I want to preface that I played this game for free, from a friend who bought it second-hand to avoid either of us funding Rowling.

With that out of the way... This game is very mid. It's not a bad or great game (and has some troubling problems with its story-goals), but overall is fairly inoffensive. It is clear Avalanche wanted this game to stand as far away from Rowling as possible, sporting a diverse cast of characters from LGBTQAI+ to POC. That's the only general things I can really give it though... While I enjoyed my time with it, the further I got the main story got worse (in a very... oddly anti-semetic way with it's tones) and the mechanics the game presents are all worse-off knock offs of better game's mechanics, but worse in most instances. This game also suffers a lot in terms of writing and gameplay activity... Every side-quest is either a one-off or a collectible nightmare (one that even locks a spell behind it, like why). The story is also just... wow... I won't get into it as people can look it up if they really wish to, but it is not painted well. Many storylines also are very hollow and characters are not very developed. So at the end of the day, it is not one of the greatest open-worlds in the past five years, I wouldn't even say open-worlds period. While it's combat can be fun (in very specific situations), the game generally suffers from having too many simplistic ideas that are half-baked or half-developed, so for now, I shelved it, I got bored around the 20 hour mark and my intrigue kept dropping.

I may come back in a year or so, but as of now, it's just fairly mid, play another open-world instead if you wanna scratch that itch, but if you do play, at least buy the game second-hand.

Super super solid. Was a blast to play through and it actually wasn't a mindless chore doing all the side stuff. Enjoyed most of what the game had to offer, as it polishes a good chunk of the problems I have with typical open world games. The biggest problem I have with this game is the enemy design. Almost all of the enemies you fight are incredibly basic, only having up to 3 or 4 moves in their catalog, making fights extremely simple and repetitive. I played through on normal difficulty and a big part that stood out to me in fights was the massive amount of health that most enemies had, especially trolls and other boss enemies. It was quite annoying, but not enough for me to lower the difficulty.

I was very surprised by just how fun the open world actually was to explore. I don't think I've ever been so motivated to do everything I can in between main quests. The amount of content is insane, but of course a lot of it is just copy and pasted.

When I finished the games story, I was a bit diappointed by the lack of consequences from dark magic. There are constant mentions of how terrible it is to use them, yet I was blasting away with them in every battle I was in with no one telling me otherwise. It felt a bit silly, but considering how much fun they were to use, it would probably hurt the experience if that ended up forcing your character down a more antagonistic path.

Also, I've got to talk about the people bombarding this game with 0.5 star ratings. You are completely petty and closed minded if you do that. It's perfectly fine and reasonable to disagree with Rowling's views (I myself do), but like many have said, it is unfair and downright moronic to take your anger out on this game that has clearly had so much passion put into it. Rowling is literally worth hundreds of millions, I doubt boycotting this game is going to hurt anyone but the people who actually put effort into creating this experience. Please focus your anger on something that is actually worthwhile.

There was a time early on in this game where I really enjoyed it. Early on, you're met with a faithful rendition of Hogwarts, and little nooks and crannies with secrets that can be solved by the new spells you have aquired, reminiscent of the early 3 Harry Potter games that were Zelda clones back in the early 2000s. If it stayed that way and the game was designed around that methodology, we could have had a true classic on out hands.

Instead, what we got was the most blatant mesh of corporate intervention I've ever seen in a game. Right off that bat I ask myself: why is there a simplistic diablo-esque gear systen in a game about a wizard school? Why is 3/4ths of the map made up wilderness that no one cares about? Why do we unlock spells by doing fetch quests, and why are these spells not more well integrated as tools outside of combat as well as within? These were questions I asked myself when I was actually enjoying the game, mind you. Over the course of the game you'll get more and more feature creep when you add in 10 additional collectable types, a lockpicking mechanic midway through the game that is unbareably slow the more you use it (which will be frequently), confusing 3D maps that you have to wait for an animation to either access or back out of, and a shall we call it Pokemon raising/breeding minigame where you "save" animals from poachers by capturing them and taking them away from their families for zero reason.

Many of these decisions to me read as corporate wanted to please everyone in the wake of the author who shall not be name's twitter comments, but when doing so they inevitably made the whole game very unfocussed and at times a huge slog. There's also the weird aspect of how strangely multicultural this place out in rural scotland during the 1800s is. It's somehow more diverse than how it is in the 1990s when the main series takes place. Mind you, this aspect doesn't really hurt the game, it's just extremely noticeable and kind of goes into what I was referring to about the game feeling very corporate.

I haven't even gotten into the story yet either. They start off with some fairly interesting ideas surrounding ancient magic and how hogwarts ties into it, but ultimately ends up feeling like another chosen one story except with basically irrelevant villains and a lot of unexplained things (why is the MC coming in as a 5th year? Hell if I know, they never explain it). On top of that it just kinda... ends. With little to no fanfare.

