo. Tudo flui organicamente, e cada missão, seja principal ou secundária, parece ter significado muito importante e divertido para você.

Falando um pouco de nossa jogabilidade, ao começar o jogo pela primeira vez e ver quantas coisas diferentes estão sendo apresentadas na jogabilidade, pode causar um momento de confusão e dúvida para você. Felizmente, cada sistema do jogo vai sendo explorado de maneira mais profunda ao longo do jogo e nao passa despercebido.

O combate no jogo é muito intrigante porque em diversos momentos ele me lembrou muito um Soulslike, apesar do jogo não ter essa proposta em sua jogabilidade; em diversos momentos de combate, você vai usar a esquiva como principal arma, e é simplesmente incrível, e esses momentos me lembraram muito um game Soulslike. O jogo tem um ritmo de combate muito legal, e independentemente de quantos feitiços ou encantamentos diferentes o jogador tenha aprendido, eles podem escolher quatro para sua roda de feitiços. Estes podem ser trocados a qualquer momento, até mesmo durante o combate, dando a você a chance de desenvolver seu próprio estilo de combate na hora do game mesmo. Com um clube de duelos disponível, há muito tempo para praticar diferentes feitiços, combinações e sequências antes de entrar em uma área de combate.

Puzzles ambientais estão espalhados pelo mapa. Embora os mesmos puzzles sejam usados repetidamente, cada um tem um nível diferente de dificuldade. Algumas áreas são bloqueadas por requisitos de nível, mas a maioria exige aprender um novo feitiço antes de acessar.

A maioria das missões requer um minigame em algum momento. Alguns desses podem ser simples e divertidos nos quais você usa o feitiço "accio" para recuperar livros voadores. Outros podem ser um pouco tediosos. Um exemplo são as chaves voadoras. Após encontrar uma chave voadora e segui-la até um armário trancado, você deve observar a chave e batê-la enquanto ela passa pela fechadura. As recompensas raramente valem o tempo para esses minigames específicos. Mas geralmente não são obrigatórios e representam apenas uma parte quase insignificante da experiência geral que o jogo vai te dar.

Um aspecto que chamou muito minha atenção no início antes de jogar foi o voo. Algumas horas no jogo, o protagonista participa de aulas de voo e pode comprar uma vassoura, se desejar. Voar, na maior parte, é uma experiência suave e divertida. Os controles são bem ruinzinhos na hora de voar mas nada que comprometa completamente sua jogabilidade, na realidade como dito antes é muito divertido.

O jogador deve frequentar aulas para progredir na história e aprender novos feitiços, encantamentos, poções e outras habilidades. As aulas são estruturadas também como minigames.

Na sua parte visual e sonora, Hogwarts Legacy é lindo e a sua parte sonora sem sombra de dúvida é incrível, toda a parte sonora lembra perfeitamente a sensação de assistir aos filmes da série. Já na sua parte visual, é igualmente incrível, tudo é extremamente lindo e grandioso aos seus olhos, muito raramente há áreas sem nada para ver ou fazer. No entanto, tentar fazer esse visual ser incrível do jeito que é parece ter prejudicado um pouco o desempenho do game. O modo Fidelidade mantém o jogo a 30 FPS e eleva as texturas a um jogo AAA atual. O modo Desempenho fica na faixa de 60FPS, mas parece um jogo de PlayStation 4 ou algo do tipo. Esses problemas são muito perceptíveis, mas não são suficientes para arruinar a imersão de forma alguma.

Hogwarts Legacy é um jogo muito bom tanto para os antigos fãs da franquia quanto para os novatos na série. Ele oferece um mundo de magia e mistério com uma história principal que é a caprichosa e recheado também de missões secundárias, há inúmeras razões para não dispensar esse game que é incrível. Problemas gráficos ocasionais são perceptíveis, mas no geral são facilmente ignorados pela abundância de pontos positivos que o jogo tem. Hogwarts Legacy é uma experiência fascinante e encantadora que não deve ser perdida por ninguém.

Pontos Positivos:
- História
- jogabilidade
- Mundo aberto
- Abundância de coisas para descobrir

Pontos Negativos:
- Gráficos visuais podem em alguns momentos parecer datado
- Alguns minigames são tediosos

Versão utilizada para análise: XSS

puta decepção isso aqui. perderam uma oportunidade de ouro de fazer um jogo extremamente memorável e com uma história muito boa, pq a lore de harry potter dá brecha pra isso. ao invés, fizeram uma ambientação fantástica com uma hogwarts INCRÍVEL que no fim das contas não serve pra nada. é um explorar apenas por explorar. em hollow knight, por exemplo, você é movido pela curiosidade (igual aqui) mas é sempre recompensado em uma obra muito interessante com áreas novas, inimigos novos, história nova, itens novos, enfim. em hogwarts legacy a sua curiosidade te leva a apenas algo do tipo "uau, igual no livro!" ou "que interessante esse personagem novo nigrous black que encontrei explorando um armazém, a jk realmente não é problemática!".
combate legal e ambientação espetacular a troco de nada. isso é hogwarts legacy: um jogo que falha em se sustentar sozinho e só funciona caso você tenha um conhecimento prévio de harry potter. e ao escrever isso parece que tô descrevendo um filme da marvel. muito decepcionante

Desde criança desejava um game desse nível no universo de HP, então é quase um sonho realizado, com certeza um jogo feito para os fans da obra.

A história é aquele padrão clichê de sempre, apesar de não ser a melhor coisa do jogo tem ótimos momentos, cenas memoráveis(essas são seguidas por uma trilha sonora muito boa) e alguns personagens com histórias bem interessantes. Uma coisa que percebi é que é MUITO parecido com os filmes, o prólogo mesmo é quase uma cópia do primeiro filme, o que é uma boa coisa por trazer nostalgia.

Agora partindo pro principal brilho do jogo: A exploração, é simplesmente fantástico explorar Hogwarts e suas terras, vários pequenos detalhes que você já reconhece instantaneamente quando bate o olho, os gráficos são lindos demais e a direção de arte brilha em muitos cenários, voar na vassoura por aí é muito relaxante, uma pena não terem colocado modo foto. A parte de aulas foi bem colocada também, lembra um pouco Bully, onde te dão novas habilidades(nesse caso feitiços) com o passar do ano. A jogabilidade é facilmente adaptável, nas primeiras horas você já domina os combos. Bugs de otimização e crashes parecem ter sido resolvidos com o tempo.

Agora partindo para os pontos negativos:
-O prólogo demora um pouco pra engajar, então é bom dar uma rushada no começo do jogo.
-Apesar da exploração ser um ponto forte quando você explora uns 70% do jogo ele começa a ficar um tanto repetitivo, o que era um problema nos outros jogos da empresa, nesse se manteve.
-O combate se torna repetitivo rápido, basicamente zerei o jogo usando o mesmo combo, já que não tem tantas opções além de quebrar o escudo do oponente e levitar ele.
-Apesar de não parecer o jogo é demasiado fácil, mesmo no difícil com 5 horas de jogo você já fica muito ''apelão''.
-A variedade de sidequests é baixa, a grande maioria é ''vá de A para B e mate tal inimigo'' ou ''colete X item''.

