This game is unimaginably horrible and it's baffling it's the hill so many are willing to die on. There is no enemy variety, which is for sure a good idea for a modern open world game. There is no spell variety either (26), which again certainly was a great idea for a modern rpg based solely around it's magic set at a magic school, but hey Harry Potter has always had a terrible magic system so ¯\(ツ)/¯. For reference Final Fantasy (1987 NES) has triple as many spells (60), and Skyrim a more modern open world game for comparison has over 100 AND both those games have multiple combat classes besides magic. The game will let you use the "unforgivable curses" but it has no morality system to give any meaningful consequences to your actions because according to the devs it would be "too judgmental on the game maker's part". The world is empty, which is always a problem with open world games (not remotely a fan of the genre tbh) and every door is a loading screen. The game is also a buggy mess and anyone saying otherwise is just lying, the game literally has Denuvo lmao. But none of this is surprising, ignoring the original author for a moment, every trailer made it look lackluster and it's made by the developers infamous for Disney tie-in shovelware.

And now for the elephant in the room... The game doubles down on all the racism and antisemitism of its source material, anyone saying Terfling had nothing to do with this game is bending the truth. The official Q&A for the game on their site says they worked closely with her team so it perfectly fits her world, and that it does a little too perfectly. The main premise is squashing a goblin rebellion riddled with antisemitism. The goblin rebellions are not new to the franchise, they are a thing mentioned in the books and expanded material as something the students learn in history class. And what were all the rebellions about? The lack or basic rights like using wands, and checks notes wizards attempting to enslave them "as house elves" but we’re supposed to believe they’re still the villains throughout the franchise?
Which brings us to the next topic, the house elves... As in the source material Hogwarts is run by slave labor and the franchise doesn't want us to look deeper into what that means, waving it off with "well they like it". But if wizards can attempt to enslave goblins as “house elves” what does that actually mean, what exactly is a “house elf” and why doesn’t the series creator want us to examine it? The head house elf at Hogwarts becomes a companion, so you don't actually get to own a slave but you still get one by proxy. The game also lets you decorate the Room of Requirement with mounted house elf heads, with how controversial this aspect of the books has always been idk who on the dev team didn’t think “maybe we shouldn’t keep the mounted head of a sapient creature decoration item”. Again none of this is surprising given the source material where they decorate houses with elf heads and the kids put little hats on during christmas, oh isn’t it so cute and whimsical? And the fact that one of the lead devs was a gamer gate youtuber (them stepping down was never going to divorce the game from these elements). The game is also a prequel set in the 1800s so it can't actually effectively deconstruct the issues with the source material, the goblins are still the anti-semetic bankers, the house elves are still slaves, and the ("good") wizards are still the good guys that have every right to oppress them. Just like Terflings own politics and the politics of the source material the game's message is about preserving the status quo, nothing meaningful can change and it shouldn’t cause we have a continuity to uphold damnit!
The game also throws in the series "first trans character" who they named "Sirona Ryan", this is a name of a Celtic goddess (as many people will point out in an attempt to ignore criticism, despite the origin not being the issue with the name) but just like "Cho Chang", "Anthony Goldstein" and "Kingsley Shacklebolt" it's certainly a choice out of all the Irish names to deliberately use that one for your first trans women. Sirona was also very obviously thrown in last minute in an attempt to save face and say the game was divorced from Terflings and her raging transphobia, but as you can see the game is quite the opposite.
But you know despite all that 9/10 IGN-ostalgia am I right!

In conclusion this game is truly the “Legacy” of this franchise and I can see why fans say “this is everything I ever wanted in a Harry Potter game” because this is all the franchise really truly is. I certainly hope everyone who bought the deluxe edition for the sole reason to spite a minority the author is actively harming daily love their overpriced shovelware and fuck off. Remember yall were the same people in the 90s who hated and wanted to boycott the books for being “satanic” and "progressive". (spoiler alert they never were)

And for anyone who can’t let go of the franchise because of “childhood” and cause “it’s so magical”, let me recommend “Earthsea” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, and “Percy Jackson” by Rick Riordian. None of those series are perfect and have their fair share of problems, but they were written by authors who actually cared, who actually took criticism and grew from it. You can let go and grow too.