This is one confusing game, but the ultimate tl;dr is that this is probably the most mixed bag of a game I've ever played. AAA devs, please, stop trying to make games into by the numbers open worlds. If they went in a highly polished Zelda clone direction, or even grabbed some aspects of Persona this could have been a far better game.

Aight so I played this for few hours and I get exactly why Harry Potter adults like this game: it successfully captures the magic of the books and especially the earlier films really well. There's a lot of environmental detail in Hogwarts that is fun to look at. Lots of moving paintings and inanimate objects doing fun and whimsical things that really don't need to be there at all but greatly contribute to the atmosphere. I wish more games did that. Aside from the spectacles this game has, it ultimately doesn't really deserve much consideration as a game worth playing.

The story had small amounts of intrigue I can see being interesting down the line , but really most of the plot I saw is just a vehicle for nostalgia baiting to give the casual audience what they paid for. That's fine and all but I was never hooked on a single thing that was happening. It does not help at all that the game spends a lot of time addressing that you are a fifth year student who just joined Hogwarts because you are super cool and smart and almost everybody in school likes you from the jump. It is really hard to shake the notion that your character is anything but a self-insert in for someone's DeviantArt fan fiction power fantasy and doesn't make for a lot of room for a player to make a character they can really express themselves with.

What's really funny is you can see & feel where this game halted development as a live service and 180'd into a single player experience. A really smart move considering the collapse of the live service side of the market, but it's obvious you were meant to run dungeons with another player or two and collect loot exactly like Destiny 2. How you find items and even the equip menu UI is dead on exactly like Destiny. The spell effects are cool and take after the latter Harry Potter movies where they essentially act like wizard bullets -- and doing your special wizard move looks pretty good.

This game also involves a lot of stealth, which is the weakest aspect of this entire game. The two stealth sections I played were linear and really, really boring. All I could think about while playing them was that this game is meant for casual audiences and not meant to be challenging, but then I remembered Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Gamecube that came out twenty-one years ago had the same philosophy on its stealth sections but gave the player more freedom to take on it's stealth challenges.

This game started development before JK Rowling's overt fascist-adjacent views were brought under spotlight and we can go back and forth all fucking decade on the pros and cons of supporting this game as a consumer product. That all said, I'm a second generation Scottish immigrant and a person who recognizes Trans people and their inherit rights as human beings; I'm not gonna throw that aside to support some extraordinarily mid video game even if it doesn't greatly affect JK Rowling's wealth or influence. Fuck her whole ass life, her momma, and her momma's momma. So I pirated this thing and deleted the files after I realized I wasn't engaged at all and everyone was arguing over a product that really isn't special in any way other than emulating the vibes of earlier media of this franchise to get some bucks from an audience who've had a hard life and are not terminally online like all of us. This game's existence is just a touchstone of how pathetic the game industry, the consumer base and internet discourse really is. I kind of want to live in another dimension where Harry Potter doesn't exist so I never have to witness an event like this again. Hogwarts Legacy, everyone!

This game runs like shit on PC too.

Nailed the atmosphere/nostalgia from my childhood with the exploration of Hogwarts, and Hogsmeade, had fun exploring bits of the world. The writing overall was kind of weak, didn't care for the main story, but enjoyed some character quests. Gameplay was very imbalanced, where either spells were stupid nice with combos, pointless to use, or OP. (Potions/plants crazy OP w/ talents) Got bored of the little Ubisoft-ish objectives in the world.

All in all, meh writing(outside of Seb/Poppy/Ominus), nice exploration for where it mattered, decent combat, fun broom flying, but no wizards chess or quidditch?

There's so much love and care put into this game to immerse you in the world of Harry Potter that its easy to forgive it for the things that it doesn't do so well. However it must be said that the gear system needed reworking, the story could have been more interesting, and the open-world could have felt a tad less copy and pasted with the same activities over and over again. Still, the combat is surprisingly good, the flying is very enjoyable, some of the character side-quests are better than the main story, and when you are in Hogwarts itself (or other hamlets) this game just oozes comf. From a first showing from Portkey Games, this is impressive.

Where to begin with such a contested release? By saying I just found out that this is the same studio that made Dragon Ball Z Sagas. Do with that information what you will.

Exploring Hogwarts and the lands outside are probably the best thing about it. Hogwarts has a large amount of activities and simple puzzles to do with the main story trials having more difficult ones for at least someone as puzzle inept as me, conversations and flavor encounters to experience such as the humming knight, and more secrets than you could shake your wand at. Outside its a lot of nice vistas such as green hills, sparsely forested areas, the rather dreary coast and the forbidden forest with hamlets dotting your way down the roads. You'll find your fair share of enemy encounters outside of the settlements along with various simple Merlin trials and wildlife you can capture for your vivarium for resources. Unfortunately the Merlin trials have about as much variety as the korok puzzles in botw. You have about 7 or 8 versions and things are just placed more spaced out to "change it up". I don't go "wow" often but when I was riding the hippogriff over the water, it was definitely a beautiful site.

