Hogwarts Legacy is a book best judged by seeing the gorgeous cover, maybe reading the inside flap, then never digging too deep into the pages contained within. While it can leave you drooling at an audio-visual buffet at times, I didn't find enough substance in this game to want to see the end.
The highs here are quite high. Potter fans will, expectedly, get the most out of Legacy, and I looked at its launch as a now-jaded adult who unabashedly adored the franchise as a kid. I left my skepticism at the door after my trans sister raved about Legacy (and shared her Home-Xbox-privileges with me for free access). Legacy never turns the fan-service meter down below "Medium" and frequently ratchets the level into the stratosphere, but ya know what? I liked it. This IP has been somewhere between dormancy, mediocrity, and public shame since the last movie released, and I was happy to immerse in the world I knew as a kid once again.
Players don't have to wait 45 minutes before the first crank of the nostalgia machine, with a brilliant pan through the woods before Hogwarts is revealed to a remix of the John Williams movie theme. This moment is, in many ways, a microcosm of Legacy at its best: a stunning view, complemented by excellent sounds. Legacy is frequently gorgeous. The interior of Hogwarts is ludicrously-detailed, a true love letter to the franchise and really everything a player could want to see. They probably could've sold this game at $70 with just the immediate Hogwarts grounds and gotten away with it tbh. But they didn't! Instead, Hogwarts is surrounded by a decently large open world, which tempts the viewer with scenic vistas and eye-catching details in the distance. The world is also vaguely dynamic, shifting noticeably with the seasons and select in-game events. It just looks great.
I elected to play Legacy on the Quality + Ray Tracing mode, a first for me (60fps is a must usually, but I figured the intensity of gameplay was low enough to try it here). Uh... nobody should play this or any game on RT mode on XSX. It's cool that the hardware technically supports it, but next-gen consoles are really at their best when smoothing everything out, not pushing the boundaries back towards the jankiness of last gen. Legacy usually holds 30fps in QRT mode, but can really chug in dense areas like large Hogwarts rooms or anywhere in Hogsmeade. I largely chalk that up to me forcing RT on an Xbox, but other problems (strange texture-pop in particular) are more on the game optimization side.
The other highlight of Legacy is audio. The game sounds fantastic. Music is a brilliant mix of old and new, where familiar tunes are fleshed out and expanded upon by new additions to make the world feel lively and authentic, not limited to a suite of songs written for linear movies two decades ago. Voice acting is also surprisingly good. I fully expected it to suck, especially with a voiced main character, but I was really sold on how basically everyone talked.
Circling back to fan-service: Legacy certainly isn't limited to it. I was pleasantly surprised that the game dared carve out a new story in the Potter universe, rather than pull a Skywalker Saga and make everyone tie back to each other somehow. With that said... beyond those initial meta strokes, story is where Legacy quickly begins to lose its luster. This tale is as basic as it gets, with generic forces of good and bad clashing. Imagine this--turns out you have a mysterious new power (somehow not just the whole being-a-sorcerer thing), and have to save the world from the bad guys. It is generic storytelling 101, and Legacy rarely makes a solid attempt to even mask that straightforward approach. Even your binary nice-or-mean dialogue choices always seem to round out into a net positive for your good-guy character. I may be speaking too soon on that point, as I've heard rumblings you can become a dark wizard (Avada Kedavra is sitting locked at the bottom of your spell sheet from minute one), but even so I have a hard time seeing how Legacy might separate itself from the good-vs.-evil story.
Also, people just relentlessly compliment you. It's actually kinda annoying how readily they decide you're the chosen one, their best friend, a most impressive student, etc. Even when you do something bad they still find a silver lining on you. I want to be bullied just once, damn.
The reductive story elements are furthered by the gameplay. This is easily the most basic western RPG I've touched in a while. Like, bro. Everything.
EVERYTHING.
