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This open-world RPG captures and transcends the magic of Harry Potter - Hogwarts Legacy Review

21K View2023-02-17

Hogwarts Legacy lives up to its legacy. This beautiful game brings the world of the Harry Potter franchise to life and fills it with mysteries to uncover and quests to complete.

Hogwarts Legacy’s storyline takes place a hundred years before the events of the Harry Potter books and films. This shift in time frame means that a lot of the established characters and events don’t necessarily matter much here. That means someone who’s never read a single page or checked out any of the movies can still situate themselves just fine within this game.

For fans like myself, though, there was still a bucketload of lore in Hogwarts Legacy, with recognizable creatures like Thestrals and locations like the Room of Requirement popping up. As a devoted Potterhead, I was giddy to pick up on small nods and references to elements of the wider Wizarding World universe—and to explore parts of that universe I was totally unfamiliar with as well.

Hogwarts Legacy’s narrative shines its light on something the expanded series hasn’t properly fleshed out yet: the relationship between wizardkind and goblins. In particular, the game digs into the deep, dark history of goblins while also shining light on a mysterious power that could change the world. I won’t go into too much detail to avoid spoilers, but I was surprised at how sinister the story got. This certainly isn’t a game that’s appropriate for young children.

Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t shy away from being gory, gruesome, and unforgiving all the way to the end. It’s full of death, dismemberment, and even people imploding into thin air.

While some might balk at a game based on a series of children’s books delving into such gritty territory, the way that Hogwarts Legacy refused to shy away from the shadier parts of this world added a lot of depth and immersion to the game’s narrative. The game didn’t try to hold my hand and pretend like everything was alright. Quite the opposite! Hogwarts Legacy admits that this is a dark world filled with horrifying secrets and terrible people.

Despite that dark streak and the game’s overall focus on player choice, I was disappointed to discover that there’s no real repercussion for making bad decisions in Hogwarts Legacy. You can’t become a version of Voldemort, even if you really wanted to—trust me, I tried. I copied Voldemort’s wand, joined Slytherin, tried befriending students who practiced dark magic like Sebastian Sallow and Ominis Gaunt, and even chose every remotely evil dialogue choice. All of this to no avail; nothing happened, even after I used every unforgivable curse in the game a hundred times over.

Speaking of curses, Hogwarts Legacy covers almost every known spell in the series. Those spells are mostly used during combat, but they can also prove handy when exploring areas, allowing the student wizard to illuminate dark places or even levitate objects to reach certain heights. I found each one pretty helpful and fun to use throughout every quest I embarked on.

Combat was certainly where spells shined the most, though. Every spell can combo dynamically with other spells. Evading and blocking incoming attacks happens responsively, leading to combat the moves together fluidly. I found it immensely satisfying to parry attacks and respond with a flurry of spells and curses, even if my slow reflexes put me at a disadvantage at times.

I didn’t really face many enemies until fifteen hours into the game, but once combat became a more regular occurrence, it was really hard to keep up. I was able to handle groups of four to six enemies without much trouble, but I had a tremendously hard time taking on bigger packs.

That said, it got easier over time, as I adjusted to the amount of time required to cast each spell, the best moment to block an incoming attack, and so on. After I started learning these spells and fighting instinctively, I danced through the battlefield, bombarding enemies with attacks and dodging curses like nothing.

The battlefield is pretty massive in Hogwarts Legacy too. The map is absolutely humongous, with a large variety of gorgeous locales to visit. The visuals are second to none. I had the time of my life exploring this game’s huge world; I easily spent five hours at a stretch just checking out each cave, mountaintop, and settlement I came across. The environments even change to account for the change in season as the storyline progresses!

Aimlessly exploring can be fun enough on its own, but Hogwarts Legacy provides plenty of other activities that kept me busy. Challenges, side quests, secret rooms, missions, monster-slaying, resource-gathering, and beast-taming—the sky’s the limit, and I genuinely feel like I could spend months playing this game exclusively and still not see everything it has to offer.

Sadly I don’t have months to devote to a single game, but even the forty-some hours I’ve spent with Hogwarts Legacy over the past week has made me very content. The game might have a few problems, but those shouldn’t dissuade anyone who’s the slightest bit curious about this magical world. Hogwarts Legacy is a charming game that brings something new and different to the Wizarding World that fans have grown to love. By offering its own unique spin on this beloved franchise, it manages to go beyond being a great Harry Potter game and into the realm of simply a great game in and of itself.

SCORE: 5 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Harry Potter. If you love the Harry Potter books or Fantastic Beasts films, you’ll likely love playing Hogwarts Legacy. It’s filled with lore and really does a great job of representing Hogwarts and the Wizarding World in video game form.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If you like a storyline filled with mysteries, twists, and action like that in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you’ll likely enjoy Hogwarts Legacy for the same thing.

💬 If you were a student in Hogwarts, which house would you be under? Will you also be playing Hogwarts Legacy or are you going to skip it? Let us know down below.

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