The game has a gear and loot system which I grow more tired of seeing in games by the day, but its not gear vomit levels like Nioh were you're getting 30 pieces of gear per encounter with .00000000001% parameter increases on them. Its inventory space does not condone itself to it enough. I don't know the exact number of slots you start with but it can't be much more than 25 and it maxed out at 40. I had to go to Hogsmead regularly to sell my stuff for paltry amounts of money, unless you're on playstation and do its exclusive quest at the time of writing this for an extra 10% selling bonus, like you get 60-200 a piece where things on average are a lot more than that to buy. You can upgrade your gear but it doesn't do much stats wise, the traits are really what matters when it comes to that which you have to find in chests or as rewards from challenges. You can transmog anything into any style of gear you've picked up or unlocked from challenges. I just wore the knights armor for the majority of my time. Not that I liked how my character turned out anyway. You can only choose from presets for the face with no option for actual editing from what I saw and I hated every single one. I'll also never understand not having a raw color picker for customization as its not like they were limiting themselves to "natural" hair colors here. The room of requirement, your personal resource farming center for stuff to craft potions and upgrade gear if you don't want to explore though you can't grow everything such as those damn horklumps, unfortunately doles things out in real time and does not progress while the game is off. Things can take between a few seconds to 30 minutes with the latter seemingly being exclusively for animal breeding. Placing items in the RoR also takes a specific resource called Moonstone that you can either generate yourself at a maximum of 30 a time every 10 minutes, if you place all 3 generators, or find outside while exploring which do refresh but I don't know how long that takes to happen. I spent a lot of time in the vivarium with the magical creatures, and you can find shinies of them in the wild. I haven't found many but I got a couple shiny birds which had shiny kids and a shiny giant toad. My amount of progression per session went down drastically once it unlocked but I knew this would happen and was looking forward to it. Nifflers are precious, must be petted and given all the love.

The story is easily its weakest aspect. Its was just so bland the entire time, and most of the side quests weren't much better. Honestly the only thing worth a damn writing wise was Sebastian's questline. The devs must have been slythrin sorted cuz they have so much more work put into them than the gryffindor or hufflepuff's and ravenlcaw's might as well not exist cuz you blink and miss him. I feel like the game also was intended to have companions follow you while you explore the world. Several times now have I strolled on up to a goblin or bandit camp and my character said something along the lines of "Theres a lot of them, and I'm without my friends" or "This will be tough since I'm alone". It must have been cut deep in development. Your main character is just a bland self insert with choices that lean towards the "good thing" or a little bit rude to get some extra money from quests but outside of that they're nothing. The vocal pitch you can adjust at the time of writing this is terrible as well. Move it anywhere from the middle and you're talking out of a tin can. The whole premise about ancient magic just never lived up to what it could have cuz this "ancient magic" just amounted to 5 to 6 finishers I was able to do outside of seeing what the painting people did with it when they were alive.

The combat wasn't asking much of me outside of color recognition and enemy awareness. Its kind of stiff and twitchy with not a lot of enemy variety and can be a bit hectic. Goblins have their several variants, dark wizards have theirs with just varying degrees of aggressiveness with maybe one unique spell to their name, spiders, wolves, big frogs and suits of armor of 3 sizes are what you'll run into outside of students in the dueling room. The enemy tracking is also absurd where the enemies will snap the distance between you, we're talking like 30 feet in a blink. Reminded me of Dark Souls' 2 absurd tracking. In terms of spells you have 5 damage types with one being exploration/puzzle focused (Control, Force, Damage, Utility, Curses) to choose from in the list of 27 and will need to memorize colors for shield breaking. "The game only has 27 spells! Skyrim has 100!" Yes it does and it is less than I expected I will agree but they are spells with vastly different properties and combo potential. Lift them up, slam them down, set them a blaze, freeze in place, stun after countering (with a perfect guard system), curse them for bonus damage and damage all cursed targets at one time to name some. How many of skyrim's spells are just strength progression of the 5 levels from novice to master and offer little else? I understand the mainstream is full on size queens and plenty of you want any reason to tear this game down but actually think about something other than size for once. Instead of having an arbitrary slot on incendio level 2, you just use the talent tree to give it its added ring of fire effect. Having to change spell loadouts mid combat is also kind of cumbersome as you need to hold down the cast button and then hit the corresponding dpad button to change. Better memorize all 4 loadouts of your 4 set spells once you unlock them. Odds are you're gonna find one combo that works and stick with it but you'll be hard pressed to actually be able to land it all unless you're fighting one on one.