Após 70 horas de gameplay e praticamente platinar o jogo me senti muito satisfeito no geral, apesar dos seus problemas foi um jogo que me divertiu o tempo todo. Vale os 250-300 reais? Depende do quão fã você é de HP.

I'm certainly happy for Harry Potter fans, but technically it's far from a AAA project, more like a class B project ("Portkey games", Seriously what a bad studio name), $60 for that is debatable, not a "seamless" open world, like for ex. "Ishimura" in the recent Dead Space remake, downloads between sections, and not instant even on ssd, poor detailing of Hogwarts, simple animations, a simple combat system based on memorizing the sequence, someone also saying a lot of "farming" starts after 10 hours. By the way, it’s an interesting decision that the game is released on PS4 only in April, I’m not saying that it’s wrong, but technically the game could well have been released on past gene right now.

Subscribe on my Steam Curators page:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41977550/

With its outdated game design and insultingly superficial handling of the setting, Hogwarts Legacy is a tragic missed opportunity in the quest for the ultimate Harry Potter game.

THE GOOD

Nails the aesthetic of the world - Flying a broom is mostly fun and precise - One questline attemps to tackle intriguing moral dilemmas - Room of Requirement can be fun to customize and use

THE BAD

Fundamental and irreparable dissonance between gameplay and setting - Hogwarts school experience never goes beyond purely cosmetic - Looter gameplay is dull and unrewarding, hampers exploration - Worthless side activities - Weak cast of characters - Basic, tedious story - No Quidditch - Sanitized setting does away with anything controversial from the source material - Substandard accessibility options

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The turn of the century was a time of great transformation for the gaming industry: the definitive switch from 2D to 3D opened up a whole new frontier for game developers to expand upon, with the sky being the limit. How fortuitous then that a franchise ripe with potential and mystique like Harry Potter happened to hit the mainstream around the same time, chiefly thanks to the excellent 2001 Chris Columbus film. What followed in the next few years was a veritable gold rush, in which different studios would chase the expanding cinematic franchise by making multiple games based on the same movie, spreading them out on every platform in existence, often with varying result in terms of quality.

The XBOX, PS2 and Gamecube version of Chamber of Secrets is widely regarded as the best Harry Potter game, or at the very least the most fondly remembered: it was a fun spin on the Zelda formula, alternating rewarding exploration with collectathon mechanics, a fair transposition of the source material and a fun Quidditch minigame. Best of all, it was the finest example of virtual tourism that contemporary technology would allow, featuring an explorable Hogwarts castle and surrounding grounds, the forbidden forest and Diagon Alley shopping district.

Not surprisingly, when Hogwarts Legacy was announced, many saw it as the ideal opportunity to do what those older games couldn't due to hardware limitations. Not only that, but features such as being able to create one's character, join any of the four houses, attend classes and take part in a brand-new story in the Potter world promised to be the fulfillment of untapped potential twenty years in the making: the ultimate immersive Hogwarts experience. And boy, were those hopes dashed against the rocks for anyone but the easiest to please among Harry Potter fans. Let us discuss how.

First, an overview of what the game gets right. The atmosphere of the castle is excellent: while not tailored on the castle from the movies, which makes it less iconic, it is similar enough to still be familiar enough and it's packed with students roaming its halls, animated paintings, recognizable ghosts floating around and a plethora of little details, cameos and lore entries, this really has a lot of value as a virtual tour of Hogwarts. When you eventually get your broom, which is thankfully fairly quickly, this extends to the surrounding areas, an open world which can be a joy to fly over, especially early on. The broom itself controls very well, allowing for precise movement in the air both when speeding and floating, even though the game sees fit to plaster the open world with irritating invisible walls to prevent you from flying where you're not supposed to. I can't land in Hogsmeade or fly to the very top of the tallest Hogwarts tower, really?

Regardless, given this lovingly crafted castle and with the broom well implemented, one would think the rest would follow suit. Unfortunately it isn't so: the problems begin right away, as we step in the shoes of a 17 year-old muggle from victorian England, who has bafflingly just been accepted at Hogwarts, starting out as a fifth year. The backstory of this generic character (we can customize him/her completely) is never explained beyond the fact they possess the power to sense and use "ancient magic", a minor mention from the source material, which the game turns into a major plot device as a means to make the protagonist special. Another chosen one like Harry Potter but far less interesting.

With a simple turorial done, we are brought to Hogwarts to attend the sorting hat ceremony, which is where things really start falling apart: simply put, it's no sorting ceremony at all. You are asked one question as to which quality reflects you best (daring, curiosity, loyalty or ambition) meant to place you in one house or another (you know, just like it doesn't happen in the books or movies), but to anyone who knows the first thing about the Potter world, it is so pathetically obvious as to which house corresponds to which answer that there is no chance for error. The questions on the sorting page of the early 2000s Pottermore website were so much more ambiguous than this, and they were meant for children. The game might as well just let you choose hour house outright... which it does, as a last call selection to change your sorting before the game starts.
Dismal. It would have been so much better to offer a prologue going through a day of your character's muggle life, and present a number of moral choices through NPC interactions, profiling the player to then base the house sorting on that collected data. Instead we get a stupid question and a simple selection menu, completely negating the point of the sorting hat as a game mechanic. You don't even get to pick your pet between owl, cat, rat and toad, being automatically given an owl that sits on a perch in your room doing nothing like the prop that it is. Oh but you do get to customize your wand in great detail, which is a bizarre choice for a tiny item you will never see up close again for the rest of the game.

Worse still, the four houses are little more than a cosmetic element, with their differences flattened to the point of not even existing. With the exception of a scant handful of important NPCs, none of the students exhibit any of the traits that distinguish one house from the next: for instance you will never see Slitherin bullies harassing a meek Hufflepuff in the corridors, or any Gryffindor bravely stepping in to defend them, and your character is no exception: barring a few absolutely inconsequential dialogue choices in which you are allowed to behave egoistically or aggressively, this protagonist always defaults to a selfless goody-two-shoes whenever it is time for any important story moments. Try as you might, you will not be able to roleplay the Slitherin dirtbag or the pragmatic Ravenclaw of your dreams in this game. The house selection screen might as well just ask you what color you like best, which is essentially what it boils down to. At most you might get the occasional voice line reminding you that you behaved badly, but there is no lasting consequence to any of your actions.

