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THE Harry Potter game we’ve always dreamed of | Full Review - Hogwarts Legacy

4K View2023-02-10

Hogwarts Legacy is a single player open-world action RPG set in the Harry Potter world. It features a compelling original linear story that takes us to Hogwarts, as well as its surrounding vicinities; the Scottish Highlands and familiar places like Hogsmeade, The Forbidden Forest, and many more.

It will be released first on PC and current gen systems today, with previous gen systems and Nintendo Switch to the following months.

🟩Pros

+Captures that Harry Potter atmosphere perfectly

+The world is immersive, big and expansive

+Beautiful Graphics

+Engaging combat, flashy and kinetic

+An gripping story that is every bit as Harry Potter as you would expect

🟥Cons

-While immersive from a visual and narrative standpoint, the world feels static and unmoved by your actions as an RPG main character.

-Outside cutscenes and scripted events, the characters may seem robotic and flat

The letter is finally here!

First off, we are in a bit of a different situation here than Harry and most wizards. Our custom character is a late bloomer who recently got accepted as a 5th year student for Hogwarts, and is under an accelerated learning program.

I find it disappointing that we aren’t entering Hogwarts as a child in our first year, but from a gameplay standpoint this is a good decision to make, as we are not required to start from scratch and go through the basics of learning all spells from basically nothing. After all, this game is built mostly for existing Harry Potter fans who already knows a lot about the lore.

It also allows for a more mature character that can make more mature decisions, one that also matches with the story set in the game. The time period takes place long before the events of the actual books / movies in a sort of a prequel setup, like the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic games.

The magic is still there

Nevertheless, our character still experiences Hogwarts for the first time, and that magical experience is still retained despite being somewhat remixed. Even though our character is a late bloomer, he is a gifted one with great potential and holds an ancient secret it seems.

He is sometimes referenced throughout the game as THE NEW fifth year, because joining Hogwarts at such a late age is a very rare if not a never before seen occurrence, giving him a sort of a mild celebrity status. Mirroring Harry Potter when he first came into Hogwarts.

No Harry, no problem

Your character is highly customizable, the voice, the face, the hair, even scars and of course, it would be a big disrespect to Harry Potter, if glasses are not available for you to wear. You can select from two sets of voices with a customizable pitch, with four difficulty settings that mostly affect enemy damage and health. Worry not, as you can still adjust the difficulty on the fly if you happen to experience difficulty spikes on your playthrough.

Gender wise, there isn’t really an explicit choice between male and female. You can only select a male or female body type, voice, and a dormitory. Characters will also refer to you in third-person pronouns, it’s a pretty gender neutral approach to character creation.

Beautiful Graphics

Immediately you will notice that the graphics look phenomenal. It looks next-gen, even other characters like Professor Fig have immensely detailed faces, it does not go for photorealistic looking humans but rather stylized looking whimsical characters that have a slight cartoonish charm to it.

The environments on the other hand are immersive looking and highly intricate, Hogwarts is faithfully recreated with all its nooks and crannies; vines emanating from castle walls, secret passageways, and grand staircases (albeit with a different take) . Even made better looking than the movie with all the added little details. The surrounding environments are enormous and wide-ranging, from a Victorian era village to a brooding dark cave, they all look damn good.

They really did a faithful adaptation of the Harry Potter world. It's like they made an interactive Hogwarts Museum first and built a game and story on top of that.

An action-packed intro

After the brief introduction, Hogwarts Legacy starts off on a high note, with a surprising action-packed set piece that is even better than Harry Potter’s intro I would say. There is brief linear dungeon crawling to serve as a bit of a tutorial and plot exposition — including another action-packed set piece — but after that, you’re into Hogwarts!

During the Sorting Ceremony, you can either let the game choose for you by asking you questions, or override that part and get to choose one of the four houses. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. While this house choice doesn’t really affect the overall narrative of the game, It’s a nice flavor to have and gives you some variety when it comes to different common rooms, attire colors, NPCs, and companions.

A diverse range of characters

In Hogwarts Legacy, there is a diverse roster of NPCs, even more diverse than what we’ve seen in the Harry Potter stories. Each with their own interesting personalities that feels in-line with the Wizarding World. There are new names to know, but also familiar names too: like Black and Weasley. You can get to know these characters and even build relationships with them, but as far as romance goes, it’s non-existent for this game.

Most of the interactions you get from these characters are via quests and story elements, outside these cutscenes and scripted events, the characters will do a 180 and will become robotic and flat, which can break the immersive a little bit.