I do wish the basic casting was more than a 4 hit where most of your damage from it comes from the final hit. You also have other items like chinese chomping cabbage (which are surprisingly strong), mandrakes, venemous tentacula and various potions to use during combat. Using the unforgivable curses was fun, and the devs almost didn't puss out on Avada Kedavra. That one shots anything and everything even with a shield including every boss enemy that I used it on with the exception of the final boss and a specific beast. There are multiple sectioned life bar enemies but I didn't run into any other than the final boss after getting the spell so I do not know how it interacts with them and if you have the "effects all cursed enemies" talent, it kills everyone afflicted. Sure it has a lengthy cooldown but there's plenty of talents and potions to reduce it. Speaking of the talent tree, you cannot get all talents from it unfortunately so plan accordingly. Leveling speed also drops hard at higher levels, requiring near 100% completion of all story, side quests, challenges and collectables to get to the max level of 40. Theres A LOT of collectables here, 1126 according to many. While its not even half of DK64, that still a lot especially since its required to get to max level, nevermind just as a completion percentage.

The flying controls seem to be a point of contention for a lot of people. Took me a bit to get used to especially since they aren't inverted out of the gate. The left stick controls your left and right turning while the right stick controls your up and down while the triggers are a speed up and a limited boost on top of the gear shift L3 click. This means you only have access to the x axis of the camera and can make things like the time trials more annoying to reorient should you miss a ring or trying to look and see what all the commotion is under you as you fly through the lands. I don't think they are awful by any means, I've gotten very used to them and can effortlessly do what I set out to but I do think either the triggers should have stayed where they are and the verticality be placed on the shoulder buttons or vice versa.

I had heard and seen video claiming the game was buggy and full of performance issues but I didn't run into much 0f anything. Other than the loading in after fast traveling, the frame rate was stable the whole time. In terms of glitches, I didn't get the quest locking or chest one. Other than clothing physics related ones that happened maybe once a session. I got stuck between a ruin wall and a cliffside and wasn't able to open the menus so I had to restart the game, but the game autosaves often so I had plenty of close saves to choose form and only lost like 30 seconds. I played unpatched on PS5 as well so nothing was fixed. So much when I played Scarlet, I either got lucky and rarely saw any issues or people are blowing it out of proportion.


TLDR: While it might not come off that way, I generally a fun time. Getting to run around a fully realized Hogwarts brought back memories of playing Chamber of Secrets on the PS2. This game right now is what I remember Chamber of Secrets being, just with a nondescript bland main character cuz self inserts and whatnot instead of loosely following a movie plot. The combat could have used more enemy variety, the story and other characters needed Sebastian levels of care, but the general act of exploring the world, uncovering secrets, petting your magical creatures and unleashing a killing curse on your foes surpasses that. Its not a 10/10 but certainly not a 1/10, probably a 6 or so maybe 7 if I'm feeling generous. Peeves is lucky he's already a poltergeist or he'd be on the receiving end of a Avada.

EDIT: I am dropping the score by half a star. This single player game would not let me even start it without downloading its newest patch at the time of writing this. There is no good reason to force an update in a purely single player title unless it fixes a gamebreaking bug. This update made the game run worse. I had literal slideshows and puzzle room not visually updating so I was just walking through blocks despite having little to no issues whatsoever on the unpatched game. I get stopping multiplayer connectivity without it but I have never seen a single player game just full on stop me without a patch before. Usually I can play while it downloads or just delete the update and play on my current version. I pray this isn't a sign of things to come. Might just never connect my stuff the internet from now on unless I'm buying a digital title and see how far I can get.

That Potter game thing turns out to be a hell of a lot better than I expected it to be - that's down to a really good story, superb, flowing combat and above all, a meticulously crafted world which absolutely nails the look, atmosphere and feel of the franchise.

There's so many awesome little details thrown into this, from the countless codex entries scattered around Hogwarts Castle, Hogsmead village and the umpteen small hamlets dotted around the landscape. A lot of them will be familiar to fans of the series, many names (surnames at least) will have links to the main HP books, beasts you encounter have also been seen in the Fantastic Beasts films.

Gameplay is a mixture of attending lessons, undertaking 'assignments' from various teachers which in turn lead to learning many of the spells the game offers. These spells are useful in combat, in taming beasts, searching for hidden items, stealth sections, platforming puzzles. There's an impressive amount to learn, from transfiguring enemies into barrels during combat, freezing them after sneaking up on them using petrificus totalus, exploding walls with bombarda, moving people and objects with depulso, accio, descendo, levioso, wingardium leviosa etc etc. In fact, most of the spells familiar to fans of the series are here - including the unforgivable curses should you wish to learn them later in the game. You can select any 4 spells at one time, and you can switch between 4 of these skill sets. Swapping between spells is a bit cumbersome, I found myself equipping different spells depending on what bonus challenges were required for various battles (e.g. defeat 4 enemies with depulso, disarm 2 dark wizards with expelliarmus etc etc). Combat is far more complex than expected, and it's such tremendous fun - so much so that there are many sections I could have avoided by flying over them on my broom, but I sought them out to practise new combos between spells and because it's so damn fun.