Sadly, this extends to one more aspect of the game: house points. You can really tell the game started out as so much more than it is, and was stripped down to the bare basics to meet a deadline: at certain moments, lines of dialogue exist in which this or that professor awards or subtracts points from your or someone else's house for succeeding at something or breaking a rule. This hints at the intention of granting the player some kind of agency as to who wins the house cup at the end of the school year, much like some of the 6th gen games did. Needless to say, this is not an actual mechanic in Hogwarts Legacy. The four hourglasses keeping track of how many points each house has accumulated are present in the entrance hall of the castle, but they are nothing more than a static prop, serving no purpose whatsoever. At the end of the game you get a one-size-fits-all cutscene in which a professor declares that "considering the bravery displayed by our new fifth year, we award them 100 points and their house wins the house cup!" not even mentioning which house it is, because recording four different lines of dialogue would have been too much effort. It is safe to assert that the Hogwarts experience in this game is nothing more than purely cosmetic and perfunctory, a smoke screen with nothing of substance behind it.

There is even the vestigial remain of a curfew mechanic: a tutorial message states that you're expected to return to the common room of your Hogwarts house every evening, but this is not true, since you can roam around the open world at night to your heart's content, and even sit on the ground to wait and advance time with no consequence of any kind.

Disconcertingly, the dissonance between game and world applies to an even bigger stumbling stone, whose lore implications are absolutely insulting in the context of the game, and that is the handling of the unforgivable curses. If you know anything about the Harry Potter world, you know that there are three main spells that no wizard is ever allowed to use: Crucio, which causes unbearable pain, Imperio, which takes control of a human being to do the caster's bidding and Avada Kedavra, which kills on the spot. All of these are present in the game, and acquired over the course of what's perhaps the best of the optional questlines the game has on offer: in it, a Slitherin student is trying to find a way to dispel a consuming curse placed on his sister, who as a result of it is slowly dying. To achieve this goal, the young man is ready to do whatever it takes, even dabbling in the dark arts. A good side story (even though, like everything else in this game, it ends with a dud) and this is where the player is offered the opportunity to learn or reject the three unforgivable curses.

Now, one might assume that there would be some momentous consequence to this choice, that learning and using the unforgivables would drastically alter the way the story progresses and ends, or at the very least the way Hogwarts staff and students relate to you. The reality is, of course, that it does not: you can run around using the forbidden arts on any enemy you want, be it human, goblin or beast, with no repercussion of any kind, and that is because the game treats them as just another one of many combat spells. This is but one of many aspects that constitute a fundamental and irreconcilable disconnect between the gameplay style they went with and the world the action takes place in, and it segues into an analysis of the combat system and why it clashes with the story and shatters the immersion.

Let's make a parallel with a Star Wars game that offer a similar perspective, but properly developed: in Knights of the Old Republic, the player is allowed to pursue dark side powers, with disastrous consequences, such as party members leaving or dying, as well as a different ending, shaped by the choices made throughout the game. There is no having your cake and eating it, you have to choose between the "fun" destructive powers and a happy end to the story. You couldn't have both, since your dabbling in the forbidden arts choices had hefty consequences. Not so in Hogwarts Legacy, where the unforgivables are just yet another skill on cooldown like any other, whose use bears no stigma at all.

Combat in this game is fairly simplistic but not the worst thing in the world: you lock onto enemies, dodge roll out of the way of attacks and fire at them with your wand. As you progress through the main story you will gradually gain access to over twenty spells, divided in five main categories: red for raw damage, purple for kinetic force (pushing, pulling), yellow for control (levitating, paralysing, transmutating), green for unforgivables and grey for utility essentials (moving puzzle elements around, casting light, unlocking doors, repairing things, obfuscate). You will also unlock up to four sets of four spells each, assigned to the directions of the dpad or the number keys on a keyboard, for a total of sixteen spells assignable for quick access during combat or exploration. If you've played the console versions of one of the Dragon Age games, this isn't too dissimilar from how those games handle their spells and skills, though more clunky: having to let go of the movement stick to switch spell set is irritating, and can lead to undeserved deaths, especially if you have trouble remembering with direction has which spells. The idea here is to find which purple or yellow magic works in staggering a specific enemy, then unloading on them with damage spells to deplete their health bar. Sometimes enemy wizards will shroud themselves in a colored barrier which negates all damage and all you have to do is use any spell of the same color to dissipate it. When an enemy is about to attack you, an Arkham-style "sixth sense" icon appears to signal you can either block and riposte or dodge. It's all very basic but it works well enough.

Here is the problem: anyone familiar with the Potter universe knows that killing is a big no-no in wizarding society, which is why murder spells like Avada Kedavra are so vehemently opposed. Even Aurors (the combat commandos of the Ministry of Magic) will resort to incapacitation spells instead of lethal ones. Enter the Hogwarts Legacy protagonist, who learns all sorts of combustion and conflagration spells from his teachers, and uses them to kill everything he sees. Seriously, this kid will take on dark wizard camps alone and kill every single one of them in an orgy of fire and curses. Even were the player to choose the virtuous (though inconsequential) path and reject the unforgivables, the protagonist will char his enemies into cinders with flames, hurl them off cliffs to their death, shatter their bones by smashing them on the ground, even transform them into exploding barrels to hurl at their allies, killing two birds with one stone. Even the old XBOX 360 Gears of War ripoffs set in the Potter universe, Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, knew better than to have Harry Potter kill his enemies, using spells like expelliarmus and stupefy as lore-friendly alternatives, and those were cover shooters! And in case you're thinking that surely this is the same, that the Hogwarts Legacy kid isn't really murdering fools left and right, that it's just a case of ludonarrative dissonance, the game makes a point to include the loud death rattles of your victims, and to top it all off, the main character often shouts "your blood is on your leader's hands!" when an area is cleared of enemies and only bodies and smoldering ruins are left. there is no doubt about it: those enemies are dead.

Tonally, this is a huge mess: this Harry Potter stand-in racks up a body count worthy of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, and nobody cares. In fact, the only person who raises an objection to students being taught deadly explosive spells is the main character himself: "Are these safe to teach students?" he asks. "Better they learn it at school than elsewhere," answers the professor. What?
It would already have been bad enough had the game punished the use of kills using unforgivables while neglecting doling out consequence for killing with standard spells, but since there is no downside to using the unforgivables either, this is just the worst possible case scenario and a complete betrayal of Potter lore. It treats the fundamental rules of the setting with such wanton disregard that it cheapens the world to the point its conventions no longer mean anything. Hilariously, you are also expected to break into people's homes with the unlocking spell, to rifle through their belonging for loot (and drink their tea). imagine a Hogwarts student breaking into your home in broad daylight and stealing from your chest, and you can imagine how jarring this is.

