Hogwarts Legacy Review

It’s hard to find someone who isn’t familiar with the Harry Potter universe. It was a piece of media that many people could relate to because both the book and movie series remained popular for years. The delay in releasing a game that aims to fulfill the fantasy of becoming a wizard or witch in that world, complete with classes, spell learning, mischief-making, and exploration of Hogwarts Castle, is perplexing. In certain ways, Hogwarts Legacy fulfills that promise. The most thorough recreation of this universe yet, it lets you discover Hogwarts and its surroundings in all their fullness. Nevertheless, it’s also too firmly rooted in the present (and occasionally, the past) of open-world game design, confining a large portion of what you accomplish to monotonous checklist tasks in a landscape that is frustratingly desolate.

Hogwarts Legacy takes place in the late 1800s, despite the fact that you might not be able to tell by the dialogue the characters use or the costumes they wear, which seem to have been taken right out of movies from the late 1900s. This time, you take on the role of a wayward witch or wizard of your own invention and battle a goblin revolt that is being headed by the particularly evil Ranrok. The narrative is supported by this, which is predictable and shockingly infrequent, with big beats and progression only occurring every few hours as you accomplish the necessary, frequently unrelated quests around them. Many of the important characters have such brief scenes that it can be difficult to understand their motivations. This is especially true of Ranrok, who barely seems to speak a few words to some of his subordinates before disappearing for a few hours. He loses all emotional intensity, and the plot becomes little more than “brilliant good pupil takes out bad powerful goblin” by the conclusion.

You’ll have to balance trying to put an end to a possibly catastrophic revolt with the responsibilities that come with being a newly enrolled fifth-year at Hogwarts. You get to experience the delights of learning some well-known spells from earlier years while also having access to a broad variety of more complex ones as the year goes on because you are both a novice and an experienced learner. Each class starts off with an engaging introduction, whether it’s participating in duels in Defense Against the Dark Arts or having to deal with a screaming Mandrake in Herbology. These are some of the times when Hogwarts Legacy shines brightest, bringing back the sense of wonder that has drawn so many people to this world. But each class’s mechanical parts are grossly inadequate. While many of the activities introduced shortly after are brief, uninteresting, and frequently used as a means to fill your map with numerous instances of the same thing, the small minigame used to convey wand movements for each spell feels ripped out of the series’ very first video game entry nearly two decades ago. They swiftly put an end to any hopes you might have had that the academic portion of your time at Hogwarts would be as interesting as many of these classes might appear on the surface.

Your interest in each professor and their field is reduced to even less engaging pursuits once you are introduced to each class. Before they’ll give you another spell, you have to complete two tasks, sometimes even ones that don’t make sense for the class they’re assigned to. Some tasks, like those requiring you to cast specific spells on foes or gather specific potions, you’ll wind up finishing spontaneously as you explore or take part in other quests. Others, though, will frequently compel you to stray from the enjoyment, such as goals that require you to either buy or cultivate a specific plant in the Room of Requirement (which might take up to 15 minutes in actual time, not unlike to the artificial clocks you’d find in a free mobile game). Given that the majority of primary quests typically needed the use of a certain spell before they could be started, it was perplexing to see progression being consistently hindered by these activities.

The battle in Hogwarts Legacy first leaves a great impression and is where this expanding library of spells shines. The combat flow mimics a familiar setup of timing blocks and parries while you punch away at the attack button in between. Basic attack and defense spells can be fired off with ease. Advanced spells are cast using one of the four face buttons and are located on a weapon wheel with four slots. They are divided into three classes: red, yellow, and purple, each of which explains what they are mostly used for in combat. Red spells like the fire spell incendio and the disarming spell expelliarmus are all about damage, but purple spells like accio and descendo are manipulation strikes that may manipulate and move opponents. Combat, when well combined, has a rhythmic flow that shows most when you’re performing combinations. It feels tremendously powerful to launch an opponent into the air, unleash several basic attacks, and then suspend them there even longer. Yet, it’s also a good technique to dispatch opponents that are content to accept damage from your basic attack.

Although this method of performing magic differs from how it is depicted in the other works of the Potterverse, it rarely seems out of place. There can be some narrative dissonance if you think about it too much—for example, why are Hogwarts professors so okay with students engaging in dangerous goblin and witch battles just outside the school—but it’s simple enough to suspend disbelief for the pleasure of being able to use magic so freely. But, there are instances when it’s a little too abrupt, especially when it comes to the countless Unforgivable Curses that you’ll have the opportunity to obtain. Although the idea of allowing you decide whether to use them at all has been considered, casting some of the worst spells this universe has to offer on a regular basis is not very harsh. Characters may express resentment when you use them, but it never materially affects the action, leaving them to exist as just another tool in your arsenal for future use.

With a maximum of four loadouts available once you’ve unlocked all of the spells, you’re compelled to assign them to different loadouts as you continue to acquire new spells. It is exceedingly difficult to switch between any of these loadouts and, as a result, change which face buttons are allocated to which spells. Outside of combat, you’ll frequently need to open a menu and alter the location of spells because you’ll fast acquire more spells than you can keep at once. The compelling rhythm of battles is also stifled while switching between them, and you risk fighting more your recollection of which spells are in which loadout than the enemies in front of you. Due to the ease of sticking to four fundamental spells that you never have to change to, as well as the fact that foes don’t really change significantly over the course of hours, this ultimately contributes to the monotonous nature of combat.