There's a lot of Hogwarts Legacy that's been influenced by other open world titles but it never pretends to be original in that sense. There's an insane amount of things to collect, there are fairly simple environment based puzzle minigames called Merlin Trials, there are challenge arenas that throw waves of enemies at you, there's also the Room of Requirement which acts as a base room where you can grow plants, brew potions, house beasts, conjure furniture/furnishings etc etc. There might be some monotony here for anyone who doesn't enjoy such sections.

Aside from the excellent main story (I've seen lots of criticism of this and I simply have to disagree with these views - I thought it was really good) there are tons of side quests. These aren't that consistent. Some of them are brilliant but there are too many 'fetch quests' for my liking. Side quests involving some of your fellow students tend to be the best of them and act as sort of secondary campaigns - they're all well worth playing through.

One thing that is a bit annoying is the loot system, as you'll find the same pointless cosmetic items in chests across the whole of the map, and when inventory slots are stingy anyway, there's a constant need to organise your inventory, by discarding unwanted clothing items or finding a stall somewhere to sell stuff. It's a bit of a pain - rewards for finding a well hidden chest often aren't worth the effort you put in to find them.

I also don't think the charm and appeal of the game would be as strong without the HP license. It really is a superb use of the license, but like Jedi: Fallen Order is a good game made better with the Star Wars license, I think the same could be said of Hogwarts Legacy, albeit I think it's actually a better overall game than the EA one.

I really enjoyed playing this - I went through the whole thing with my Potter-obsessed 12 year old daughter, taking it in turns to do puzzles, combat sections etc and it never outstayed its welcome. It's a good, fun, open world adventure with tremendous combat and a really good, strong main storyline.

The good:
-Exploring Hogwarts as a fully realized explorable map is amazing, so many small and large details that really make it awe inspiring to wander around
-This is truly a faithful adaptation to BOTH the movies and books. It combines them wonderfully and takes it's own creative liberty in areas that are disputed
-Hard mode combat feels great and fluid (once you get used to holding r2 for spells, though sometimes it is still too hard to juggle them and you end up doing something you didn't mean to)
-Revelio pages are a great way to get people engaged in what they're actually looking at. They give cool information and tidbits that actually help you to answer certain questions in the game
-The broom is fun asf
-Beast collecting is super cute, and customizing the room of requirement is a guilty pleasure of mine. Organizing things is really fun, and this game succeeds where Unpacking failed. Unpacking didn't engage me because everything I organized wasn't mine, but in Hogwarts Legacy everything in the room of requirement is EARNED
-Sabastian's quest, I'll say no more

The bad:
-Your choices have absolutely no weight or dramatic tension, it doesn't matter what you say or do because the person you're talking to will always end up agreeing
-The previous leads into a larger issue of dialogue and writing, it is SO stale and tiresome. Someone always has their dick in your ear saying some nonsense to fill the air; and you're spoon fed every piece of information through a talking head without a chance to just experience something and think about it yourself. Also, most people may not care but every dialogue between characters is made of medium shot close ups and I HATE it
-The wiggenweld potion system is shit, reminds me of the same problem scorn had. They absolutely should have functioned more like an estus flask
-The open world outside of the Hogwarts grounds is quite repetitive
-The loot system becomes redundant in mid-late game, to the point where if you do a main mission it is common to get nothing but under-leveled gear. It fills up your inventory fast and discourages exploring to find chests.

Don't really care about the J.K Rowling controversy. Whatever pennies ended up in her already millionaire net worth was worth it for paying the devs for their work.

So, the game is much worse than Witcher 3/Elden Ring, but much better than most RPG's Ubisoft throws out these days.

A very shining positive, for example, is that the talent (skill) system is composed of almost 95% mechanical changes to the spells rather than like, 2% damage increases, which is the absolute bane of modern RPG design. Could not praise this decision more.

The story, outside of Sebastian's tale, is not all that awe-inspiring. People talk about Goblins being allegory for Jews, but, from an outsider perspective, that just seems like projection. Like, if you see the evil Goblins in this game, and think they remind you of semitic tribes... that's on you.

Other's have mentioned that the dev team sought to distance themselves so hard from controversy, that they added plenty of LGBT/POC characters. To the point that I found it a bit weird there being no tension at all given that it's 1800s London, and the original trilogy from the 90s had a much less diverse school despite being the 90s... but whatever, it's a magical children-oriented universe.

It's a bit bland, but overall a good experience. If you're a Harry Potter fan, I can see it being a 4/5 because they really put an effort into making it authentic to the feel of HP.

An absolutely magical experience! This was the Harry Potter/Wizarding World game I have been wanting since I was reading the books years ago.

Creating your character, selecting your house, wand, patronus, animal, etc. was so immersive and the fact that you could attend classes and learn spells in different ways made the whole experience engaging and immersive.