In this game is a task. Go get 2 of these. I'll meet you at X so you can do Y for me. Hell your professors give you homework and they all admit they're making you do 3 tasks before you can advance the story. It just kills me that this world, so charming on the surface, is wholly flavorless to actually interact with. The map is just littered with locations and repetitive mini games to complete. None are interesting after the first few attempts.
The best part of the gameplay is the actual fighting, amazingly. I thought this was doomed to fail before playing it, but it's actually kinda cool! You have a decent number of different spells, they interact with each other differently, you can do some creative stuff with it all, and all of that is wrecked by the fact there are like 6 enemies in the whole game. You got goblins and people and those stone knight things, a few boring animals and some zombies. How is that it?? No matter how many spells you unlock, it gets boring to kill the same enemy over and over with them. I really needed more variety here.
My biggest takeaway from Legacy is that it is, ironically, crafted to be as inoffensive as possible. Generic story, generic activities, generic movement, generic loot system (though why do I have only 20 slots for clothes), generic open world, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes this works well; for instance, I genuinely appreciate how much they washed history (and Rowling) out of this game. There's no racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or really anything rude to other people at all here. Representation is excellent, at least compared to (checks notes) every other video game ever made. This is an alternate history where wizarding schools have flying horses roaming around them, and I want to happily escape into it while thinking of a world I entirely wish I lived in.
Other times, that placation goes beyond what I'm interested in playing for endless hours. In the interest of appealing to as many people as possible, Legacy dilutes itself of an excellent experience with enduring appeal. I had a good time, and I don't need to sink another day of my life into finishing this game to have gotten what I want out of it: the chance to walk around Hogwarts and pretend to be a wizard for a moment.
(My hot take, despite never having played a game of this genre before, is that this would be a better game as a life sim. Avalanche could've taken the effort they put into everything outside of Hogwarts/Hogsmeade and put that into creating better stories, more characters (the few fleshed-out characters in Legacy are usually quite good, but rare), and a thorough experience inside Hogwarts. I don't need to be Harry Potter-lite from 150 years ago, but carving my own (relatively normal, lower stakes) wizard-school story out in that beautiful rendition of Hogwarts would be super fun.)
The highs here are quite high. Potter fans will, expectedly, get the most out of Legacy, and I looked at its launch as a now-jaded adult who unabashedly adored the franchise as a kid. I left my skepticism at the door after my trans sister raved about Legacy (and shared her Home-Xbox-privileges with me for free access). Legacy never turns the fan-service meter down below "Medium" and frequently ratchets the level into the stratosphere, but ya know what? I liked it. This IP has been somewhere between dormancy, mediocrity, and public shame since the last movie released, and I was happy to immerse in the world I knew as a kid once again.
Players don't have to wait 45 minutes before the first crank of the nostalgia machine, with a brilliant pan through the woods before Hogwarts is revealed to a remix of the John Williams movie theme. This moment is, in many ways, a microcosm of Legacy at its best: a stunning view, complemented by excellent sounds. Legacy is frequently gorgeous. The interior of Hogwarts is ludicrously-detailed, a true love letter to the franchise and really everything a player could want to see. They probably could've sold this game at $70 with just the immediate Hogwarts grounds and gotten away with it tbh. But they didn't! Instead, Hogwarts is surrounded by a decently large open world, which tempts the viewer with scenic vistas and eye-catching details in the distance. The world is also vaguely dynamic, shifting noticeably with the seasons and select in-game events. It just looks great.
I elected to play Legacy on the Quality + Ray Tracing mode, a first for me (60fps is a must usually, but I figured the intensity of gameplay was low enough to try it here). Uh... nobody should play this or any game on RT mode on XSX. It's cool that the hardware technically supports it, but next-gen consoles are really at their best when smoothing everything out, not pushing the boundaries back towards the jankiness of last gen. Legacy usually holds 30fps in QRT mode, but can really chug in dense areas like large Hogwarts rooms or anywhere in Hogsmeade. I largely chalk that up to me forcing RT on an Xbox, but other problems (strange texture-pop in particular) are more on the game optimization side.
