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Review: Hogwarts Legacy

  • 9.5/10
    Total Score: - 9.5/10
9.5/10

Summary

Players looking for a great action RPG and magical stories will love Hogwarts Legacy.

Developer – Avalanche Studios

Publisher Warner Bros Games

Platforms – PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series, PC

Review copy given by publisher

I’ll be honest. Up until last month, I had never finished the Harry Potter films. I actually had only seen The Sorcerer’s Stone and the Goblet of Fire. I’ve also never read any of the books. Likewise, I wasn’t familiar with the previous Harry Potter games, except for a few minutes of Lego Harry Potter, so this was a completely new world for me. I wouldn’t even call myself a fan of Harry Potter. That is, until now. 

Hogwarts Legacy developed by Avalanche Software is an absolute triumph of a game! I think anyone that is just generally interested in gaming will appreciate the level of detail and just how enjoyable it really is. Everything from the puzzles and exploration to the combat is fun. After playing it, I honestly wish more magic based games played similarly to Hogwarts Legacy. Quickly casting spells to damage enemies, coming up with combinations to increase your damage, and using them to solve puzzles never got tiring for me in my 40+ hours playthrough.

The game starts with a character customization screen, where you can choose many different aspects of your soon-to-be Wizard or Witch. While not necessarily to the level of Skyrim or Cyberpunk, there are enough options to make your character feel unique. Hairstyles, facial structure, eyebrows, scars, glasses, and voice pitch and tone are all customizable.

On top of the basic customization of your appearance, Hogwarts Legacy gets one thing absolutely right. The transmog system. It is mind-boggling how many games get this wrong, and they really need to take note of how it should be done. As you find clothing options in the game, you can always use that look at any time, for free. There are no restrictions to this! This is so important in my mind for an RPG. If I am going to spend hours looking at my character, let me choose the way I look. So many games give you equipment that either has no visual impact or locks you into hideous styles because the stats might be better.

Another feature that I enjoyed is the account linking between the online website and the game. On the website, you can take a few different tests that impact which house the games will start you in, although you are free to change it if you don’t want to. It also chooses the starting wand appearance and traits from a quick personality test, which you can also change in game before making a permanent selection. This is just a fun way to further expand on the game. Of course it would have been better if the in-game sorting hat section was more fleshed out but it worked for what it is since you get to make your choice regardless of both your house and your wand.

The overall progression of the game is broken up into main quests and side quests, which carry us through our adventures at Hogwarts and surrounding areas. These include quests involving our classmate companions and our instructors’ assignments to learn powerful new spells. Along the way, you are presented with a myriad of different puzzles and objectives to complete in the open world, such as broom racetracks and completing trials that Merlin has left behind. These are a good way to pass time and unlock additional upgrades for your character.

On top of the customization for your appearance, you can also upgrade and improve your character’s equipment. As you progress through the game and clear out camps of enemies, you will find runes that you can later add to the equipment that can increase the amount of damage to your spells, decrease the damage that you receive, and other passive traits. You can also upgrade the gear’s offensive/defensive stats multiple times to increase their use. In order to do this, you will have to harvest materials from magical beasts that you come across throughout the world. This system requires you to use your magical abilities and a bag, much like in “Fantastic Beasts,” to capture them. You can collect different beasts, pet and feed them, and then they will give you some materials that you can use to craft. Speaking of crafting, you can also craft potions and grow plants that you will use throughout your adventure!

As your character levels up, you will eventually get access to skill trees that allows you to put points into different aspects of your character’s abilities. These trees can impact your spells, dark arts, potions, and your stealth spells. These perks really change the way your spells work and impact the enemies. For instance, in the dark arts tree, you can use certain spells to curse the enemies. After you curse an enemy or two the damage between them is shared as you attack one between all enemies that are cursed. Eventually you can even use Avada Kedavra which will kill all cursed enemies at the same time! You have to be careful which perks you take as your character can only learn 35 traits max.

In terms of the story, there are three main quest lines that follow different students that you befriend, as well as a quest line that has to do with you solely. Basically, there is a war brewing between Wizard-kind and Goblins. There is a particular Goblin named Ranrock who wants to get his hands on ancient magic that few Wizards/Witches can utilize in order to bring absolute chaos to the world. Fortunately for our character, we are able to use ancient magic along with our spells to fight against this threat. The main quest chain is very eventful, containing several different trials that are there to prove yourself capable in the eyes of your mentors, with a very climactic final boss fight!

The three other chains are just as entertaining. My favorite however involves a student named Sebastian whose sister has been cursed. He is searching for ways to save his sister’s life, and this of course goes deeper into the world of Unforgivable Curses. It has so many great moments that I definitely do not want to spoil. The relationship between the characters involved in that quest line was the most memorable by far and were always a priority quest for me to continue.

There are so many aspects that are great about Hogwarts Legacy such as sound design, the environment and world building, the lore. There are so many collectibles, secrets, and puzzles that you will get that itch for just one more thing that will lead into hours and hours of continuing the adventure. Several times I found myself just taking a few hours and exploring the world, fighting evil across the land, capturing beasts, customizing the Room of Requirement. It never got old throughout the 40 hours play through for me.

I’m really grasping at straws to provide negative aspects about Hogwarts Legacy. A few that come to mind is that there is little reason to play through the other houses. From my understanding and experience, there is only one quest that is house dependent. This is far too little to make it worth playing through the entire game again to experience that one quest. I also think that your actions should have more consequences in the game. Many of the dialogue choices just provide you with variations of the responses that you give to characters, and not much else. There are just a few instances where the choices you make have any real impact on any outcomes of the story, which is a shame. However, these aspects definitely didn’t make my enjoyment of the game any worse… they are more wishlist complaints if anything.

Overall, I can’t recommend Hogwarts Legacy enough to players looking for a great adventure game with an excellent combat system. Even if you aren’t a fan of Harry Potter in general, but like magical high adventure stories and RPGs, you will definitely find something to like about this game. I absolutely can not wait to see what is in store for Avalanche Software after this achievement and the future of the Hogwarts Legacy franchise as a whole.

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