Combat isn't only nonsensical in context, it is also quite boring in the long run. You will soon find yourself trying to avoid it altogether because it tends to be very repetitive and monotonous. This where the obfuscation spell comes in. Think of it as an unlimited cloak mode from Crysis, with which to sneak past enemies or behind them for a stealth takedown with the petrificus totalis spell. Obfuscate can even be upgraded to decrease movement penalty, sound emitted, overall visibility and even allow to incapacitate two foes in close proximity instead of one. Needless to say, stealth is as unbalanced and overpowered as they come: it is laughably easy to pick off enemy after enemy in every camp, stronghold or dungeon, since they tend to stand there staring off into nothingness, have very predictable patrol patterns and generally like to stay away from one another, like commuters at a Swedish bus stop, making your job trivially simple. Not even bosses are immune to this, since they can be dealt critical damage with stealth takedowns, so long as they are humanoid and begin in an unalerted state, after which finishing them off is a walk in the park.

///Plot spoilers follow///

The story is boring and completely devoid of any kind of twists or surprises: a generic macguffin pursued by a cast of unengaging characters and one-dimensional villains: if only they had made the leader of the goblins more sympathetic, enabling the player to perhaps empathize with their plight. Instead they make him kick the puppy during his very first appearance, and he never moves from the role of purely malicious antagonist.

If you're like me you would have been suspecting either the kindly mentor character or Professor Weasley of using you to reach the secret of the ancient magic to keep it for themselves or hand it over to some dark lord they might be serving, but none of that happens. In a series that makes subversion of expectation one of its stronger points, this game has none of it. There is even an ending where you choose to keep the secret power for yourself, implying some kind of turn towards evil, but it's so poorly executed and unearned (boiling down to the usual three choices after the final boss for which ending MP4 to play) that you wouldn't blame people for not even realizing what's happening.

///Spoilers end///

The cast of characters largely feels like a store brand version of the ones from the source material: you have the shifty potions teacher, the bubbly herbology teacher, the stern but well-meaning McGonagall stand-in, but they are all different degrees of weak and unconvincing, making you wish this game were based on the books/movies instead. There is a huge focus on diversity, with a caleidoscope of different races and sexual orientations that is all well and good, but clashes with the victorian England setting quite a bit. If you absolutely want to have your cast be inclusive, you probably should not make a period piece. Why not set this in our more inclusive present times? It's not like it being set in the 1800s factors into the game in any capacity anyway, aside from meaning there is no Whomping Willow to be found anywhere. What is the reason for this meaningless choice?

Thing is, much of the aforementioned disconnect between game and lore could have been sidestepped simply by either sticking closer to the source material or by avoiding the scolastic aspect of Hogwarts entirely. Considering the Harry Potter fanbase is usually composed of people who were children or early teens in the year 2000, thus are today in their thirties, why did Hogwarts Legacy insist on making the protagonist a schoolboy/girl? Even the recent spinoff film series, Fantastic Beasts, centers itself on adult wizards, realizing that the original audience has grown older, so why not this game? The concept of a wizard running around setting people on fire would have been much more acceptable when, say, playing as an Auror tasked with investigating a conspiracy taking place in Hogwarts and the surrounding area with some license of bending the rules to get results. Still not quite lore-friendly, but definitely more sensible than a student doing the same with no repercussions.

The issue is compounded by another aspect, that is the appearance of the clothes you can wear: the art team of this game have clearly gone to great lengths to include dozens upon dozens of pieces of clothing that are not only period appropriate for the victorian era, but also fit right in with the fashion aesthetic of the potter world, especially the movies. From gaudy suits to top hats, from ample Merlin robes to bizarre eyewear to menacing all-black dark wizard attire, the freedom of choice on how to dress is nothing the game can be knocked for... if not for the fact that we are playing a student in an exclusive school with a very strict dress code. What could possibly shatter the immersion any more than seeing an idiot student running around Hogwarts attending classes wearing a Death Eater skull mask and a black cape with animated screaming skulls dancing on it? Of course this could have been made into a mechanic: perhaps the game could have allowed for two sets of clothes: one for school hours and the other for outside exploration, maybe with the teachers commenting on inappropriate attire and deducting points on that basis, but as we have discussed above, this sort of cards simply aren't in this game's deck.

Discussing the clothes segues into the loot system, which is, quite simply, atrocious. This is the most uninteresting and unengaging sort of colored loot imaginable in a videogame, with every chest containing randomly generated trash loot you have to dump off at a store. Clothes are armor, while gloves and eyewear are damage boosts, and that's as far as the depth goes. Thankfully the game was wise enough not to force the player to wear these gaudy clothes and accessories, allowing to choose a look in the equipment menu, even though it has to be set again every time a new piece of loot is equipped, which is often. For the user interested in salvaging what little role-playing the game allows, this feature is a real godsend.

Nothing can save this loot system, which is perhaps even worse than similar ones found in games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Nioh: after a while you will stop opening chests altogether, since there is almost invariably nothing good in them. Furthermore, the inventory is severely limited, something done to force mediocre minigames on you (more on that later), so picking up trash loot is highly inadvisable. Should you bother solving puzzles or spending hours collecting hidden statuettes to upgrade your unlocking skills to plunder that Hogsmeade home, when the rewards that await you are the same random chests you can find anywhere else in the world? The answer is no. This severely hampers exploration as well: should you land and explore the umpteenth copied and pasted tomb or cave found around the world? Refer to the answer above: unless you are cool with opening chests and finding trash you will never need, the answer remains no, don't even waste your time. On top of that, you are showered with legendary items early on, which means you will be decked in better gear than the game is ready to give you for the rest of the game, making all loot completely inconsequential.

At least there is a passably interesting minigame which is used to acquire the materials needed to upgrade your legendary loot: around a third through the game, you will gain access to a personal base of operation called the Room or Requirement, which you can decorate to your liking and outfit with utility tables like plant pots for growing ingredients, cauldrons for brewing potions and pens to keep your animals in, which you "rescue" around the world and groom and feed in echange for materials. Quotation marks on "rescue" are in order, since you have to chase them down, stun them with debilitating spells and suck them into a bag of holding against their will. You can even sell them at a "rescue shop" for a fat wad of cash, which is totally not a front for a poaching racket.

As you make progress, you will gain access to other mounts besides your broom: a hippogriff, which is another flying vehicle whose clunkier controls make it absolutely redundant, and a large terrestrial beast, whose ability to ram enemies is fun enough for five minutes, but is completely useless as far as world navigation goes when flying and fast travel are an option. One can only wonder why they spent so much time creating these mechanics, instead of implementing something that matters.

So the main story is tedious and uninteresting and the loot is pointless, so how is the side content? Can it salvage this game in any way? Well, yes and no: while acquiring new spells is tied to grueling busywork meant to ensuure you use every mechanic in the game at least once (collect and use all potion types, use a chomping cabbage on three enemies simultanously), the three optional questlines (one focused on protecting magical beasts from poachers, one dealing with a crime ring and the other, mentioned above, with the dark arts) offer some passingly intriguing moments, the many minor side quests are nothing more than garden variety fetch quests that you should not waste your time with: find 5 hidden objects, retrieve an item from a cave, get me 8 herbs, you know the deal. There are also a number of optional puzzles to complete for useless loot, and they are pitifully easy, the sort of thing you'd test a monkey with.

