Hello dear readers, it’s your friendly neighbourhood Javier! “Hogwarts Legacy” has sparked a LOT of debate online. You know what I’m talking about, but I’m not here to get political. I just want to talk about the game as a game.
When I’m playing this game, I can’t stop flying around on my broom collecting things I don’t really need, and you know what? That’s really fun. It’s completely incredible that I’m flying around Hogwarts and the surrounding grounds, making potions, and destroying enemies with well-known spells.
However, I can’t help but feel that once you strip out all of the “Potterness,” this game is AVERAGE and really quite lazy. For starters, why are we starting as a 5th year? The very odd reasoning seems to be that all people with this mystical power start in year 5, and that’s that? How awesome would it have been to start as a 1st-year student and learn magic properly, even if it was just the first 5 hours or so of the game?
And have you noticed that you get the same 2 or 3 lines of dialogue most of the time, for example, in Hogwarts or when using the Floo system? These are both hugely integral parts of the game, but hearing the same thing over and over is really verging on “I’VE DEVELOPED A NEW RECIPAAAAAH” territory.
“Quidditch is banned this year”? No, you couldn’t be bothered to program it in, you lazy bastards! And where the hell is Wizard chess?!
Every lesson only gets one proper scene, and after that, it’s just rubbish fetch quests for the professor with basic ass dialogue. It would have been so cool to have had to attend your classes properly and for it to really enhance the character.
The enemy variation, well, isn’t varied. We all know that the Potterverse offers a ton of mystical creatures and characters who you could be battling, yet I just seem to be continually fighting the same goblins and the occasional troll.
Most of the game is just collectables, and I feel like a lot of what I’m asked to do is just collectables, and the dungeons are SO basic unless it’s part of the main quest.
Watching my wife play as a different house to me has shown that there is no point in playing it twice, as the differences are minimal. I think just the common room and one different quest. The lines of dialogue are all the same, and is it just me, or do your character’s lines all sound like they were recorded inside a metal bucket?
This and many other reasons are why I think the game is actually really basic, but I’m still really enjoying it (I promise). I just feel that once you actually dig down into it, the game is actually quite basic and average, and it really could be more, especially if you play lots of games! More definitely could have been done with this game. Imagine a Persona-style set up where the classes and relationships actually mattered, or even if the dialogue actually made a difference!
However, there are good points because when I play it, I love the world and riding around on a broom and destroying people with spells. But once something better comes along (Wo Long), this is getting dropped quicker than a screaming mandrake. I, for sure, won’t be plating this one.
I will play the story, and I do love the detail they’ve put into the castle and the moving paintings, etc. However, it just feels like something is missing, and it could have been more. Maybe we’ll get THAT from the sequel?
I have really enjoyed watching the better half putting hours into something other than “Animal Crossing (literally there are only 5 games she’s played for more than 2 hours) and I hope this can be a gateway game for her and teach her how to play something more complex, for that reason it is good, she is definitely getting more lost in the magic of the game. Pun intended.
If I had to score it I’d give it
7/10