I want to get this out of the way right away. I did not buy this game. I’m staying firm on my stance of if you buy this game whether preowned, brand new, or through a sketchy second hand key seller you are actively supporting the rampant transphobia that is sweeping the world right as we speak. I’m not saying you’re a bad person for playing the game or you're even transphobic, just that you decided to choose a piece of entertainment that you don’t need rather than standing with a group of individuals that need the most amount of support at this moment. In my mind you cashed in your trans ally pass the moment you put any amount of money towards this game. As I said I did not buy this game, I pirated it mostly for the sake of seeing what the whole game was about, mostly because I DO NOT TRUST other people's opinions on the game. While I’m sure their are rational people who have given good breakdowns on the game but it really doesn't help that whenever you look the game up on youtube it sends you right down the alt-right pipeline, and everyone else is either a weird gamer chud who like playing crap AAA games and calls them art, or some bozo who gets all of their opinions on media from asshates on Twitter. I also used to be a bozo who mostly just took the word of other people online rather making my own opinion, because of that I was an obnoxious turd who didn’t think for themselves; because of that I’ve tried to actively try my hardest to have my voice stand out among the crowd that way I don’t feel like just another voice in a group, which is mostly why I haven’t bother really saying anything on the conversation around this game (granted the whole conversation around this game is so fucking toxic I also wanted it to die down first).
Anyways possible damage control out of the way what are my overall thoughts on the game itself. It is just like literally every other open world AAA game; right down to what feels like copy and paste open world garbage that is tossed all around the open world. It’s literally everything I actively don’t like about other games like Gotham Knights or the Assassins Creed games, but now it has a high quality license game sheen on it. (this is a weird side note but does anyone else find it so strange that people actually expect a good chunk of licensed games to actually be high quality; or on the same bar as other AAA games. I don’t know, I just find that strange.)
I actually wanna say some positive stuff I wanna say about the game because shockingly I actually found stuff in the game I did think was honestly worth noting. The general overall look of the game is honestly not that bad, and I genuinely like how active the world feels; what I mean by that is generally a lot of open world games feel generally static and lifeless outside of a few NPCs and wildlife, because of them it generally makes a lot of them feel more empty and less engaging overall. (Assassins Creed Valhalla, Gotham Knights, Mass Effect Andromeda and so on) With this game whenever I looked I could see NPCs interacting with each other, paintings alive and moving, suits of armor getting into fights in the hallway, and all the window shops of Hogsmeade just brimming with so many different moving objects; they went so far out of their way to integrate a lot of that whimsy that the movies and books are best known for and on purely visual level it does a great job standing out among the crowd of other static AAA games (even though that’s only 2 areas of the game but I’ll get there in a bit)
Another aspect I liked was for the first few hours just being able to explore Hogwarts. I was at one point a stupid huge Harry Potter fan (don’t worry I got better) and I feel like if this game came out when I was still in middle school or elementary school I would’ve absolutely loved this game. This does tie in with how well the devs did with immersing the playing into the Harry Potter universe. (for the most part, and I’ll get to that as well)
Ok time for me to be mean again. While I did say the open world was really lively I was mostly just talking about Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. The rest of the map is literally just one big chuck of nothing but empty grassland that looks like a photo of Wales, and I don’t know about you but when I’m playing a Harry Potter game the last place I wanna be is in fucking Cardiff. On top of just looking visually bla, it also is just filled with nothing except a shit ton of boring fake BOTW puzzles that are so short and dull that they feel more like busy work then anything else. On top of all that you also have the traditional bandit camps and meaningless collectibles that feel so haphazardly scattered around the map you’d wonder if the devs really have any thought outside of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Which honestly begs the question “why am I even bothering with all these bandit camps and other enemies?”. It’s not for roleplaying reasons since why would your average Hogwarts student even be bothering with stuff outside of their school work, and even then why are there so many dangerous dark wizards so close to a school full of kids???. I know that’s a nitpick of if this game wants to be an RPG and wants me to roleplay as my own character. I really shouldn’t be questioning the world around me to the point where I’m being taken out of it.