Also scattered around the world are so-called Merlin trials, which are pedestrian physics-based puzzles that will bore you after the first handful. The game tries to force you to do all of the above by level gating progress into the main quest and severely restricting inventory space (you increase it by completing an ungodly amount of Merlin trials), but you can just do the quality side questlines and reach the required level that way, as well as just ignore all loot and have no need for merlin trials. You will get to the point where you will see them from the sky while flying around on the broom and disregard them completely, useless and tedious as they are. They are a far cry from the fun and clever Riddler's trophies from the Arkham games which clearly inspired them.

Another baffling omission: there is no Quidditch either. The stadium is there but aside from some Superman 64 flying through rings, it is never used for anything. There is even a series of cutscenes in which the game establishes that the Quidditch season has been cancelled due to safety concerns. You keep expecting it is bulding up to a grand reopening of it but no: there simply is no Quidditch. Why? Glass half full sort of people might surmise the developers didn't have time to include it, while cynics might point out that there is a separate Quidditch game (still upcoming as of writing this) being made by the same company. You draw your own conclusion.

On top of all that, the lore has been sanitized to the point of pure stupidity. It is no secret that J.K. Rowling has been in hot water with a lot of people due to her controversial socio-political opinions, so in turn it is no surprise that this game tries to step on as few toes as possible, but this does not justify the absence of many elements that make the Potter universe what it is. Let's face it, Wizarding society is far from the best of all possible worlds, by narrative design: it's a universe in which elves are routinely enslaved and mistreated by wizardkind, which also looks down on non-magic people and often discriminates against families who include them, considering them of impure blood. We are also talking about a society which maintains a prison in which inmates are deprived of their will to live by mind-bending Dementors. The Wizarding World is far removed from any kind of idyllic utopia.

Hogwarts legacy tries to steer clear of all of that: only the most fleeting of mentions is made concerning the pure blood debate, blink and you miss it, and off the top of my head I can't even remember a single instance of anyone using the word "Muggle". House elves are present as an inescapable part of Hogwarts decoration but very little effort has been made to highlight their condition, relegating them as little more than a tutorial element for the Room of Requirements mechanic, bypassing all the rest. This is the kind of aseptic version of this world that you would expect from a Harry Potter-themed corporate-run summer camp for spoiled children, and aside from the violence of the combat, this is precisely how this game feels.

They even sanitized the funny candy items: in a multimedia franchise in which children eat cockroach clusters, fudge flies, live chocolate frogs and surprise flavor jelly beans that may or may not taste like vomit, used underwear or earwax, plus a billion spells and items meant to make you fart or barf, Hogwarts Legacy makes sure to scrape all of that away, to better suit its corporate overlords and no risk offending any modern sensibility with any icky or gross. The most you get is a brief verbal mention of the stinking liquid of gobstones, though never seen in action.

The game also feels retro, like it began development on the Xbox 360 and only saw a release a decade too late. The English voice acting is not very good, with a lot of actors turning out B game performances and even the really bad idea of procedurally pitch shifting the protagonist's voice to make it sound more childish or mature depending on player's preference, which results in occasionally very noticeably artificial delivery, so when I was made aware that the localized Italian dub was far superior, I went into the options to switch the dialogue to that language. To my surprise there isn't a language menu, at all: you have to change your console's language in order to access the localized content, like it often happened on the Xbox 360. Another standard feature that's absent is any kind of control customization: beyond tweaking the camera turn speed you don't even have different control presets, meaning you are stuck with the default control scheme. You can't pause cutscenes either, a standard feature for many years which, in a game featuring fairly long ones, is a real problem. You get this feeling like the lead designer hasn't played any games in the past decade or so, and has remained unaware of the recent advancements in accessibility options. In a post-The Last of Us 2 world, this is simply no longer acceptable.

And that's what ultimately goes for the entirelty of Hogwarts Legacy: it is evident that the original vision for it was so much more than what we got, which is a bare minimum effort ubigame, which thinks randomized loot is a good substitute for compelling gameplay, and which handles the source material with such an absolutely insulting degree of cavalier disinterest, that it leaves you with the question of who exactly this game is for.

As such, it is impossible to recommend to anyone but the most undiscerning of Potter fans, who are so starved for any harry Potter-themed game that they will accept anything they can get. Anyone else can skip it with extreme prejudice: there is simply nothing here of much value.

Still. its sales were so strong that a sequel is all but guaranteed. Who knows if the next one will make good on the promise that this one failed to fulfill? One can only hope.

When people wished for a proper big Harry Potter video game, the monkey paw curled, and not only because JK Rowling cannot stop being a bigot on Social Media (Trans Rights are Human Rights)
Visually Hogwarts Legacy is perfect, the castle is beautifully realised and full of life, students practice magic in the hallways, parchments fly above your head. It is an absolute joy to walk through the halls and comes close to the fantasy the books put in all of our heads.

But the wonder quickly stops when you stop wandering and start playing. Any opportunity to put some magic into the mechanics of the game has been forsaken for the safest, blandest AAA bullshit one can find, without a single creative or even logical thought. Why does my teacher tell me "I have a task for you before the next class" only for the task to be "Do 10 dodge rolls in combat". How is that related to my class? Why do I even dodge roll, did I miss that part in the books?
You dodge roll, because thats what you do in video games. For the same reason the first spell you get is literally called "Basic Spell" (how fucking unmagical is that) and functions as a gun. Because how could one make a video game without a gun? It has never been done. Impossible. The players wouldnt know what to do.
Why does casting Alohomora trigger an Unlocking Minigame??? Is that how magic is supposed to work? No, it s how boring video games without ideas are supposed to work.
Why do I have only 4 spells at a time equipped? Because it is a genre convention. Only in other games of this genre you equip guns, not spells, so going into a menu to equip a different gun is a metaphor for grabbing a different weapon out of your backpack. Doesnt make any sense for magic, does it? Doesnt matter, copied without thought anyway.

Imagine a Hogwarts Legacy that actual took a back step and thought about how to translate the magic, the spellcasting, into its mechanics and controls and structure. A game where for example you map out ward movements instead of pressing a button to make magic happen. A game that looks at games like Persona for structure, not fucking GTA. What could have been

+ Captures the “magic” and lore of the books and films brilliantly
+ Beginning hours were intriguing and fun
+ Room of Requirement was a great change of pace at first
+ Riding the broom is great

- Combat soon grows stale
- Weak story with uninteresting characters
- Boring world activities not worth doing
- Unrewarding gear system with pointless upgrades and constant bombardment of new stuff

I'll start with the positive: The combat system is kinetic, satisfying, and has more depth than I expected from such a casual-facing AAA release. In a game so clearly built upon the open-world mold, this is the one part they truly innovated and improved upon Papa Skyrim.

