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.

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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?

(Since my last review got removed)

I fully expected this game to suck since the creators have not done anything worthwhile but by god, they actually pulled it off. This is a legit a great open-world RPG. The graphics are fantastic and the combat is actually really fun and complex. I've been wanting a good triple A Harry Potter for a long time so I'm happy to say that it's finally here and it's terrific. I will say this though it does have its issues. It suffers from problems that most open-world games have and the story is fairly standard. But even with those problems the world and gameplay kept me satisfied. I hope the next game is even better. I feel like it has the potential to be a 10/10 game.

This will go down as perhaps the most controversial game of this year.

Hogwarts Legacy, however, found a place in my heart in the first 2 hours of gameplay. My expectations for this game were not high, mind you, I already knew it would have mid gameplay and mid story, but HL managed to capture what no other game did.

It is a faithful adaptation of the Harry Potter universe, with references to the books now and then on every corner. The magic and spells are no stranger to fans, with many known spells from the books making it's way to your arsenal.

However, the combat is somewhat chaotic, which might be good or bad depending on the type of fan you are. There is a lot of shield-breaking which is somewhat popular in WB games, and I do not mind that at all - however, I think it did not fit a magic game at all - and the game is basically a "counter game" much like the Arkham games and, again, Shadow of Mordor.

What maintained me playing for so long was the worldbuilding. The game adds basically nothing to the gaming industry, you will be collecting things around the world, the "RPG part" of this game sucks completely, and there are not many enemies to fight, but despite it all, Hogwarts Legacy is a fantastic experience for the average fan.

I think it's worth noting too that most characters failed to have an interesting participation in the story, which is disappointing. The teachers, unfortunately, are there just to teach you a spell or two, your companions have their own questlines but only one of them has a very interesting ending and the world doesn't feel that alive.

Sure, you can find a lot of funny events around Hogwarts itself, but compare this game to, say, Red Dead Redemption 2. God, it's almost an insult. I really wish both Hogwarts AND the world outside had more events going on, more people to find,more students wandering around, but alas, WB has failed me a couple of times in that aspect.

Long story short: First experience was very amazing. Won't 100% it too soon due to how boring and annoying it is to travel the world fighting EVERY enemy, getting EVERY page and doing EVERY sidequest (which are not bad per se) like in previous Arkham/Mordor games.

I still recommend this fully, if you enjoy the books/movies, you will most likely enjoy this game that's been bombed by reviews.

As a preface, I would not have ever purchased this game, I was given a copy of it in order to do parts of my job and decided to then play it in my own time out of curiosity. If you are interested in playing this game then I implore you; I don't ever condone piracy of new, readily available games, but I believe you have a moral imperative to pirate this game. Support the quality of the product without financially supporting a game that lines the pockets of a transphobe and touts the disturbing rhetoric that this game does. I am a huge supporter of trans rights, trans rights are the social issue that I care about the most and it is awful that the creator of an integral part of the childhoods of much of the consumer base in the western world aggressively and blindly spouts hate towards transgender individuals. However, I would never tell someone not to play a game (simply not to spend money on it), but as I will get into in the review proper it will become apparent that the text of this game reflects none of JKs trans ideologies, likely as they weren't present in the original books, but it does spout some equally damaging and at times horrifying messaging.

Gameplay:
Hogwarts legacy was controversial well before it's release, and whilst the team at portkey games and avalanche software did everything they could to distance themselves from the game, JK does still get royalties, but what of the game itself? is it any good to actually play?
Avalanche have almost exclusively made tie-in games, with their biggest endeavor being Disney Infinity, a game I am personally a fan of, but could not sing its praises. Most of Avalanche's library consists of games like Cars 3 the game or Bolt the game, generic and uninteresting cash grabs made by cynics who think gaming is a novelty, so surely hogwarts legacy is just another pit-stop on the Avalanche tour of mediocrity, right?
Well, somehow, they managed to pull it out of the bag. This game at no point reinvents the wheel, every gameplay system you can see having been taken from other places, but every system the game employs is really good, from the fun and engaging combat (despite some bullet sponge enemies and lack of enemy variety), to the farming sim/home builder room of requirement, which links out to a pokemon arceus style beast catching system. Every one of the systems, mechanics and minigames is really good, never great mind you, but a game chock full of really good and varied systems and activities that are all consistently really good is not something to turn your nose up at. Sure, there's a criminal lack of enemy variety and some elements (like the owl post) feel a tad superfluous, these end up being minor qualms in the face of a grand and great beast. The closest comparison I can give to the experience of playing this game is playing the witcher 3; with it's beautiful, expansive and detailed world bursting with things to do, where you just want to sit and watch all the crazy little things play out (especially in the castle) before heading out to a minigame to beat a high score or beat some bandits in a mission. This is a good game in the gameplay, in fact I am almost relieved that I am now in the post game as I no longer have to engage with the frankly concerning writing that carries this game's narrative.

