I said on the last log that I wasn't feeling keen on the odds of me finishing this game and turns out yeah, I didn't. One part of me is curious to see how it holds up top to bottom but on the other hand, its inability to meld the Open World formula into something resembling the "Hogwarts" experience is so fatal that I simply do not think I need to.
It puzzles me that for a non-negligible amount of people and critics, the ability to openly explore Hogwarts and a decent, fulfilling combat system is enough to ignore that it doesn't even try to enforce you into the rules and the world of Hogwarts. Dress codes? Nah. A day-to-day schedule that tries, even vaguely, to simulate what is expected of a Hogwarts student????? Hello???? No half-way measures whatsoever. It should, in my eyes, be insulting to fans that they were so afraid that any attempt to genuinely immerse you in the >>fantasy of a wizarding school<< would be too tedious and boring. But give someone a broom, a wand and landmass to fly around and forgiveness shall be received.
So much praise and love for a game that had no faith in anyone it was trying to appeal to. At least "middling AAA games" like Assassin's Creed Valhalla try to simulate the experience of being a raiding viking. If Hogwarts Legacy can't even do that, than can it be called a middling AAA open world game? Not to mention the alchemy system, ripped straight out of money farmer mobile games with reckless abandon. Almost everything Ive said about the game's cowardice of not meeting the standards of the setting extends to a lot of the experience. Like, they infest Hogwarts with bandit camps??? Thats what they name them. Bandit Camps. Straight up.
Like come on man, this game has an 89% approval on Opencritic. Are we really lacking so much aspiration that this game's flaws are acceptable as a baseline?
It puzzles me that for a non-negligible amount of people and critics, the ability to openly explore Hogwarts and a decent, fulfilling combat system is enough to ignore that it doesn't even try to enforce you into the rules and the world of Hogwarts. Dress codes? Nah. A day-to-day schedule that tries, even vaguely, to simulate what is expected of a Hogwarts student????? Hello???? No half-way measures whatsoever. It should, in my eyes, be insulting to fans that they were so afraid that any attempt to genuinely immerse you in the >>fantasy of a wizarding school<< would be too tedious and boring. But give someone a broom, a wand and landmass to fly around and forgiveness shall be received.
So much praise and love for a game that had no faith in anyone it was trying to appeal to. At least "middling AAA games" like Assassin's Creed Valhalla try to simulate the experience of being a raiding viking. If Hogwarts Legacy can't even do that, than can it be called a middling AAA open world game? Not to mention the alchemy system, ripped straight out of money farmer mobile games with reckless abandon. Almost everything Ive said about the game's cowardice of not meeting the standards of the setting extends to a lot of the experience. Like, they infest Hogwarts with bandit camps??? Thats what they name them. Bandit Camps. Straight up.
Like come on man, this game has an 89% approval on Opencritic. Are we really lacking so much aspiration that this game's flaws are acceptable as a baseline?