Hogwarts is a boring and bloated Wizarding World pastiche of the open world game we already tired of five years ago. It's clear that the Western response to the insane innovation in this genre from Japan (Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring) is to serve us more of the same in a risk-averse, brand-dependent fashion.

To be honest, I'm enough of a Harry Potter fan that if this game was Skyrim clone with the pristinely spooky vibe of the source material, I would be satisfied. However, Hogwarts Legacy seldom feels like stepping into the world of Harry Potter as much as it feels like a Unreal Engine 5 wizard tech demo that just happens to really look like Hogwarts.

One of the most important parts of the Hogwarts fantasy is how charmingly inconvenient the wizarding world is. You can misspeak during a Floo Powder teleportation and end up in the completely wrong place, and "friendly" monsters will turn right around and feed you to their children if you are stupid enough to waltz into their den. A school filled with students learning magic is obviously rampant with bullying, cheating, and has secrets around every corner. The sheer unpredictability of Rowling's world creates the magic and wonder of the books and movies, which is the largest incongruence with the Western AAA Open-World, a genre determined to be as convenient to the user as possible. In a source fiction already rife with inconsistencies, Hogwarts Legacy impresses me with how often it manages to trip it's own immersion to keep the experience absolutely painless. House rivalries are irrelevant because everybody wants to be your friend within a single dialogue tree. On top of all this, you happen to be the master of an ancient powerful magic that nobody else can wield because of course.

Even the combat, which I had a good impression of, gets stale when this game is stretched out to Witcher 3 length without a Witcher 3 level of content variety. The enemies are fun and in-theme, but they all feel like what should be starter enemies in a better action game. Each of them also has a very clear best answer to deal with them, which can Revelio how similar individual encounters are to each other.

Design innovation be damned, combat variety be damned, interesting open world be damned... truly, the only thing I actually wanted this game to do was take me back to being a kid, turning pages under my blanket at night, completely transported to this wizarding world. Yet as an adult, I feel substantially more babied than the games my 8-year-old little brother plays. In the journey to make Hogwarts a painless AAA open world experience, they have created a game without any of the magic that made this IP special in the first place.

Everything is magical and the points don't matter.

Hogwarts legacy is an open world role playing game Where you create your own witch or wizard and attend the Hogwarts school. I'm not a big Harry potter fan, I never read any of the Harry potter books, but I have seen the movies (Harry potter weekend on TV) So i won't know some of the references the game offers. The idea that you can attend a school and learn magic to fight enemies and solve puzzles is a fun concept. I kind of hoped the game would be like Bully Academy (another school like game) but sadly you can't lift students in the air for their lunch money.

The world of Hogwarts is huge, and I haven't seen everything that the game offers. The game has fast travel, so you won't get lost and a navigator to get to your main quest objective. The school is big, but it never looked the same in areas or felt like you're running in circles. You can also fly on a broom to get other places as well.

You can also craft in the game to make healing potions or give you an advantage in combat. The combat will take time to get used to. You will need one type of spell if the enemies use shields, and you'll need to defend yourself from attacks. You'll have to level up and find better gear to stand against strong opponents cause strength comes from the costume (Why else would we run around in color undies?) You'll also gain skill points to level up your magic. Instead of lifting one enemy you can lift up multiple.

There are a few nitpicks and flaws of the game like popup of objects when you enter an area, characters repeating the same dialogue and the talent spells you can learn to upgrade magic is small. You can't reset your skill points as well so you will need to make another character if you want to focus on other talents. A major flaw of Hogwarts legacy is that if you go around the Hogwarts castle you may fall off the map and may lead to an unfair death or fly underneath and see everything below.

You're going to be very busy in this game. You can design your own base, do side quests to learn new spells, catch and raise different kinds of animals and possibly more dlc in the future. It's worth the 70-dollar asking price and if you're a Harry Potter fan you're going to love this game. If you're not a fan of the series Give it a try in the future. What Harry potter games lets you become the bad guy in the series?

This is a magical adventure that I feel like stays true to the Wizarding World!

Man I had a great time with Hogwart Legacy. I loved exploring the world with my wand as this game offers many things to distract me. I ALMOST never found a door I couldn’t go through (unless the door was locked which I’ll talk about later). Graphics hold up well and make this world look amazing and I’m proud to see it, the accuracy of how Hogwarts looks like from the films is unbelievable and fascinating. Unfortunately I wasn’t interested enough to do everything I could in the game and really only played until I was satisfied. I absolutely love the flexibility of the clothing you can wear. There are all kinds of different looking clothes that look so cool and if you want to keep a certain outfit but maybe you don’t want to sacrifice stats you can change your appearance while still having the same stats as before. Flying around in this game is a hell of a lot of fun but I do have to admit the controls for flying feel a bit off to me. Speaking of which, THERE’S NO QUIDDITCH! Massive missed opportunity that Avalanche missed out on. Throughout the game you’ll get assignments which give you a variety of tasks to complete in exchange to learn a new spell. I loved this idea because it really did encourage me to get more spells to use either for combat or to solve puzzles. However, some of these assignments were a slog to do and it felt more like chore to do rather than actual fun. In this world you’ll encounter puzzles. I definitely recommend do them since you get really good loot or by completing challenges you can unlock clothing or expand your inventory to hold more loot. I also recommend selling most of your loot for money. Early on in the game money is actually pretty tough to come by at least not until you learn a spell called “Alohomora” which unlocks doors. Unlocking these doors make you do a short mini game which is SUPER easy to do, I honestly do wish it offered more of a challenge. ALSO, I wish there was a proper system to sell potions for money. The Room of Requirement is a cool idea and love how the devs handled it. Definitely felt like my own place to customize to my liking and loved catching Fantastic Beasts to groom and take care of them and many of them look awesome or very cute. The world is feels alive in a believable way. If you look around and listen there’s tons of people going about their business and you’ll something silly, funny or interesting. By all means though it didn’t feel totally immersive like that. There’s all kinds of places to see in this open world RPG than just Hogwarts. Being able to explore Hogmead or The Forbidden forest was an absolute pleasure and many more places to see. The music is exactly the type of music you would hear from a Harry Potter film. As for the combat, it so damn cool! I honestly had a blast with combat as it was challenging at times but I wouldn’t say it was all that tough since I didn’t lose as often as I though I would’ve. I loved using all kinds of different spells or methods to take down my enemies. I could also throw harmful plants that help defeat my enemies. The RPG elements are kinda disappointing. The skill trees feel like an after thought that you can fill out pretty easily. And man oh man I have to say this, they definitely should’ve added damentors and the Patronus Charm. Yet another missed opportunity the devs should’ve taken advantage of since it would’ve made combat a lot more fun. And before I start talking about the story I just want to give props to Avalanche. I played on PS5 and I encountered NO BUGS at all during my experience with this game. The only performance issue I had was the fact there was a loading time on some doors to load in the world. For me it kinda broke the immersion I had. Other than that, gameplay wise it felt like an almost flawless experience.