Writing:
A little bit after this game was announced, and after JK had begun her descent into her concerning obsession with stranger's genitals, it was uncovered that the lead designer of the game had, at one point, run an 'anti-sjw' channel on youtube, but hey, he's not writing the game, who cares, right? Well, this should have been our first red flag; fool me once, shame on you. A few months go by once again and the game hires Greg Ellis, who has ammassed enough controversy of his own, some of it in relation to supporting Rowling, over the years. Fool me twice...
No, we should not have ignored these warning signs. It has already been pointed out that, within the text, the Goblins of the Wizarding World are extremely antisemetic, and here that is dialed up to 11.
It's all well and good that you have a super diverse cast of characters, in fact that's great, there's every kind of person here you can imagine, there's even a prominent trans woman who is never needlessly clocked and deadnamed and demands respect around her; but what's the point of all of that if the plot of your game is that the hook nosed bankers who control the economy, based on a historically known antisemetic symbol, decide to rise up against the fact they are treated as slaves and are upset that their cultural artefacts have been stolen and locked away from them for hundreds of years, and they are treated unequivocably as the villains.
There are so many opportunities presented to this game where it could turn things around, the only 'good goblins' want nothing to do with the rebellion, no one ever questions if maybe stealing another race's cultural artefacts and putting them in places enchanted so goblins can't enter could be bad, no one ever even suggests that enslaving an entire race and treating them as lesser could be bad. Moreover, the general stance of this game is that rising up against those in power is inherently a bad thing to do, as the player if you choose dialogue options that go against doing as your teachers say you are told things like 'I wouldn't have expected that from you', all but telling you that you are behaving out of character. It even employs some familliar right wing rhetoric, of course the people rising up to try and justifiably gain what is theirs just want to 'wipe out all of wizard kind', this kind of rhetoric is sadly all too familliar from the real world politics of 2023, especially following certain protests in the last few years.
More concerning, still, is the treatment of life within this game. It's a strange thing, when you are punished for using the 'unforgivable' killing curse with a mere 'I'd rather you didn't do that', and then are allowed to use the explosion spell to kill someone, or burn someone to death slowly, and no one bats an eye. Let me be clear, there is no hyperbole in play here, this isn't Spider-Man or Arkham where in-universe you're just knocking people out. Over the course of this game you murder dozens of innocent humans, and you are congratulated for it. At first I believed this to be some kind of huge oversight on behalf of the developers, but toward the end of the game I was getting a little bored of the boss battle with rockwood and decided to use the killing curse on him. He exploded into a cloud of dust, never to be seen again. Shortly after professor fig confronted me about it, I expected a harsh telling-off for my callousness and the coldness with which I dispatched a named character. Instead I was told that he was a dangerous man, and I did what I had to, I did the right thing. And this was right next to another boss that I merely incapacitated and had arrested. I was told that my erasure of this man's life, a human life, was the right thing to do. And this was in and among the slaughter of hundreds of goblins over the course of the game.

So, to review; this game, based on a children's series and likely being played largely by children and young people, presents an oppressed group rising up against subjugation and the stealing of cultural artefacts as a threat to 'our kind', and tells you that you are free to indiscriminately murder these people, as well as humans; in fact if you think it is the right thing to do you are always justified in killing human beings. What am I to do with this plot? How can one ignore the frankly disturbing rhetoric on display here?

Conclusion:
I'm going to have to stop here, I have other things to do with my day, but I do think that, despite it all, I will come back to this game. As I mentioned earlier, now that I'm in the post game I don't have to encounter the horrifying messaging of this game anymore.
The bottom line is that this is a good game, it's really fun, has so much to do, and is really visually pleasing, I would even go as far as recommending it, but please, I beg you, do not spend money on this game, not a cent. Rowling has said that every penny from this game will go to anti-trans causes and the racist rhetoric on display in the actual game is frankly disgusting. Pirate this game, steal it digitally, There are many multitudes of places where you can acquire this game without funding the people who made it. Think about what you're consuming. You can support high quality products without supporting awful people and awful ideologies.
This game should be an 8/10, but I simply can't bring myself to do it.

This game is unimaginably horrible and it's baffling it's the hill so many are willing to die on. There is no enemy variety, which is for sure a good idea for a modern open world game. There is no spell variety either (26), which again certainly was a great idea for a modern rpg based solely around it's magic set at a magic school, but hey Harry Potter has always had a terrible magic system so ¯\(ツ)/¯. For reference Final Fantasy (1987 NES) has triple as many spells (60), and Skyrim a more modern open world game for comparison has over 100 AND both those games have multiple combat classes besides magic. The game will let you use the "unforgivable curses" but it has no morality system to give any meaningful consequences to your actions because according to the devs it would be "too judgmental on the game maker's part". The world is empty, which is always a problem with open world games (not remotely a fan of the genre tbh) and every door is a loading screen. The game is also a buggy mess and anyone saying otherwise is just lying, the game literally has Denuvo lmao. But none of this is surprising, ignoring the original author for a moment, every trailer made it look lackluster and it's made by the developers infamous for Disney tie-in shovelware.

