With the recent release of the highly controversial Hogwarts Legacy, I was reminded that I've had this unfortunate disaster sitting unfinished on one of my old cellphones for a few years now. Don't worry, this was from before all those nasty details about J.K. Rowling came out. Now, I pretty much knew where I stood on this at the time but had always intended to go back to it as some point and get a little farther along in the story before finally putting my thoughts on it out there. That was back in 2018. After leaving it untouched for so long, I decided over the past few days to pick the title up again and settle my unfinished business with it. Even starting a whole new playthrough to refresh my memory on the stuff I had forgotten. Upon revisiting the game for a bit, I think I'm at last ready to officially abandon it.
At first glance, Hogwarts Mystery looks like a dream come true. You get to make your own wizard/witch, attend classes to learn spells, form rivalries or friendships with other students, and make choices that influence aspects of the story. It's essentially the first attempt at delivering the RPG every Harry Potter fan had fantasized about. Legacy before Legacy was a thing. You can even date some of your classmates! Wait... OH NOOOOO-
So why the hate then? Well, the absolute tragedy of its existence is that there's a truly good, worthwhile game here trapped behind the most aggressive monetization scheme I've seen since EA's 2014 revival of the Dungeon Keeper property (although mercifully nowhere near that heinous). Like the vast majority of mobile offerings, that incredibly enticing price tag listing of "free" is nothing but a disappointing trap. It's not uncommon to see timers and energy systems in F2P experiences, but few have had their fun sucked out by them to the degree that this one has, and that's saying something.
You'll regularly run out of energy mid-task, be unable to complete side-quests because you're stuck waiting until you're allowed to engage in the various extracurricular activities you need to grind for the required currency or stat upgrade again, and find you can't progress the main plot anymore regardless of how full your custom character's stamina bar is thanks to a 3-hour countdown locking you out of the next chapter. It leads to this unsatisfying loop of playing for a few brief minutes and then being forced to step away for upwards of 60+. Unless you're willing to pay that is...
Naturally, the devs have given you the option to bypass as much of this downtime as you want in exchange for some of your hard-earned, real-world cash. Gee, wasn't that nice of them 🙄. Now, while always annoying, this sort of thing wouldn't necessarily be the biggest deal for a lot of other mobile titles, as by their very nature these types of experiences are designed to be played in short spurts on the go. The difference here is that the adventure is compelling enough that you genuinely won't/don't want to put it down, which on top of the frustration of having to stop before you've had your fill comes with the added detriment of making those microtransactions dangerously more enticing than they otherwise would have been. So much so in fact, that they were able to sucker $110 million out of people in less than a year and are evidently still proving profitable enough for the team at Jam City to stay on top of the updates necessary to keep this game up on the App and Google Play stores when many of its peers released around that same timeframe have long since been delisted from both.
To be completely honest, yes, you can make it through this entire thing without spending a single cent on it if you so choose. It will simply be an agonizingly long process and a largely unenjoyable test of your patience. As a result, I can't recommend doing so in the slightest. I wouldn't encourage putting any cash into it either though, and not solely due to the sins of its universe's creator. The model they've gone with here isn't just offensive because it's exploitative and manipulative, but also wholly unnecessary as well. Like, I might have actually been interested in tossing out a few bucks here or there for a cool cosmetic, unique pet, etc. had they just charged me a flat entry fee and left out all the money-grubbing bullcrap. Instead, I'm uninstalling it from my phone having not made them a penny richer and disgusted to have witnessed what could have been a legitimately good game be near-totally ruined by greed.
4/10
At first glance, Hogwarts Mystery looks like a dream come true. You get to make your own wizard/witch, attend classes to learn spells, form rivalries or friendships with other students, and make choices that influence aspects of the story. It's essentially the first attempt at delivering the RPG every Harry Potter fan had fantasized about. Legacy before Legacy was a thing. You can even date some of your classmates! Wait... OH NOOOOO-
So why the hate then? Well, the absolute tragedy of its existence is that there's a truly good, worthwhile game here trapped behind the most aggressive monetization scheme I've seen since EA's 2014 revival of the Dungeon Keeper property (although mercifully nowhere near that heinous). Like the vast majority of mobile offerings, that incredibly enticing price tag listing of "free" is nothing but a disappointing trap. It's not uncommon to see timers and energy systems in F2P experiences, but few have had their fun sucked out by them to the degree that this one has, and that's saying something.
You'll regularly run out of energy mid-task, be unable to complete side-quests because you're stuck waiting until you're allowed to engage in the various extracurricular activities you need to grind for the required currency or stat upgrade again, and find you can't progress the main plot anymore regardless of how full your custom character's stamina bar is thanks to a 3-hour countdown locking you out of the next chapter. It leads to this unsatisfying loop of playing for a few brief minutes and then being forced to step away for upwards of 60+. Unless you're willing to pay that is...
Naturally, the devs have given you the option to bypass as much of this downtime as you want in exchange for some of your hard-earned, real-world cash. Gee, wasn't that nice of them 🙄. Now, while always annoying, this sort of thing wouldn't necessarily be the biggest deal for a lot of other mobile titles, as by their very nature these types of experiences are designed to be played in short spurts on the go. The difference here is that the adventure is compelling enough that you genuinely won't/don't want to put it down, which on top of the frustration of having to stop before you've had your fill comes with the added detriment of making those microtransactions dangerously more enticing than they otherwise would have been. So much so in fact, that they were able to sucker $110 million out of people in less than a year and are evidently still proving profitable enough for the team at Jam City to stay on top of the updates necessary to keep this game up on the App and Google Play stores when many of its peers released around that same timeframe have long since been delisted from both.
To be completely honest, yes, you can make it through this entire thing without spending a single cent on it if you so choose. It will simply be an agonizingly long process and a largely unenjoyable test of your patience. As a result, I can't recommend doing so in the slightest. I wouldn't encourage putting any cash into it either though, and not solely due to the sins of its universe's creator. The model they've gone with here isn't just offensive because it's exploitative and manipulative, but also wholly unnecessary as well. Like, I might have actually been interested in tossing out a few bucks here or there for a cool cosmetic, unique pet, etc. had they just charged me a flat entry fee and left out all the money-grubbing bullcrap. Instead, I'm uninstalling it from my phone having not made them a penny richer and disgusted to have witnessed what could have been a legitimately good game be near-totally ruined by greed.
4/10