Story was pretty good! I at least thought it was decent and enjoyable by all means I don’t think the story was amazing or life changing, not by a long shot. I love the idea being able to use ancient magic to uncover a mystery. There are all sorts of interesting characters but some are just meh and unimportant. The reason I say that is because you’ll encounter many side quests and many of them had very generic or boring story telling or plot that made no sense. But the friendships you can build are worth the time and I don’t mean that like a life sim type of relationship. I love how as I progressed the story the season would change which was so cool to see. As for the main character, I was a little disappointed. I also was disappointed with how little my choices impacted me and the story but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the story regardless. The main character YOU create felt so bland and generic. Now of course you can give your character personality depending on your choices but I wish we had more depth and better character development to better know our character other than just being special to use ancient magic.

While this adventure did at times feel underwhelming for me I had a great time. I must also confess that I did expect better from this game from a few aspects. Very light RPG but I think that’s great for anyone who doesn’t like complex RPGs. And this game is definitely a must for Harry Potter fans. This will be a magical adventure to remember for sure. I can see myself playing Hogwarts Legacy in the near future.

What a game this is! As a devout Potter fan from a young age, I have dreamed of going to hogwarts. I have played the lego games, I've been to the WB studios, I've literally downloaded hogwarts in Minecraft godammit. This game has given me my childhood dreams and then some, with a story that wasn't overly long, and when played alongside the accompanying side quests makes for a delightful 25 hours of gameplay and discovery, with plenty more hours available to explore and 100%. If you love Harry Potter, or just games where you can use magic, this is a must play. Lost half a star to some slightly repetitive or iritating elements that didn't hinder enjoyment but would polish of the games immersion.

This review will be (mostly) ignoring discourse surrounding this game, and just covering the game’s contents.

The best way to describe Hogwarts’s Legacy is Open-World Game the Game. It does nothing interesting beyond look pretty. The world is very bland to explore beyond looking at the pretty graphics. It hits all the check boxes of a Ubisoft style open-world game. Just a bunch of copy and pasted mundane activities scattered all over the place and an out of place colored loot system. Boy I sure do love getting the exact same vest that I’m wearing but now the background is purple and the numbers are bigger. The world is not horrible but certainly isn’t anything that I would consider as good, beyond visuals. And these visuals are undermined, because even though I have a pretty beefy PC, it is a stutter fest. It’s been a while since I last played this game so maybe that’s been fixed, but that stuttering was unacceptable when I played.

Story wise, it’s nothing special as far as I remember. Again, it’s been a while, but I didn’t remember it being all that interesting. Something about a goblin uprising, it didn’t really do anything for me. However, I didn’t finish the game so what do I know; maybe it becomes the greatest story in all of gaming, but I doubt that.

Hogwarts Legacy make me feel like… an absolute dope. Using spells suck. Having to swap constantly between different spell sets is so cumbersome for both solving puzzles and doing anything near interesting in combat. Combat is where I mainly have issues in. It’s incredibly easy so you’re not incentivized to mix many spells in combos and very clunky if you want to try to do anything cool. You have to make multiple spell sets that you swap between on the fly which always interrupted the flow of combat. Additionally, utility spells and combat spells share space on the same sets. Meaning you’ll have to always be organizing and editing the sets and/or switching far more often. It’s also frustrating that you have to unlock additional sets, so you have to choose between an interesting upgrade or a quality-of-life feature that you should’ve already had. I’m sick of the word “sets”.

Hogwarts Legacy isn’t awful but quite mediocre. I honestly, really regret getting this game. I wish I could get the money back, because I really feel quite sour on it both as a game and ethical reasons. I’m rather uneducated on the whole controversy surrounding this game but feel bad that I may have inadvertently supported things that aren’t great. Oh well, you live and learn I suppose.

Additional note, I genuinely wonder why this game is so well received by “the masses”. I feel people often shit on this style of open-world but so many people absolutely adore this. I wonder what people see in this that I don’t, or maybe it’s just the Harry Potter IP carrying it. Or maybe I’m simply out of touch. Well enough of the rambling.

Sério... aonde foi parar aquele papinho de que "Todo mundo já está cansado de jogos mundo aberto vazio e cheio de missões repetitivas" Hogwarts Legacy é um AC Valhalla com mod do universo de Harry Potter, SIM! deixem de ser alienados. Falo serio mesmo, foda-se a opinião politica e foda se a J. K. deixem o lado de fã fora da balança, assim como o próprio que lhes diz, o que eu quero dizer é que esse jogo é uma merda, e vocês estão alimentando a indústria ir para buraco com esse tipo de jogo medíocre e patético, isso aqui é uma formula vomitada que a Ubisoft não canso de empurrar pra gente e hoje a mesma respira por aparelhos por conta dessas merdas. Agora falar que esse jogo é incrível, vocês estão de sacanagem, pra não dizer outra coisa.

Got the deluxe for the 72hour early access. Not yet done but I can say that I FREAKING LOVE IT! GOTY!!! Am a huge HP fan so this might be biased but yeah just give it a go and you'll be amazed by the massive content it has.

EDIT:
I FINISHED THE GAME AND I CAN SAY THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

On my way to platinum!

Hogwarts Legacy is what I like to term a AA½ game. You can tell a lot of money was spent here to craft a lavish and beautiful sendup to the Harry Potter universe, but through a combination of factors (perhaps due to time or experience on the developer's part) it can't quite reach the heights of some of its contemporaries in the AAA space. This isn't to say it doesn't exceed those games in other regards, or that I didn't enjoy my time with it, but it's certainly a game where the cracks in the foundation are there and become much more evident the longer you play.

Let's start with some of the things I liked about Hogwarts Legacy, beginning with the obvious: the world they've created here. I'm not a Harry Potter/Wizarding World fan, merely a passerby with limited knowledge from the films just looking for a fun game to play, but even I can tell how much they nailed the faithfulness of what they've constructed. If attention to detail was put anywhere, it was here first and foremost, and for a lot of people coming to this game, that's what matters most, so it's hard to fault them. The Hogwarts school itself is easily the standout, but even beyond stuffing it with references to things people know, they managed to create an environment that was fun to play in. The school is jam-packed with secrets, hidden rooms, and things to collect (something which the entire game is based on, really), so if you're like me and big into collect-a-thons, you'll find plenty of that here. It didn't matter how late into the game I got, I was constantly stumbling into new areas of the academy I never even knew existed.

Combat was another area I found myself pleasantly surprised by. Truthfully, wand combat in the Harry Potter films has always looked goofy as hell, so I don't envy the task of trying to make it exciting, but they've largely managed to do that here. Once you've unlocked a large chunk of your spells it becomes really fun experimenting with how they combo together, and battles really shine brighter with the intensity that comes with large enemy encounters. It ostensibly plays like a reskinned version of the combat in Marvel's Spider-Man (just replace webs with spells), but there are certainly much worse games you could draw inspiration from. My only major gripe here is that the game has a noticeably small number of enemy types, many of which are pallet-swapped into big versions for boss fights, so the lack of variety here really restricts the ability to do more with the tools you're given.