Dark wizards, witches, goblins, and savage wild dogs and giant web-slinging spiders await you. Despite the variation, it’s easy to tackle each type with the same tactics, save humans and goblins, who have color-coded shields that you’ll need to demolish with spells. Bigger adversaries can’t be juggled like smaller ones, but their limited assault moveset reduces their threat. This is worse with monsters, especially those repeated at the end of multiple critical story missions, who only have two attack patterns to learn while you steadily chip away at their health bar. These fights are repeated, which saps their excitement.

Most quests include combat, which makes them repetitious, although some let you employ spells in unexpected ways. Hogwarts Legacy trusts your intelligence to solve spatial riddles with your manipulative magic. The finest quests coupled this with combat to break up a multi-staged puzzle level. An assault on Falbarton Castle featured a variety of towering walls to scale with levitation and time-freezing spells, as well as smart combat encounters in abnormally confined quarters where a little miscalculation may mean a lengthy fall to death. It ends with a climax sequence as you fly a Hippogriff for the first time while the Hogwarts Express travels across a valley, spewing smoke. It’s a classic Harry Potter moment that feels torn from the main canon, highlighting Hogwarts Legacy’s commitment to detail.

Hogwarts Castle, the most interesting part of Hogwart Legacy’s open-world, shows this attention to detail. There’s no better way to figure out how all its rooms link, how moving staircases connect crucial halls, or where every landmark is. It sometimes feels like you’re exploring an enthralling museum, stopping at magnificent areas like The Great Hall or The Library, witnessing students go about their day, and seeing small acts of whimsical enchantment in the corner of your eye. It’s beautiful and full of riddles and activities to promote exploration. It wasn’t big enough to hold Hogwart Legacy’s story, but its polish contrasted with the outer world.

Hogwarts Legacy’s massive map’s only rival to Hogwarts Castle is Hogsmeade’s vendor-filled streets. Ignoring the same two voice cues that played every time I visited, the village is as nice as your character suggests and provides crucial mercantile services for all your potions, equipment, and more. These enormous landmarks’ surroundings are disappointingly desolate. The Forbidden Forest is spooky at any time, but the surrounding hills’ matching forests detract from its aesthetic impact. The map’s smaller villages, which have a few merchants and side quests, are even more cookie-cutter. Flying across the countryside on a mount or broom shows this well. While Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are easy to spot from afar, everything else blurs into an indistinguishable swirl of woods and empty fields, which rarely enticed me to investigate it over fast-traveling between objectives.

There are things to do in this visually dismal open world, but they’re usually as dull as their backdrop. If you’ve played recent open-world games, Hogwarts Legacy’s world is full of minor tasks. There are enemy camps to clear, flora and fauna to harvest or hunt, field guide pages to find, locked chests to search, and more. It’s supposed to save travel time between story objectives and reward players with money and gear, but it’s easy to overlook due to the frequency of such benefits in more interesting main quests.

Hogwarts Legacy encourages you to do these mediocre side activities to proceed, which is problematic. Many story quests are blocked by level and spell restrictions. Many of the world’s activities and dull side tasks just give experience. Depending on how much you explore Hogwarts Legacy’s world organically, you may find yourself (like I did regularly) compelled to take a break from the main path and go through open-world quests just enough to continue before facing the same problem again.

Better gear should break up the monotony, but because defeated adversaries give it away so freely, you’ll find yourself bumping up against your limited inventory. You begin with 20 spaces that are distributed among all five of your gear categories. If you don’t regularly visit a merchant to dispose of stuff or wastefully destroy them, you can fill these slots in just one or two missions. What’s worse is that the only way to solve this problem is to complete countless Merlin Trials all over the map, each of which consists of a limited number of brief, easy problems that are repeatedly encountered. This quest is a grind if all you want to do is lessen how often you have to manage your inventory. Each milestone awards you with four extra slots, and the prerequisites for the following one rise as you progress.

Many of Hogwarts Legacy’s mechanics have a sense of bloat that penetrates them, influencing design choices that transform it into a recognizable loot-based action game. There are a ton of systems that are there only to entice you into caring about leveling up your equipment to the maximum or upgrading gear to improve its stats, both of which are absolutely pointless given how easy it is for the enemy to keep up with you in fight. Similar to Diablo or Destiny, The Room of Requirement is a small hub where you can reveal unidentified gear, make potions and grow violent flora, both of which have long waiting periods before you can claim them, and have access to a sizable area where all of your collected beasts can be farmed for materials necessary for enhancing your gear. I saw little incentive to return to this area for the various uses it was intended for, with the exception of the occasional visit to finish a quest or make a single potion. Even unidentified equipment largely lost its significance because better gear—often in the same rarity class—would appear before I felt compelled to travel. These are only a few of the many systems that Hogwarts Legacy forces you to interact with, frequently under duress through questlines. Several of these systems fail to mesh with the overall design of the game, becoming unnecessary and a waste of time.

Hogwarts Legacy frequently disrespects time with its repetitious objectives, dreary open environment, and repetitive combat, from its lethargic start to its fixation on adding new systems to juggle only for show. Hogwarts Castle remains a fun puzzle box to explore from the moment you enter its doors until the last day of class, so it’s a shame that these pieces couldn’t come together in the same way that its presentation and respect for its universe does. There are similarly enjoyable moments during some of the larger quests, particularly those that skillfully combine fighting and puzzle-solving to test your command of your spells. It will probably take some of the most devoted Harry Potter fans to justify watching the entire voyage through because these moments are so sparsely spaced out among much less engaging filler footage.

Source: gamespot