Welcome to our review of Hogwarts Legacy, one of the most anticipated games of the year and our first time to explore this magical world of wizards and witches in such an elaborate way!
Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter books. For the first time, experience Hogwarts in the 1800s. Your character is a student who holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. Now you can take control of the action and be at the center of your own adventure in the wizarding world. Your legacy is what you make of it.
The wizarding world awaits you. Freely roam Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, the Forbidden Forest, and the surrounding Overland area. Be the Witch or Wizard You Want to be: Learn spells, brew potions, grow plants, and tend to magical beasts along your journey. Get sorted into your house, forge relationships, and master skills to become the witch or wizard you want to be. Experience a New Wizarding World Adventure. Experience the wizarding world in an unexplored era to uncover a hidden truth from its past. Battle against trolls, Dark Wizards, goblins, and more as you face a dangerous villain threatening the fate of the wizarding world.
Hogwarts Legacy is by far one of the most anticipated games in years, not just the hype and attention it has gotten, it also kept getting delayed and now, 2 years after its original intended release date, the game is finally upon us on current gen. Yes, sadly those who have not updated their consoles to the newest models will have to be a little more patient for now. The game is coming out later this year for you and a summer release for fans on Nintendo Switch!
Now let us talk about the actual game, its internal politics, its gameplay and why you should buy it even if you are not a fan of the Harry Potter franchise. But first, the general idea of the game, you pick your character as always in these kind of RPG masterpieces and after I picked my character, my story into Hogwarts began, or you would think so. First things first, I named my character Kuro, so I will be calling him Kuro from now on, to make it easier to read.
Kuro is a young aspiring wizard that is joining Hogwarts at the exceptional fifth year, having had special lessons by his mentor Professor Fig. Yes, it is indeed very uncommon to still join the wizarding world at that age, so obviously something is making you special, well, for this story, the leading story is that you can see ancient magic and traces thereof. This is very unusual and only a few in the past have been able to. While it makes you special, it also paints a gigantic bullseye on your back, as you would expect, right?
And it all starts from the very start of the game, being attacked by a massive dragon, ending up facing your death and unlocking a portkey when falling to your demise all to end up in a place that seems to be far away, even unbeknownst to Professor Fig. You embark with him on your quest to find out why you are there and what you are doing. As per my habit, no spoilers in regards to the story, but I can say that this is a short part in the bigger scheme and before you know it, you are ending up at Hogwarts and that infamous sorting hat is being placed on your head, despite being late for the first day of school.
Once you get sorted into your favorite house, Slytherin, your stay at Hogwarts really begins and you become a full fledged student of the best magical school in the world. This is also where the real fun of the game starts as well as how incredibly big this game really is. The first thing you really must know is that you need to learn all the famous spells as well as many other things, it often feels like the first 10 hours of the game is one big tutorial, not even joking. I have spent so much time following main quests, side quests and so much more.
First, I would like to speak about the actual atmosphere and how the game changes between day and night and this is something that might pass you by at first. Certain tasks are actually time sensitive, but do not worry, it is incredibly easy to switch times, just go to the (massive) map of the game and click the proper button on your controller and like magic, you switch times. It does not end there though, there is also a changing of seasons as you will enter Halloween and winter for example. Those pumpkins everywhere, so cool!
Secondly, all the collectibles. Maybe I should say too many collectibles, because I literally need to say damn, there are many collectibles, not even exaggerating. From flying pages that become reachable as soon as you master the Accio spell to small puzzles to finding items up high or hidden in statues or the ones that only become visible after casting Revelio. I think there are hundreds of items spread across game and I will give a small help here, the puzzles with the question marks, you will find a piece of paper eventually with the proper way to solve them all.
Thirdly, so remember how I said there were tons of quests and side quests, this is where it can get tricky. My only complaint in regards to the game is that the map is not the best. Especially when checking the quests, it becomes clear how big the world is and at the same time, how much of a problem it is to move around in the world. Yes, you can teleport into the region once you visited it before (there is a system behind it) but you are always still a way away or you really clicked the wrong place due to their placement on the map. I feel this is a part that could be heavily improved upon.
They do the entire location part 2 the right way though, once you do teleport to the place nearby, the game can guide you very nicely to where you need to be. It starts a spell that shows you the way to go in such a cute fashion that you forget you might have just been in a life or death fight with one of the enemies in the game.
Talking about enemies, this is where the good old politics of the Harry Potter franchise comes in, the good old reluctance of the ministry of magic to take action, it is very much real. This and the fact some famous families are present in the game, are basically the biggest throwbacks to the Harry Potter movies, something that I personally liked. This is very much a standalone entry in the magical world of wizards and witches and it really is massive.
What I didn’t always like that much in the game was the amount of content. I know, this is a very weird thing to say, especially after reading the game is massive. There really is way too much to do. I was so often distracted just to do a side mission to get a new spell that I still have not used now 20 hours into the game, I know they will come in handy at one point, probably for those Merlin trials (yep, more side quests, but these are the good ones, they get you to carry more gear).
Another thing I kind of disliked was the way gear is handled. There is no typical RPG option to just auto equip the best items, which is a shame but nothing we can not overcome. The real kicker is how the visuals are handled, you are basically constantly changing appearances and well, I was at one point attending class with a PJ and hat on. I did change their appearance to be neutral again, but once I found better gear, it automatically reset the appearance to the new gear. I would have loved a neutral appearance all through the game, I just loved my Slytherin house gear and would have really enjoyed just flexing that.
Since we’re coming closer to the end of the review let us talk fighting. Fighting with your wand and spells or with additional items/potions, this is pretty much your every day RPG and I would say that once you look past the vast amount of options, you are left with a really fun battle system and once you really learn to abuse your enemies’ weaknesses, you are in for dealing some really heavy damage, even massively damaging those boss fights in the main quests.
All in all, Hogwarts Legacy is a really fun game, but its size may be the sole thing that distracts you from just breezing through the storyline. Do mind that I consider this a definite advantage to any game, it is just overwhelming how much there is to do. It is like they took a massive open world RPG and added about as much as they possibly could, that would be my description of Hogwarts Legacy.
In conclusion, Hogwarts Legacy is not a perfect game as it does leave some small space for improvement, but I do feel it is an amazing RPG and it might be the best in its genre for sure since that fabled day that we got Dragon Quest XI. Hogwarts Legacy is massive and loads of fun, nothing beats the atmosphere in a game like watching the square at Hogwarts castle filled with pumpkins around halloween and it is these details that sets it apart from many other RPGs out there, Hogwarts Legacy is a must play title!
