This review will be (mostly) ignoring discourse surrounding this game, and just covering the game’s contents.
The best way to describe Hogwarts’s Legacy is Open-World Game the Game. It does nothing interesting beyond look pretty. The world is very bland to explore beyond looking at the pretty graphics. It hits all the check boxes of a Ubisoft style open-world game. Just a bunch of copy and pasted mundane activities scattered all over the place and an out of place colored loot system. Boy I sure do love getting the exact same vest that I’m wearing but now the background is purple and the numbers are bigger. The world is not horrible but certainly isn’t anything that I would consider as good, beyond visuals. And these visuals are undermined, because even though I have a pretty beefy PC, it is a stutter fest. It’s been a while since I last played this game so maybe that’s been fixed, but that stuttering was unacceptable when I played.
Story wise, it’s nothing special as far as I remember. Again, it’s been a while, but I didn’t remember it being all that interesting. Something about a goblin uprising, it didn’t really do anything for me. However, I didn’t finish the game so what do I know; maybe it becomes the greatest story in all of gaming, but I doubt that.
Hogwarts Legacy make me feel like… an absolute dope. Using spells suck. Having to swap constantly between different spell sets is so cumbersome for both solving puzzles and doing anything near interesting in combat. Combat is where I mainly have issues in. It’s incredibly easy so you’re not incentivized to mix many spells in combos and very clunky if you want to try to do anything cool. You have to make multiple spell sets that you swap between on the fly which always interrupted the flow of combat. Additionally, utility spells and combat spells share space on the same sets. Meaning you’ll have to always be organizing and editing the sets and/or switching far more often. It’s also frustrating that you have to unlock additional sets, so you have to choose between an interesting upgrade or a quality-of-life feature that you should’ve already had. I’m sick of the word “sets”.
Hogwarts Legacy isn’t awful but quite mediocre. I honestly, really regret getting this game. I wish I could get the money back, because I really feel quite sour on it both as a game and ethical reasons. I’m rather uneducated on the whole controversy surrounding this game but feel bad that I may have inadvertently supported things that aren’t great. Oh well, you live and learn I suppose.
Additional note, I genuinely wonder why this game is so well received by “the masses”. I feel people often shit on this style of open-world but so many people absolutely adore this. I wonder what people see in this that I don’t, or maybe it’s just the Harry Potter IP carrying it. Or maybe I’m simply out of touch. Well enough of the rambling.
The best way to describe Hogwarts’s Legacy is Open-World Game the Game. It does nothing interesting beyond look pretty. The world is very bland to explore beyond looking at the pretty graphics. It hits all the check boxes of a Ubisoft style open-world game. Just a bunch of copy and pasted mundane activities scattered all over the place and an out of place colored loot system. Boy I sure do love getting the exact same vest that I’m wearing but now the background is purple and the numbers are bigger. The world is not horrible but certainly isn’t anything that I would consider as good, beyond visuals. And these visuals are undermined, because even though I have a pretty beefy PC, it is a stutter fest. It’s been a while since I last played this game so maybe that’s been fixed, but that stuttering was unacceptable when I played.
Story wise, it’s nothing special as far as I remember. Again, it’s been a while, but I didn’t remember it being all that interesting. Something about a goblin uprising, it didn’t really do anything for me. However, I didn’t finish the game so what do I know; maybe it becomes the greatest story in all of gaming, but I doubt that.
Hogwarts Legacy make me feel like… an absolute dope. Using spells suck. Having to swap constantly between different spell sets is so cumbersome for both solving puzzles and doing anything near interesting in combat. Combat is where I mainly have issues in. It’s incredibly easy so you’re not incentivized to mix many spells in combos and very clunky if you want to try to do anything cool. You have to make multiple spell sets that you swap between on the fly which always interrupted the flow of combat. Additionally, utility spells and combat spells share space on the same sets. Meaning you’ll have to always be organizing and editing the sets and/or switching far more often. It’s also frustrating that you have to unlock additional sets, so you have to choose between an interesting upgrade or a quality-of-life feature that you should’ve already had. I’m sick of the word “sets”.
Hogwarts Legacy isn’t awful but quite mediocre. I honestly, really regret getting this game. I wish I could get the money back, because I really feel quite sour on it both as a game and ethical reasons. I’m rather uneducated on the whole controversy surrounding this game but feel bad that I may have inadvertently supported things that aren’t great. Oh well, you live and learn I suppose.
Additional note, I genuinely wonder why this game is so well received by “the masses”. I feel people often shit on this style of open-world but so many people absolutely adore this. I wonder what people see in this that I don’t, or maybe it’s just the Harry Potter IP carrying it. Or maybe I’m simply out of touch. Well enough of the rambling.