I’m slightly too old to have been one of those Harry Potter kids, but I begrudgingly checked out the first movie when it was relatively new and already massively popular, and despite my skepticism, I actually enjoyed it. That led to me eventually watching them all, many times, including several in the theater, reading and/or listening to all the books, and having way more fun than any middle aged man should admit to with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter stuff at Universal Orlando. My partner, a bit younger than me and more in-line with the age to have been enraptured by it as a kid, is similarly afflicted. When Hogwarts Legacy came out and started getting a lot of acclaim, she ended up picking up a copy. I figured she’d love it because on top of loving Harry Potter, she’s played plenty of open world games, but while she didn’t bounce off it, the gameplay didn’t quite hook her either. After a few sessions she lost interest. I, on the other hand, liked what I saw and added it to my backlog. It had been a while since I’ve played a game of this sort, and feeling in the mood for one, one day I dusted it off and jumped in.
“There it is, Hogwarts Castle.”
First, I should say that the game looks (and sounds) quite beautiful. The developers did a bang-up job realizing the world. While I’ve not played even a single other Harry Potter related game so I can’t really compare it to previous efforts, I can say that a lot of love and care was put into crafting the world, particularly Hogwarts itself. It’s huge and absolutely brimming with secrets and insane details, so much so that not being able to find my way around eventually started to get a little old. Thank Ignatia Wildsmith for Floo Flames, eh? Seeing Hogsmeade at Christmas time was another highlight. Unless you’re simply not a Harry Potter fan, this all goes a long, long way all by itself. Overall, the game feels very competently made, and while I wasn’t really familiar with Avalanche Software before this, they’re now very much on my radar. I’m impressed!
As for the gameplay, after you get through the introduction which sets up the main story of the campaign, you’re finally plopped down in Hogwarts. From there on, the game consists of an open world where you can more or less do anything you want, with most quest triggered by approaching the relevant NPC and chatting with them. Of those quests, the main story related quests tend to be much more linear and focused, and of course, include quite a few cutscenes. The rest are a bit more of the variety you’d usually find in an open world game, with some being a bit more involved than others. There are also quests related to going to your classes, though these are usually more like cutscenes which usually lead to special assignments from your professors that result in the opportunity to learn new spells. All of the main story quests, classes, and some of the more notable side and relationship quests are grouped together so that you need to complete everything in the group to unlock the next main quest, and completing that will unlock the next group of quests. This actually works quite well in ensuring that you don’t skip anything too important to the overall story.
“Correct answer. Get fucked, Gryffindor!”
Combat is action RPG focused, mostly consisting of your spammable basic cast and more interesting spells which are on cooldown timers. There’s not really a mana system or anything like that; as long as a spell isn’t on its cooldown, you can use it, and the more spells you have, the less you need to use your basic cast while waiting around for other spells to become available again. It’s all pretty straightforward. One of the funnest and amusingly weird things about the game is how incredibly violent combat actually is. You have a huge selection of spells by the end, but even the most mundane ones you have at the beginning are pretty brutal. Levitate someone so they’re helplessly flapping around in the air, then shoot the shit out of them, then pull them closer to you, still keeping them floating, then push them away, violently slamming them into a wall. You can “juggle” them like that for quite a while too, although I prefer using some of the interesting spells you get later instead. I mean, why not burn them alive in the process as well? While I think the spells are represented accurately enough, seeing them actually used like this doesn’t quite fit the tone of Harry Potter. This might turn some off, but as I said, I find it darkly humorous.
You know, early on, I came to the realization that between the over the top, whimsical British vibes and this particular style of the open world action RPG gameplay, Hogwarts Legacy actually reminded me quite a lot of the Fable games, particularly Fable II. Of course, combat aside, a bit less over the top. I mean, there’s no farting to impress prostitutes in Hogwarts Legacy, but I guess we can’t have it all. (/s) Searching around a bit, I definitely don’t seem to be the only person who saw the similarities, and I’m quite curious about how much the upcoming Fable game is going to end up resembling Hogwarts Legacy when it’s released.
“Torturing a Mountain Troll and not feeling too bad about it.”
One big difference between Hogwarts Legacy and the Fables games is that there’s no morality system in this game at all. You’re supposed to be a student at Hogwarts but by the time the campaign is over you’ll probably have brutally murdered hundreds of dark wizards, poachers, and beasts, trespassed everywhere, and stolen everything not nailed down and no one, absolutely no one, cares. Nowhere is this more clear when it comes to “unforgivable curses”. Yes, you can learn some of the infamous, highly illegal spells that only dark wizards use. You can agonizingly torture someone with Crucio right in front of other students and even teachers and no one bats an eye. You can even learn Avada Kedavra (the killing curse, which instantly kills a target) later too. Yep, met with a shrug by everyone around. It’s hilarious!
The main quests take you all over the map, from very familiar locations like Hogwarts itself, Hogsmeade, and the Forbidden Forest, to innumerable tiny hamlets, ruins, caves, dungeons, and other points of interest. In fact, this relates to my another complaint about the game. I wouldn’t say its absolutely massive, but I do think the world is too big for this game. It would have been better to tighten the map up to just the notable areas from the books and maybe a small number of hamlets and specific side quest locations. Instead, this game takes the opposite approach and fills a pretty large area with a number of random puzzles and collectibles. Like I said, it’s been a bit since I’ve played an open world game like this, so I went kind of OCD trying to do and collect everything. This was mostly pretty fun, but the game did start to feel a bit like a massive checklist outside of the quests.
“Flying a Hippogriff at night, Hogwarts Express below.”
At least you can fly around the map, and I have to say, I love the way flying a broom feels in this game. Some may complain about the lack of maneuverability, but to me it looks and feels exactly like it’s portrayed in the movies. My only real complaint is that they somehow neglected to include Quidditch. I suppose adding an entire sports game inside of the already content rich main game was just too heavy of a lift for Avalanche Software, but it does feel like a bit of an oversight, even if there is a flimsy in-game excuse for why the season was cancelled.
There are a lot of other diversions, from growing and gathering herbs and other spell ingredients to brew potions with, to decorating your own magical “room of requirement” space, and even capturing and breeding beasts. I put around 70 hours into the game and while I got pretty close, even with my compulsion to check all of those boxes, I still didn’t 100% the game. I wanted to, but there was just too damn much to do, even though I was still having fun with the game.
“Trying to make a Kneazle like me in my Care of Magical Creatures class.”
Overall, quite an enjoyable game, and yes, I will definitely be paying attention to the details on its sequel as more are revealed. Part of me is kind of surprised that it’s getting one, as after the initial hype died down, it seemed like everyone stopped talking about the game. Then again, it was the global best-selling video game of 2023. Who knew?!