On the topic of the game wanting to be like an RPG let’s talk about its “RPG systems”. This game isn’t an RPG. It has aspirations with its clothing system giving you better buffet and it’s exp and leveling system; but just like almost every other AAA game it’s so fucking shallow and annoying to use it make you wonder more of why they even bothered. Like surely no one actually likes these systems right? People don’t actually think this is a deeply rewarding system to get sucked into right? I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been spoiled on actual RPGs so now I know what makes a good RPG and what doesn't but personally this shit just annoys me to no end. Since I’m talking about the game’s systems I’ll also briefly talk about the game’s combat, and in all honesty it’s just meh. From all the videos I’ve seen of the combat it looked very slow and not very engaging, and after giving it a thorough breakdown it’s not NOT engaging. All your attacks have good impact to them and combowing attacks together can feel pretty satisfying in the midst of combat; but after you really get a good grip of the combat it just gets really samey and stops evolving , becoming subpar for the rest of the game. In comparison to an older game with a similar combo filled combat system, Arkham Knight’s freeflow combat is really engaging from beginning to end because the game changes up its combat flow to keep the player on their toes. Here it just sorta gives up halfway through.
Finally I wanna talk about the game’s story and characters. Looking at the game from purely a story standpoint outside of the weirdly insured anti-semitism littered throughout the entire game. The game’s story is beyond boring and forgettable. None of the characters really sound like real people, I refuse to believe they had an actual voice director on this project because every piece of dialog sounds like it was done in one take. On top of the general story beats being shit and unengaging none of the characters you meet along your journey really feel like characters, rather they feel like pretty generic archetypes that don’t do much outside of just “being your friends” or “being your teacher/mentor”. The villains of the game are also just as one note and uninteresting, speaking of that I feel like I should bring up that anti-semitism undertones. I’m not gonna say much on the topic mostly since I don’t feel comfortable confronting it; I’m not Jewish nor do I know a lot about Jewish culture outside of a handful of holiday and the general background so I don’t really feel like I’m a well educated enough in the topic to properly dissect it in a genuine way, all I’m gonna say on the topic is regardless if you try to ignore it or just brush it off as “oh the devs probably didn’t know” no they probably did; because the general Goblin look the series has is a very well know Jewish stereotype that has been around for decades, and the Goblins in the Harry Potter books have been seen as Jewish stereotype for about as long as the movies and books have been around, and if the devs claim they at least a handful of them know about the backlash about them. It’s either that or they're a bunch of pinheads who refuse to do research on topics and just go with whatever chuds say on twitter. Another problem with the anti-semitism undertones is just how one note the evil Goblin really is. Outside of his motive to freeing Goblins from wizard oppression he will actively kill his own people just because they don’t wanna fight in his revolution or even use literally every single kind of evil underhanded means to get what he wants, which is equality??? The game makes the whole Goblin Revolution storyline feel so one note that it feels more like an in-universe piece of wizard propaganda rather than a real struggle of morals and slavery.
In conclusion it’s pretty much everything I honestly thought it was gonna be. While I do feel like most of my time was wasted I’m also glad I’ve finally gotten this game out of my system and can move on to other games that I actually like playing outside of the occasional crap game I like to rag on.
Anyways possible damage control out of the way what are my overall thoughts on the game itself. It is just like literally every other open world AAA game; right down to what feels like copy and paste open world garbage that is tossed all around the open world. It’s literally everything I actively don’t like about other games like Gotham Knights or the Assassins Creed games, but now it has a high quality license game sheen on it. (this is a weird side note but does anyone else find it so strange that people actually expect a good chunk of licensed games to actually be high quality; or on the same bar as other AAA games. I don’t know, I just find that strange.)