I also found myself clicking a lot with some of the side quests you do alongside your fellow classmates. It's clear the writing focus was more so here and fleshing out these characters over the main narrative, which itself was fairly lackluster until some genuinely kino missions later on in the game. But, I really dug learning about my companions and their personal stories, and given how much time you spend outside the school, it was nice these rooted you firmly back into that environment. You can tell, though, that this is one of those areas where the cracks show a bit because despite how enjoyable these quests are, it feels like they intended to do more with these characters and your relationships with them.

It's hard to delve too much into speculation of what might have been cut from this game during development, but a more in-depth companion system and a morality system seem to be the two most likely features. There are times during the open world when your character mutters aloud to themselves that they should come back here alongside some else despite the option never being available to you. Also, missions like the dueling club feel woefully underutilized and it's the one area of the game where it specifically asks you what partner you want to bring to the proceedings. There's no real incentive to do so, however, but it seems exactly the kind of activity one might do to strengthen the bonds of friendship with someone.

As well, the game has a LOT of dialogue options for quests and sidequests that feel like it should matter; that a character should remember what you say for later and act accordingly, but these options are ultimately all meaningless. You can be nice or you can be a jerk, but no matter how harsh your reply is, characters will just continue on as normal and never bring it up. Not to mention - rather bizarrely - the game has zero consequences for using the so-called "unforgivable" curses. You can use them brazenly in front of anyone and while some might comment on it, you certainly won't get a one-way ticket to Azkaban for it. Not that it would be expected, of course, but it's one of those things that takes you out of the moment a bit, especially when the quest associated with learning the dark arts makes a HUGE deal about another character using them. The dissonance is a bit strong in this one.

While we're talking about undercooked aspects of this game, the choice of house is another huge one. Naturally, as you start your year at Hogwarts, you get sorted into one of four houses, the ramifications of which are mostly non-existent. Again, you might get a few comments on your specific house and a differing early-game quest, but it affects little else over the course of the game. Your house's common room is another huge bummer, as despite them being lavishly recreated, you're given zero incentive to ever come back to it. There's a big chest you need to open for one side quest, but beyond that? Nothing. Maybe it's a bit too much of an ask, but it really should be more akin to the camps in Red Dead Redemption 2, where you are given reasons to continually come back to it, either to pick up quests or just talk to people, really futher your immersion into the school.

Speaking of talking to people, that's another area that kind of cemented my view of this being a AA½ game. Outside of quests, you're practically invisible to most NPCs. You'll pass one of your companions in the hallway, that you've been working through quests lines with the whole game, and they don't even acknowledge you, nor are you given the option to acknowledge them. You can break into someone's home and steal shit and they won't even bat an eye, which I suppose is kind of an old-school throwback in terms of video game design, but in a modern big-budget game, makes it feel much more sterile than it should. It also doesn't help that when you do talk to NPCs, they have some of the stiffest facial animations you'll find for a game of this size. They could have done a lot more with this.

Finally, in terms of the open-world design, it does give you a lot to do, but unfortunately, some of those elements are copied and pasted a bit too much in what's become the typical bloat expected with a game of this nature. I enjoyed the Merlin puzzles for a while, but the 10th time I had to collect butterflies and bring them back to their glowing rocks I was more than done with it. Some of the things the game asks you to find and collect are also just pointless and obvious filler thrown in there, like the landing pads, which serve zero function beyond simply being another item on a checklist. The lock-picking minigame was also another thing that needed to be excised or cut down; just let me cast the spell and have the lock disappear instead of rotating these dials 500 times.

I recognize there are a lot of complaints and more than a few nitpicks about Hogwarts Legacy here but I did still have fun with it. Part of it is that I find the completionist nature of these open-world games to be a bit of a zen experience and probably a holdover from my love of the 3D platformer collect-a-thons of yesteryear. Still, most of what they've built here is genuinely solid, especially when you consider the developer's previous history. It's clear a lot of elements of this game are there because of the IP and the expectations of fans that they be there, and I suppose for them those things will push their enjoyment even higher than someone like me, but I still got enough out of Hogwarts Legacy that I felt my time was respected. Just don't go into this game expecting anything more than that and you should find enough magic to be satisfied with.

O universo do jogo é de longe a grande estrela aqui, tudo nesse mundo parece muito vivo e tem uma história pra contar. Andar pelo castelo é de longe uma das coisas mais legais desse jogo, explorar Hogwarts, conhecer os segredos e ver referencias da obra original muito bem adaptadas aqui.

A história não é nada muito especial e chega a ser bem clichê em varios momentos, oque mais empolga mesmo é que no decorrer do seu progresso o jogo vai sempre te apresentando novas mecanicas e te dando diversas opções pra resolver certos puzzles. Ainda quanto a história, suas escolhas não afetam de jeito nenhum o desenrolar da trama, muito menos a escolha da sua casa (que só serve pra mudar a cor da sua roupa), muito pelo contrario servem só pra efeitar ou até mesmo esticar desnecessariamente os dialogos, se fosse pra ser feito dessa forma, então que removesse a opção de escolhas de dialogos pois no geral não servem pra nada.

A trilha sonora é muito baseada nos filmes e tem até mesmo releituras ou revivals de certas musicas da saga de filmes, nada muito especial, original ou muito marcante.

Como dito antes, o ponto chave do jogo é o universo que ele apresenta e os graficos lindos ajudam muito à te deixar imerso nesse mundo de magia e de contos que o jogo tem pra te apresentar, outra coisa muito legal é uma tecnologia usada tambem em Cyberpunk de movimentos labias dos personagens que tentam ao maximo emular o som que sai da voz do personagem e transformar em movimento labial baseado em IA, seja qual for a lingua na qual esta jogando o jogo.

Meus principais problemas com Hogwarts Legacy foi a má otimização que o jogo apresenta no PC, tendo varias quedas de quadros durante a gameplay, principalmente em Hogsmeade ou ao andar pelo Castelo de Hogwarts e as dungeons e missões finais do jogo que ficam muito repetitivas depois de um tempo e se resumem ao entrar em uma caverna, matar uma horda de aranhas gigantes, duendes ou bruxos das trevas, pegar algo e voltar.

Certas coisas que faltam e poderiam estar presentes em uma possivel sequencia seria o tão pedido Quadribol, mais opções de Magias e poções, pois o jogo apresenta muito poucas, o mapa do maroto que é aquele mapa dos filmes que mostra as pegadas das pessoas (não seria de muita utilidade talvez, mas daria um charme à mais) e capas de invisibilidade e manobras com a vassoura (pois digasse de passagem, a gemeplay da Vassoura nesse jogo é meio travada)