The other highlight of Legacy is audio. The game sounds fantastic. Music is a brilliant mix of old and new, where familiar tunes are fleshed out and expanded upon by new additions to make the world feel lively and authentic, not limited to a suite of songs written for linear movies two decades ago. Voice acting is also surprisingly good. I fully expected it to suck, especially with a voiced main character, but I was really sold on how basically everyone talked.
Circling back to fan-service: Legacy certainly isn't limited to it. I was pleasantly surprised that the game dared carve out a new story in the Potter universe, rather than pull a Skywalker Saga and make everyone tie back to each other somehow. With that said... beyond those initial meta strokes, story is where Legacy quickly begins to lose its luster. This tale is as basic as it gets, with generic forces of good and bad clashing. Imagine this--turns out you have a mysterious new power (somehow not just the whole being-a-sorcerer thing), and have to save the world from the bad guys. It is generic storytelling 101, and Legacy rarely makes a solid attempt to even mask that straightforward approach. Even your binary nice-or-mean dialogue choices always seem to round out into a net positive for your good-guy character. I may be speaking too soon on that point, as I've heard rumblings you can become a dark wizard (Avada Kedavra is sitting locked at the bottom of your spell sheet from minute one), but even so I have a hard time seeing how Legacy might separate itself from the good-vs.-evil story.
Also, people just relentlessly compliment you. It's actually kinda annoying how readily they decide you're the chosen one, their best friend, a most impressive student, etc. Even when you do something bad they still find a silver lining on you. I want to be bullied just once, damn.
The reductive story elements are furthered by the gameplay. This is easily the most basic western RPG I've touched in a while. Like, bro. Everything.
EVERYTHING.
In this game is a task. Go get 2 of these. I'll meet you at X so you can do Y for me. Hell your professors give you homework and they all admit they're making you do 3 tasks before you can advance the story. It just kills me that this world, so charming on the surface, is wholly flavorless to actually interact with. The map is just littered with locations and repetitive mini games to complete. None are interesting after the first few attempts.
The best part of the gameplay is the actual fighting, amazingly. I thought this was doomed to fail before playing it, but it's actually kinda cool! You have a decent number of different spells, they interact with each other differently, you can do some creative stuff with it all, and all of that is wrecked by the fact there are like 6 enemies in the whole game. You got goblins and people and those stone knight things, a few boring animals and some zombies. How is that it?? No matter how many spells you unlock, it gets boring to kill the same enemy over and over with them. I really needed more variety here.
My biggest takeaway from Legacy is that it is, ironically, crafted to be as inoffensive as possible. Generic story, generic activities, generic movement, generic loot system (though why do I have only 20 slots for clothes), generic open world, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes this works well; for instance, I genuinely appreciate how much they washed history (and Rowling) out of this game. There's no racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or really anything rude to other people at all here. Representation is excellent, at least compared to (checks notes) every other video game ever made. This is an alternate history where wizarding schools have flying horses roaming around them, and I want to happily escape into it while thinking of a world I entirely wish I lived in.
Other times, that placation goes beyond what I'm interested in playing for endless hours. In the interest of appealing to as many people as possible, Legacy dilutes itself of an excellent experience with enduring appeal. I had a good time, and I don't need to sink another day of my life into finishing this game to have gotten what I want out of it: the chance to walk around Hogwarts and pretend to be a wizard for a moment.
(My hot take, despite never having played a game of this genre before, is that this would be a better game as a life sim. Avalanche could've taken the effort they put into everything outside of Hogwarts/Hogsmeade and put that into creating better stories, more characters (the few fleshed-out characters in Legacy are usually quite good, but rare), and a thorough experience inside Hogwarts. I don't need to be Harry Potter-lite from 150 years ago, but carving my own (relatively normal, lower stakes) wizard-school story out in that beautiful rendition of Hogwarts would be super fun.)