Gameplay Analysis

Even just exploring Hogwarts castle itself feels magical already during the first few hours of the game and feels really immersive with all the quests, activities, and places that you can do and explore. Aside from the mainline story quests, there are also side quests, including some in-universe magic games like Summoner's Court, and Crossed Wands Dueling. Unfortunately, you cannot play Quidditch because of an in-universe explanation that I won't spoil.

The questing setup is simple: go to a place, solve this using a specific spell, maybe defeat some baddies on the way. It’s a tone that is steady throughout the game, but I never found it repetitive due to that constant barrage of new areas to explore, spells to use, and characters to meet.

In between the narrative-heavy segments, you can live as a normal student, by skipping or attending classes – preferably attending them to learn new spells. Classes are basically a part of the questing system, but brim filled with cutscenes and are understandably just glorified tutorial segments to learn new spells, Classes and Tutorials are synonymous words, after all.

A very entertaining amusement ride.

There are the occasional dialogue choices, but it doesn’t really amount to much when it comes to affecting the world, seeing a different reaction from NPCs, or showing some sort of consistent good or evil side from your character.

Speaking of good and evil, you cannot go full evil at this game. The best you can do is be rude and use Avada Kedavra (The Killing Curse) on deserving enemies (Not students and faculty members).

Having said that, while immersive from a visual and narrative standpoint, the world feels static and unmoved by your actions as an RPG player. It's like you are just in a heavily scripted amusement ride with minor choices to make and pretty restricted on what to do, but don’t get me wrong, it’s a very entertaining scripted amusement ride.

For those looking for a true Harry Potter sandbox experience, this is not it yet folks. Maybe with future sequels or even just PC mods, it can be possible.

I don't remember Harry Potter combat being this cool

For the combat of Hogwarts Legacy, it’s downright amazing. It’s just your typical ranged combat in a hack and slash game: spam the attack button, dodge, counter, and use different skills, but as far as Harry Potter combat goes, they’ve completely nailed it and even made it more visually appealing, with different stylish poses every attack you make.

This is very reminiscent of the stylish mage combat animations from Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, except it’s on a real-time combat system more-akin to Dark Souls with all the dodges and parries. I feel that this dodge mechanic is so overused nowadays, but I couldn't blame them for including it — It never gets old, at least for the past decade or so.

The combat flow in general is flashy and kinetic, even more so than what we've seen in the movies. They actually made wand combat interesting considering they’re just waving around small sticks in the air, for all intents and purposes. They have no business being as cool and stylish as they are in the game.

The RPG elements are light and surface level quality only. Aside from customizing your character's looks and obtaining random negligible loot to gear up your character's stats, most of the RPG gameplay centers on the skill tree or what the game calls Talents, where you can unlock spells and abilities like Stupefy, Avada Kedavra, and Potion making bonuses. There are no respecs and not all talents are obtainable in a single playthrough, so you’d have to be very careful in choosing which to unlock. Did they do this to encourage multiple playthroughs? possibly, but the lack of a New Game Plus game mode tells us otherwise.

A Harry Potter game - through and through

They did not skimp on the details and really went all in and utilized all the existing lore to its potential. Nothing is overlooked, many elements from the books / movies are used and are even expanded upon. There are lots of collectibles, mini-games, secrets, and easter eggs that Potterheads will encounter to the point that it becomes overwhelming and maybe too on the nose.

Even though you can explore the castle and the rest of the outside premises almost immediately, Hogwarts Legacy did a pretty good job on the introduction, questing, and overall progression to be able to provide a decent avenue for the story and its open-world nature to coalesce into one cohesive singular experience that will last for 30 hours or more. Sure, it’s not a true open-world sandbox, but the game never pretended it was one.

Technical Performance

As of writing, it did not run 100% smooth on my setup with an i7-8700k, RTX 3080, and 32GB RAM with random hiccups and stutters, especially when entering new areas and interiors. Hopefully they can patch it up during release week. It also has a ‘Verified’ status with the Steam Deck and it plays nicely with it, as long as you are fine with a locked 30fps performance.

Cursor navigation again?

A minor gripe, but the infamous cursor menu navigation seen in other games is present in this game. No D-Pad controls, no snappy navigation, so you have to painstakingly drag the cursor using the analog sticks to select menu elements, as if you're using a mouse cursor. It works for PC players, but not for controller users, so just why?

Conclusion:

Hogwarts Legacy faithfully captures the atmosphere of the Wizarding World, and creates a fantastic Hogwarts experience with a gripping story in-line with the lore and gives us a world full of wonder and magic. The RPG elements might be a little too light and the world is not as sandboxy as one might expect, but overall, it is a masterpiece that lives up to the hype and THE quintessential Harry Potter game we’ve always dreamed of. It is surely an early contender for GOTY for me.

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