Hogwarts Legacy is an up and down experience, with each success being marred by a necessary caveat. Hogwarts Castle is one of the best realized video game environments I've ever seen--and yet spend a few hours there and the emptiness of the castle becomes overbearingly apparent. The joy of sitting in for the Sorting Ceremony and choosing your wand is exciting for any long-time fan of the series--but I couldn't help but be let down by the impersonal nature of it all. I'm ready to be charmed by my Hogwarts friends, but they function more as tutorial bots for the majority of the game than real characters.

The most remarkable part of the game is that it does manage to be a solid experience, despite everything. I can credit the developers and publisher for not twisting the game into a GAAS cash grab, and I hope that Portkey Games is able to take the solid foundation and pare away the bits that simply drag it down.