The story was surprising to me as well - I was not expecting much out of the story, rather, I didn't know what to expect overall from it. I was shocked, playing through the story was like experiencing a movie! The role you play, the cast of characters, the stakes, the motives, the lore, the history - all of it made for a great experience that I was blown away by.

Riding around on your broom or your magical companion mount felt wonderous, as flying through the sky and seeing the Wizarding World beneath you was breathtaking. Interacting with the world in ways like this and others, such as meeting magical creatures and fighting against the threats of the world really helped to capture the magical essence of this game and help to create the adventurous tone and spirit of the game.

I am hoping for more content and looking forward to hearing more about this game and series.

Hogwarts Legacy

Un buen juego de HP, la ambientación, los detalles y el gameplay están muy bien.

Tiene algunos fallos en cuanto a la trama, pasan cosas interesantes pero las ignoran, parece que vayan con prisa de terminarlo todo, y bugs.

(7'5/10)

A ver si lo acaban de pulir.

Hogwarts Legacy isn't too far off your generic Ubisoft style open world rpg but with the Harry Potter IP slapped across it. This wouldnt be worth much, if not for the care and detail and sense of nostalgia that comes with that IP and it boosts the enjoyment of the game immensely.

This game does not reinvent the wheel for rpgs or open worlds, but it does give us a version of one that many people have longed for and I think does it quite well. Hogwarts as a building is unbelievable and you'll easily spend the first 10 hours just roaming its halls for secrets and places you recognize. The outside area isn't bad but its nothing too special imo.

The combat was my greatest fear going in to this but it was honestly a lot better than I expected. Its sort of hard to describe but its fun if thats worth anything. The main story is decent, some parts of it are boring and forgettable, mainly the two villains and their whole plot, but the stuff about the Keepers and the trials are memorable, and the side character relationship quests actually end on quite good notes, the game doesn't pull its punches at times.

Gripes include the repetitive nature of some of the open world elements, the lack of variety with some dialogue lines around fast travel and Hogsmeade, I think they could have cut some of the more generic side quests to focus on the main story, specifically some characters that I think would have benefited the final act if we had spent more time with them.

tldr if you like harry potter you will like this, if you dont like harry potter, there really isnt anything new for you here.

Short answer: It's a mixed bag of a game, with an open world that could feel fantastic but mostly just feels like sparsely populated locales with the same rotational stuff from one location transposed over another.

I'll try and avoid significant spoilers and mark where they are as necessary.

The game definitely has its moments -- there's a huge charm to Hogwarts (and to Hogsmeade, to a lesser extent), with lots of things that feel right at home in the HP universe making themselves known in both brazen and subtle ways.

I think that once I got to Hogwarts, I spent probably near four hours just wandering around and searching out all the experiences there are to find -- some of which come courtesy of a guidebook that's supposed to help your character out with their time in Hogwarts for this particular school year. The charm hits hard in the school and the promise of learning some really slick spells and putting them into practical application (read as: getting rid of baddies and solving puzzles) becomes tantalizing.

Once you've chosen to undertake the quests necessary to get yourself out of the school and gradually begin arming yourself with spells, combat seems like it might be an enterprising challenge that could make for a grand experience. Some enemies protect themselves with certain barriers, and you need to use spells relative to that barrier type to null the barrier in order to damage them, which complicates an enemy duel in an interesting way, as you need to be properly prepared to dispatch your enemy. But that's where the fun ends at with combat.

Spells do enough different stuff that they warrant being their own spell identity, but the damage spells definitely feel like damage spells and the "status" spells (for a lack of a better name for stuff that impedes your enemies) feel like more cleverly usable damage spells. But when you're fighting a number of enemies, some of which might have different barriers up, you're going to largely be focused on just casting the right color-grouped spell to disable an enemy and try and wail on that enemy while dodging other enemies before the one you're working on throws a barrier back up again. It's serviceable, if not a little annoying because the game seems to love throwing numerous enemies at you at once (this was on Normal difficulty for me, I don't know if enemy presence is more or less on Hard or the easier difficulties), so you're just committed to doing maintenance in battle instead of really engaging in experimenting with spells in fun ways. Or maybe that's just me!

Enemies scale with your level in all encounters I've had with the exception of one of the earliest main story quests, so there's no grinding levels to overpower your enemies as far as I can tell. Levels are basically HP and Talent Points, the latter of which can be used to mostly bolster spells and their effects, though one of those talent branches is quite busted.

Equipment loots can be acquired by searching locales or by defeating enemies, and loot has its own level to it and is nearly always found at the same level as you or one level higher, with stats generally around the same stats as what you already have, though maybe slightly higher or lower. You're always going to be roughly where you should be with encounters you happen upon, even without upgrading your equipment, unless you travel to certain parts of the world earlier, as enemies in certain parts of the world seem to have higher levels in order to discourage exploration before you're ready to go to said areas.