I actually wanna say some positive stuff I wanna say about the game because shockingly I actually found stuff in the game I did think was honestly worth noting. The general overall look of the game is honestly not that bad, and I genuinely like how active the world feels; what I mean by that is generally a lot of open world games feel generally static and lifeless outside of a few NPCs and wildlife, because of them it generally makes a lot of them feel more empty and less engaging overall. (Assassins Creed Valhalla, Gotham Knights, Mass Effect Andromeda and so on) With this game whenever I looked I could see NPCs interacting with each other, paintings alive and moving, suits of armor getting into fights in the hallway, and all the window shops of Hogsmeade just brimming with so many different moving objects; they went so far out of their way to integrate a lot of that whimsy that the movies and books are best known for and on purely visual level it does a great job standing out among the crowd of other static AAA games (even though that’s only 2 areas of the game but I’ll get there in a bit)
Another aspect I liked was for the first few hours just being able to explore Hogwarts. I was at one point a stupid huge Harry Potter fan (don’t worry I got better) and I feel like if this game came out when I was still in middle school or elementary school I would’ve absolutely loved this game. This does tie in with how well the devs did with immersing the playing into the Harry Potter universe. (for the most part, and I’ll get to that as well)
Ok time for me to be mean again. While I did say the open world was really lively I was mostly just talking about Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. The rest of the map is literally just one big chuck of nothing but empty grassland that looks like a photo of Wales, and I don’t know about you but when I’m playing a Harry Potter game the last place I wanna be is in fucking Cardiff. On top of just looking visually bla, it also is just filled with nothing except a shit ton of boring fake BOTW puzzles that are so short and dull that they feel more like busy work then anything else. On top of all that you also have the traditional bandit camps and meaningless collectibles that feel so haphazardly scattered around the map you’d wonder if the devs really have any thought outside of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Which honestly begs the question “why am I even bothering with all these bandit camps and other enemies?”. It’s not for roleplaying reasons since why would your average Hogwarts student even be bothering with stuff outside of their school work, and even then why are there so many dangerous dark wizards so close to a school full of kids???. I know that’s a nitpick of if this game wants to be an RPG and wants me to roleplay as my own character. I really shouldn’t be questioning the world around me to the point where I’m being taken out of it.
On the topic of the game wanting to be like an RPG let’s talk about its “RPG systems”. This game isn’t an RPG. It has aspirations with its clothing system giving you better buffet and it’s exp and leveling system; but just like almost every other AAA game it’s so fucking shallow and annoying to use it make you wonder more of why they even bothered. Like surely no one actually likes these systems right? People don’t actually think this is a deeply rewarding system to get sucked into right? I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been spoiled on actual RPGs so now I know what makes a good RPG and what doesn't but personally this shit just annoys me to no end. Since I’m talking about the game’s systems I’ll also briefly talk about the game’s combat, and in all honesty it’s just meh. From all the videos I’ve seen of the combat it looked very slow and not very engaging, and after giving it a thorough breakdown it’s not NOT engaging. All your attacks have good impact to them and combowing attacks together can feel pretty satisfying in the midst of combat; but after you really get a good grip of the combat it just gets really samey and stops evolving , becoming subpar for the rest of the game. In comparison to an older game with a similar combo filled combat system, Arkham Knight’s freeflow combat is really engaging from beginning to end because the game changes up its combat flow to keep the player on their toes. Here it just sorta gives up halfway through.
Finally I wanna talk about the game’s story and characters. Looking at the game from purely a story standpoint outside of the weirdly insured anti-semitism littered throughout the entire game. The game’s story is beyond boring and forgettable. None of the characters really sound like real people, I refuse to believe they had an actual voice director on this project because every piece of dialog sounds like it was done in one take. On top of the general story beats being shit and unengaging none of the characters you meet along your journey really feel like characters, rather they feel like pretty generic archetypes that don’t do much outside of just “being your friends” or “being your teacher/mentor”. The villains of the game are also just as one note and uninteresting, speaking of that I feel like I should bring up that anti-semitism undertones. I’m not gonna say much on the topic mostly since I don’t feel comfortable confronting it; I’m not Jewish nor do I know a lot about Jewish culture outside of a handful of holiday and the general background so I don’t really feel like I’m a well educated enough in the topic to properly dissect it in a genuine way, all I’m gonna say on the topic is regardless if you try to ignore it or just brush it off as “oh the devs probably didn’t know” no they probably did; because the general Goblin look the series has is a very well know Jewish stereotype that has been around for decades, and the Goblins in the Harry Potter books have been seen as Jewish stereotype for about as long as the movies and books have been around, and if the devs claim they at least a handful of them know about the backlash about them. It’s either that or they're a bunch of pinheads who refuse to do research on topics and just go with whatever chuds say on twitter. Another problem with the anti-semitism undertones is just how one note the evil Goblin really is. Outside of his motive to freeing Goblins from wizard oppression he will actively kill his own people just because they don’t wanna fight in his revolution or even use literally every single kind of evil underhanded means to get what he wants, which is equality??? The game makes the whole Goblin Revolution storyline feel so one note that it feels more like an in-universe piece of wizard propaganda rather than a real struggle of morals and slavery.
In conclusion it’s pretty much everything I honestly thought it was gonna be. While I do feel like most of my time was wasted I’m also glad I’ve finally gotten this game out of my system and can move on to other games that I actually like playing outside of the occasional crap game I like to rag on.
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NOWITSREYNTIME17
1 year ago