When I first heard of Grounded it kinda sounded like a dream come true. I always loved stories about going small and exploring the world from the point of view of an insect and I just adore bugs in general. So a survival game based on the Honey I Shrunk The Kids scenario sounded absolutely fantastic to me.
But I was hesitant to play it myself because I generally suck at crafting and resource management based survival games. That sort of stuff can get really tedious and frustrating to me. So I went into it with some skepticism.
Thankfully it turned out to be a great experience.

Grounded is still in an early access stage, or as they call it, a game preview. But there is already a huge map to explore with a lot of interesting, creative locations based on real-life sections of a typical garden. They all feel different and unique to each other too: From the wet pond area to the colorful rose bushes, the dark nooks under the porch to the dangerous treetops... All scattered throughout are several spots to explore and work towards like an abandoned ant hill, an area shrouded in toxic gas, or plot-relevant tiny research stations to break up the pace with some sci-fi elements.
I spent hours walking through the foliage and exploring the surroundings. And looking at the map you can see how much free space there is left to be filled in the future development time. This game must have an incredible amount of content once it's finished.

This game is also really effective at making me feel vulnerable as the tiny squishy thing in a world full of large exoskeleton tanks. And meeting the giant orb weavers and wolf spiders has never stopped being scary if you're unprepared. If you got arachnophobia, you definitely wanna check out the settings to tweak that stuff because those are fucking terrifying in this game.
I eventually found every creature the current build has to offer but I'm pretty pleased with the number and assortment of those bugs right now. It definitely had some surprises and I still love looking at them.
Generally, this game looks absolutely gorgeous. The way the sunlight shines through the blades of grass never stopped to amaze me, honestly. Everything is so vibrant and lively. And underground sections are genuinely atmospheric and moody.

As far as the plot goes, you can't "finish" the story yet. There are only a few major plot locations in here yet, one of which is a full-blown dungeon-like adventure in itself. But thankfully there is enough scattered around the map already to keep you busy. Also, apparently, there is a huge update coming some time this month that will add a whole bunch of new creatures and an entirely new area. So that's exciting.

As for my personal problems with resource management and crafting games, I eventually got into the flow of things here and while it can still get a bit tedious to have to farm for things at points, it is pretty satisfying to find new material and analyzing them to figure out what you can do with them. I also loved that you can essentially explore the entire map right from the get-go and literally build your base anywhere.
Really my only gripe with this game, and it's not even really a gripe because it rarely actually affected my experience negatively, is that the creatures do get stuck on the environment a bunch. There were a lot of moments where a bunch of ants were stuck on a rock and couldn't get down, or a spider stuck on a tree stump. Sometimes creatures even ended up inside of objects which is just confusing, and the lawn mites just seem to be stuck in place a lot. As I said, it only rarely actually had a bad effect on my gameplay. Most of the bugs walked around just fine and the ones that got stuck weren't important anyway. But it's definitely something that should be fixed before the full release. Whenever that's gonna be.
I really wonder when this game is supposed to be finished anyway. It already has so much content but as I said before, there is a ton of free space marked as "under construction" that has yet to be filled that would essentially at least double the current map and I wonder how long that will actually take.
I know I will buy this game when it's complete, even if that will take years. But I'm pretty much done (and pleased) with the current build for now and ready to wait for the rest. I only got to play it because I was subscribed to Xbox Game Pass anyway and I already planned on canceling that subscription soon. Once it's done and complete, the retail price is definitely gonna be worth it. I'm sure of that.

I spent a lot of hours in this game already and it's not even finished yet. I think that's already a pretty damn good sign for a great game. If it was a complete release already, this would have been a game of the year contender for me.
Also, I only played this alone, which worked great, but I can definitely see how great it would be playing together with friends as well.