The worst thing about enemies is something that I think shouldn't be spoilered because people should know this -- there are very few enemy types, so with the meat of the game being focused on combat or just uncovering puzzles in tombs or Hogwarts or anywhere else, you're going to see a lot of repetition in short order once you get your freedom. Yes, the enemy typings come in multiple flavors, but they're not nearly diverse enough to overcome the fact that they really are just...more of the same thing. Even with specialized enemies you're treated to, you get a little profile notice that they're a unique enemy, but they look just like everyone else and might have a minor quirk about their combat tactics, but it's really just the same fight as everything else you've done, with one extra flourish involved, generally.

I encountered several bosses and I may have cheesed some of them with a very brutal one-shot tactic, but the major ones where I couldn't do that with were mostly just larger versions of enemies you've already seen with 1-2 extra moves based on the progression of the boss fight.

If you're searching for side-objectives just to complete, the game has you covered with so many options, but that's the main reason you're incentivized to wander the countryside. Because once you really travel around, you start noticing how insignificant other hamlets are as you discover them -- my favorite point to this is my character making the same "it's right out of a storybook" comment each time I enter one and in the case of a particular quest that had me traveling to each hamlet to acquire a particular item, I realized that some of them had VERY similar plots for how the hamlets were laid out.

Speaking of characters and their commentary, people are personable enough when you're introduced to them, but there are a couple lamentable overlaps -- first, you get to meet some seemingly unique characters in different hamlets or other locations, but they're almost always the exact same merchant types, so you get little variety in what you're purchasing from them, which makes them a bit less interesting beyond just asking them about what's going on in the local areas. Second, there's a weird issue with character models when talking, where between each sentence, their face reverts to the base character model "neutral" expression, which can lead to some very hilarious facial changes in conversations, which can really take you out of the moments.

High points for me?

Customizing the Room of Requirement whenever you unlock that is fun -- I went with a look that reminded me of Raya Lucaria from Elden Ring.

Also, I had a character at one point go, "There's something strange going on around here," and as she did, she rose about one foot off the ground and the table she was leaned against, which made her statement both hilarious and factual in the moment.

Exploring Hogwarts and its general grounds is a grand time and unlocking fast travel points (Floo Flames) makes the exploration feel extremely rewarding, especially given the the number of side quests you're thrown later on in the game as it finds ample opportunity to go, "Hey, have one more spell that may or may not have any impact on puzzles but will definitely be a separate option to ruin your same seven or eight enemy groups!"

Someone said it felt like an Ubisoft open-world game, and I kinda get that. For me, it's that Ubisoft level of open-worldness, but with a weaker WB-oriented combat system than Middle Earth or the Batman games. It feels very much like a game that belongs in the WB portfolio and if those games are your jam and you like the Harry Potter universe, it's probably a good fit for you and worth your time to check out. A friend gifted me this game and I was initially super-stoked to check it out, but I can't imagine buying it at full price with what I know now, as it just never felt like it kept my interest beyond that initial exploration of Hogwarts. I wasn't nearly as excited when I first left the grounds because it became very apparent that there just wasn't much variety in what you'd find when you started trying to dig deep into the exploratory side of the game. It's just a big world with some points that exist that you need to visit for reasons, and a lot of those points already reside in the two major areas of the game and the ones that don't, often have similar areas that feel somewhat copy-pasted, from hamlets to tombs.

How's that one spell go? Caveatus emptorum? I'm sure it's something like that.

Good:
Environment looks nice
Exploration is fun
Combat is fun
Puzzles are well spaced out and not overly long/complex
Occasional good side quests
Voice acting is quite good
The Room of Requirement is a nice change of pace, especially the vivarium

Bad:
Story makes no sense
Most side quests are lame
World has no reactivity (casting unforgivable curses causes absolutely zero reaction, for example)
Performance is shamefully bad on PC

Pros outweigh the cons for sure but it could be so much better.

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.

Hogwarts Legacy is a book best judged by seeing the gorgeous cover, maybe reading the inside flap, then never digging too deep into the pages contained within. While it can leave you drooling at an audio-visual buffet at times, I didn't find enough substance in this game to want to see the end.

The highs here are quite high. Potter fans will, expectedly, get the most out of Legacy, and I looked at its launch as a now-jaded adult who unabashedly adored the franchise as a kid. I left my skepticism at the door after my trans sister raved about Legacy (and shared her Home-Xbox-privileges with me for free access). Legacy never turns the fan-service meter down below "Medium" and frequently ratchets the level into the stratosphere, but ya know what? I liked it. This IP has been somewhere between dormancy, mediocrity, and public shame since the last movie released, and I was happy to immerse in the world I knew as a kid once again.

