I have played a lot of Potter games over the years and to finally get a full-fledged RPG was a dream come true. Well, it would have been if it had arrived before the crummy spinoff movies and the ultimate twist that Rowling is a hateful piece of trash to rival Voldemort himself. Still, it’s the Hogwarts game I’ve always dreamed of… for a little while at least.
The simple appeal of Rowling's world has always been the sense of wonder. The bricks peel back to reveal a world just outside our own. It's a world of magic, warmth and character. Logic and nuanced depictions of minorities weren't her strong suit, but the Potter books are still undeniably charming, particularly the earlier ones. I adore them and probably always will.
The opening hours of Legacy capture this feeling of awe as you enter this magical world incredibly well. Hogwarts looks and feels just right. Its halls are brimming with life: Peeves will slide down the banister past you, ghosts flit around, house elves apparate out of sight and suits of armor will engage in combat. Honestly, it's magical. Add to that the ability to explore a fictional location that you know so well through other mediums, and you have one damn fine piece of virtual tourism. I gave my partner a tour. We wandered down from Hogsmeade Station to the docks and across the lake to the cave where first-years enter. We rode the elevator up, walked through the courtyard into the castle, past the house point hourglasses and into the great hall with its ceiling showing a clear summer sky dotted with stars and floating candles. My partner was blown away and she asked me, "can we talk to the other students?" And that's when the cracks begin to appear. Sure, you're in a gorgeously realized Hogwarts but your ability to engage with it is severely limited. Hogwarts Legacy is a shallow game.
Classes are mostly non-interactive cutscenes. In earlier Potter games they were jumping off points for Zelda-style dungeons where you would master the spell you had just learnt. I always loved this idea, since it made Hogwarts feel unknowably large and dangerous. In legacy there are pre-requisites to learning some spells, but these take the form of MMO checklists: go out and kill a certain number of beasts or poachers, etc. It's not fun or especially school-like. Gamifying schooling is no easy task, but this wasn't the answer.
You can't interact with your fellow students outside of quests. I distinctly remember trading wizard cards with them in a Gamecube release. There's no shortage of mindless tasks to complete around the castle - chasing flying keys, lighting torches, collecting flying pages etc. But these all feel removed from the school itself. Give me dialogue choices and let me talk to people. Give me some feeling of shared experience. Don't just give me dicking around doing game shit.
There are a couple of quests that captured what I wanted this game to be. There was a brief History of Magic class that involved walking around the castle while Professor Binns lectured. Simple school shit. At one point you take polyjuice potion to imitate the headmaster to gain access to his office, learning that he suffers from body boils in the process. Both quests require you to walk around and interact with the castle as a student would. Both are over far too quickly.
Hogwarts is a small portion of this game. Legacy is large to a fault. I wanted to explore a densely designed castle, roam the surrounding grounds, move cautiously through the forbidden forest and explore the terrifying depths of the great lake. Taking the shortcut to Hogsmeade is essential. Outside of that I would have been content with taking the floo network to self-contained locations like Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic, as well as original creations. We get the castle, grounds, forest and Hogsmeade, but then the game just keeps going. There are so many valleys, swamps and hamlets, none of which scream “Harry Potter!” to me. It’s just open-world filler. There also aren't any muggle locations to create contrast. A huge part of Potter was how the wizarding world overlaps with our own. Here it's all magic all the time.
So, what do you do in this enormous, visually stunning world? Crap. The same kind of crap you got sick of years ago.
There are ‘Treasure Vaults’ scattered around the map. These are caves where you’ll find a treasure chest. Some of these involve very very minor puzzle solving, but most are a set of stairs that lead you directly to a chest. A better version of this would have replicated the recent Tomb Raider games (or what I imagine the shrines in Zelda are) - less vaults, better puzzles, with each one feeling like an individual location with a sense of history rather than a quick copy-and-paste job.
The other significant map activity are the Merlin Trials. These are "puzzles" found throughout the world. There are around 90 of them, but it is the same 4 or 5 repeated ad nauseam (lights some torches, shoot some orbs, etc.). You’ll need to complete enough of these to gain inventory space, of which the game gives you very little at the beginning.
Open-world activities I enjoyed: ancient magic hotspots that require basic traversal through buildings to collect glowing orbs, battle arenas where you’ll fight waves of enemies, nests of beasts for you to capture with your magical bag, and balloons to pop as you fly on your broomstick. The rest is pretty dire stuff. Your standard bandit camps, pointless astronomy tables where you’ll rotate constellations to match the screen, or butterflies to follow to a hidden chest.
The lack of puzzles is a bizarre choice for a game revolving around a school. Instead the focus is on combat. Honestly, the combat is pretty good - there are loads of spells and you can unlock up to 4 spell wheels so switching between them is reasonably smooth. I have no real issues with the combat other than it not being what I want out of a Harry Potter game. This is the Goblet of Fire game all over again.
One part that I dug was the Room of Requirement. It’s the player’s hub for crafting consumables, upgrading gear and breeding fantastic beasts to “save them”, by which I mean selling their young and stealing their feathers. It’s a clever use of the license. It’s a customizable space that continues to expand as you unlock four terrariums of different biomes that you can decorate for your beasties. There is even a personal house-elf named Deek - the best character in the game.
The other characters? They're present, but another example of Legacy just missing the point. The core trio of Potter work because they're a trio that first meet and grow to care for each other, you know, like a friendship. In legacy you'll have questlines involving individual students who I guess are your "friends", but they never interact with each other (or you outside of quests). The game would have benefited from a companion system. I should care about these guys like it's a Mass Effect game. There's no reason to return to your common room because there's no one to talk to. Even the Prisoner of Azkaban tie-in had Ron and Hermione by your side while exploring.
I won't go into the story because it isn't very interesting, but it lacks the sense of mystery that is the backbone of the early novels. Simply put, a Hogwarts game should be a puzzle-focused mystery game featuring companions, dialogue options and moral choices with well-defined consequences. That's it. Do that guys. This is an "RPG" but there aren't any real decisions to be made. Dialogue choices are pointless since the game just pushes you in the direction it wants. There is one moral choice, and the consequence happens offscreen. You can learn and use the unforgiveable curses, murder indiscriminately and it really doesn't matter.
Oh, also there's no Quidditch. Despite this, broomstick flight looks great and feels competent. You’ll also unlock a couple of beasties to ride on. These also look great, but are slower and less convenient than your broom, so I rarely used them.
There's a bunch of other stuff but this has run long, and I've run out of steam, so I'll leave you with this: how Alohomora functions. To learn and upgrade the door-unlocking spell you'll have to find hidden statues throughout the game that can only be collected at night. Complete this bullshit homework and you'll have access to all three levels of locked doors. But how is this magical unlocking process depicted? Do you simply press the action button and the door opens because you're using fucking magic, and it should absolutely not be a hassle at all? Don't be ridiculous! (riddikulus?) We've got a lockpicking minigame, baby! Every. Single. Time. Rotate two wheels and hold the position when they vibrate. This sums up the game for me perfectly: something potentially magical reduced to inanity. I spent almost 70 hours with this game until I reached 100% completion. I unlocked every fucking door. If you can muster up any enthusiasm for this franchise after the harm its creator has caused, this game will slowly strip it from you.
What do I want out of a sequel? Any sense of misplaced obligation that I need to play it to apparate out of my mind.