And now for the elephant in the room... The game doubles down on all the racism and antisemitism of its source material, anyone saying Terfling had nothing to do with this game is bending the truth. The official Q&A for the game on their site says they worked closely with her team so it perfectly fits her world, and that it does a little too perfectly. The main premise is squashing a goblin rebellion riddled with antisemitism. The goblin rebellions are not new to the franchise, they are a thing mentioned in the books and expanded material as something the students learn in history class. And what were all the rebellions about? The lack or basic rights like using wands, and checks notes wizards attempting to enslave them "as house elves" but we’re supposed to believe they’re still the villains throughout the franchise?
Which brings us to the next topic, the house elves... As in the source material Hogwarts is run by slave labor and the franchise doesn't want us to look deeper into what that means, waving it off with "well they like it". But if wizards can attempt to enslave goblins as “house elves” what does that actually mean, what exactly is a “house elf” and why doesn’t the series creator want us to examine it? The head house elf at Hogwarts becomes a companion, so you don't actually get to own a slave but you still get one by proxy. The game also lets you decorate the Room of Requirement with mounted house elf heads, with how controversial this aspect of the books has always been idk who on the dev team didn’t think “maybe we shouldn’t keep the mounted head of a sapient creature decoration item”. Again none of this is surprising given the source material where they decorate houses with elf heads and the kids put little hats on during christmas, oh isn’t it so cute and whimsical? And the fact that one of the lead devs was a gamer gate youtuber (them stepping down was never going to divorce the game from these elements). The game is also a prequel set in the 1800s so it can't actually effectively deconstruct the issues with the source material, the goblins are still the anti-semetic bankers, the house elves are still slaves, and the ("good") wizards are still the good guys that have every right to oppress them. Just like Terflings own politics and the politics of the source material the game's message is about preserving the status quo, nothing meaningful can change and it shouldn’t cause we have a continuity to uphold damnit!
The game also throws in the series "first trans character" who they named "Sirona Ryan", this is a name of a Celtic goddess (as many people will point out in an attempt to ignore criticism, despite the origin not being the issue with the name) but just like "Cho Chang", "Anthony Goldstein" and "Kingsley Shacklebolt" it's certainly a choice out of all the Irish names to deliberately use that one for your first trans women. Sirona was also very obviously thrown in last minute in an attempt to save face and say the game was divorced from Terflings and her raging transphobia, but as you can see the game is quite the opposite.
But you know despite all that 9/10 IGN-ostalgia am I right!

In conclusion this game is truly the “Legacy” of this franchise and I can see why fans say “this is everything I ever wanted in a Harry Potter game” because this is all the franchise really truly is. I certainly hope everyone who bought the deluxe edition for the sole reason to spite a minority the author is actively harming daily love their overpriced shovelware and fuck off. Remember yall were the same people in the 90s who hated and wanted to boycott the books for being “satanic” and "progressive". (spoiler alert they never were)

And for anyone who can’t let go of the franchise because of “childhood” and cause “it’s so magical”, let me recommend “Earthsea” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, and “Percy Jackson” by Rick Riordian. None of those series are perfect and have their fair share of problems, but they were written by authors who actually cared, who actually took criticism and grew from it. You can let go and grow too.

I'm not a huge Harry Potter nerd but I started a new game on my GFs account to optimize the settings for her since she's playing on a low end rig.

Surprisingly, the game runs well with the Medium preset on a GTX 1060, i5-9100F. Put some things on high and it's still mostly a stable 60 FPS. Medium is still pretty, but I wish the TAA wasn't mandatory. It makes things blurry a bit.

As I've said, I'm not into HP that much, atleast I wasn't until this game. I only wanted to play a bit to mess with the settings but ended up being glued to the screen for 2 hours more than I wanted. There's rarely a game where I enjoy exploration as much as here. The environments are captivating and the NPCs are interesting. My character is dressed like an idiot and I love it. So, thanks Avalanche for giving a depressed guy a bit of unexpected joy.

The universe this game takes place in doesn’t save it from being a subpar game. Wish the game was like the first trailer has promised, but instead the whole open world is so stiff, static and inanimate. The story was bla and the game even failed to hit my nostalgic memories.

Best thing in the game is when one of the armors beat the crap out of the other armor, kinda made me laugh a bit.

Idk, kinda expected more. Not a total mess, though.

horribly optimized for pc. generic and bland story and characters. open world is laughably boring. steals basically every mechanic from another game but somehow implements them worse. accio is the only fun combat mechanic and then they render it unusable after level 20. the actual harry potter stuff like potions and beasts and whatnot is reduced down to a list of errands and button prompts with no meaning whatsoever. the hogwarts and hogsmeade area is the only redeeming thing in game that brims with life and makes you feel like you're actually a student at a wizarding school. you come to this game wanting to be a student at hogwarts. you are given a triple a amalgamation of other games with a shiny layer of ip spray paint over it. so...jedi fallen order, but to a far more egregious degree, basically.