Players don't have to wait 45 minutes before the first crank of the nostalgia machine, with a brilliant pan through the woods before Hogwarts is revealed to a remix of the John Williams movie theme. This moment is, in many ways, a microcosm of Legacy at its best: a stunning view, complemented by excellent sounds. Legacy is frequently gorgeous. The interior of Hogwarts is ludicrously-detailed, a true love letter to the franchise and really everything a player could want to see. They probably could've sold this game at $70 with just the immediate Hogwarts grounds and gotten away with it tbh. But they didn't! Instead, Hogwarts is surrounded by a decently large open world, which tempts the viewer with scenic vistas and eye-catching details in the distance. The world is also vaguely dynamic, shifting noticeably with the seasons and select in-game events. It just looks great.

I elected to play Legacy on the Quality + Ray Tracing mode, a first for me (60fps is a must usually, but I figured the intensity of gameplay was low enough to try it here). Uh... nobody should play this or any game on RT mode on XSX. It's cool that the hardware technically supports it, but next-gen consoles are really at their best when smoothing everything out, not pushing the boundaries back towards the jankiness of last gen. Legacy usually holds 30fps in QRT mode, but can really chug in dense areas like large Hogwarts rooms or anywhere in Hogsmeade. I largely chalk that up to me forcing RT on an Xbox, but other problems (strange texture-pop in particular) are more on the game optimization side.

The other highlight of Legacy is audio. The game sounds fantastic. Music is a brilliant mix of old and new, where familiar tunes are fleshed out and expanded upon by new additions to make the world feel lively and authentic, not limited to a suite of songs written for linear movies two decades ago. Voice acting is also surprisingly good. I fully expected it to suck, especially with a voiced main character, but I was really sold on how basically everyone talked.

Circling back to fan-service: Legacy certainly isn't limited to it. I was pleasantly surprised that the game dared carve out a new story in the Potter universe, rather than pull a Skywalker Saga and make everyone tie back to each other somehow. With that said... beyond those initial meta strokes, story is where Legacy quickly begins to lose its luster. This tale is as basic as it gets, with generic forces of good and bad clashing. Imagine this--turns out you have a mysterious new power (somehow not just the whole being-a-sorcerer thing), and have to save the world from the bad guys. It is generic storytelling 101, and Legacy rarely makes a solid attempt to even mask that straightforward approach. Even your binary nice-or-mean dialogue choices always seem to round out into a net positive for your good-guy character. I may be speaking too soon on that point, as I've heard rumblings you can become a dark wizard (Avada Kedavra is sitting locked at the bottom of your spell sheet from minute one), but even so I have a hard time seeing how Legacy might separate itself from the good-vs.-evil story.

Also, people just relentlessly compliment you. It's actually kinda annoying how readily they decide you're the chosen one, their best friend, a most impressive student, etc. Even when you do something bad they still find a silver lining on you. I want to be bullied just once, damn.

The reductive story elements are furthered by the gameplay. This is easily the most basic western RPG I've touched in a while. Like, bro. Everything.

EVERYTHING.

In this game is a task. Go get 2 of these. I'll meet you at X so you can do Y for me. Hell your professors give you homework and they all admit they're making you do 3 tasks before you can advance the story. It just kills me that this world, so charming on the surface, is wholly flavorless to actually interact with. The map is just littered with locations and repetitive mini games to complete. None are interesting after the first few attempts.

The best part of the gameplay is the actual fighting, amazingly. I thought this was doomed to fail before playing it, but it's actually kinda cool! You have a decent number of different spells, they interact with each other differently, you can do some creative stuff with it all, and all of that is wrecked by the fact there are like 6 enemies in the whole game. You got goblins and people and those stone knight things, a few boring animals and some zombies. How is that it?? No matter how many spells you unlock, it gets boring to kill the same enemy over and over with them. I really needed more variety here.

My biggest takeaway from Legacy is that it is, ironically, crafted to be as inoffensive as possible. Generic story, generic activities, generic movement, generic loot system (though why do I have only 20 slots for clothes), generic open world, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes this works well; for instance, I genuinely appreciate how much they washed history (and Rowling) out of this game. There's no racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or really anything rude to other people at all here. Representation is excellent, at least compared to (checks notes) every other video game ever made. This is an alternate history where wizarding schools have flying horses roaming around them, and I want to happily escape into it while thinking of a world I entirely wish I lived in.

Other times, that placation goes beyond what I'm interested in playing for endless hours. In the interest of appealing to as many people as possible, Legacy dilutes itself of an excellent experience with enduring appeal. I had a good time, and I don't need to sink another day of my life into finishing this game to have gotten what I want out of it: the chance to walk around Hogwarts and pretend to be a wizard for a moment.



(My hot take, despite never having played a game of this genre before, is that this would be a better game as a life sim. Avalanche could've taken the effort they put into everything outside of Hogwarts/Hogsmeade and put that into creating better stories, more characters (the few fleshed-out characters in Legacy are usually quite good, but rare), and a thorough experience inside Hogwarts. I don't need to be Harry Potter-lite from 150 years ago, but carving my own (relatively normal, lower stakes) wizard-school story out in that beautiful rendition of Hogwarts would be super fun.)