First mistake - no quidditch.

I agree with another reviewer that this game basically didn’t know what kind of game it was, and therefore a lot of things were poorly executed. Since I expected it to be an RPG, it disappointed me terribly by not doing any of the RPG elements of the game well. It might’ve been better a SIM due to the lack of depth. Alright, let’s get into it.

I felt more rewarded during the idk, 10 hour side bit to become the Archmage of Winterhold in Skyrim than I am in 10 hours of gameplay/level 20 at Hogwarts. I love intricate games where I can get endlessly lost in sidequests and exploration but that is impossible to do with HL (so much obvious level and storyline lock). There is none of the mystery or intrigue of the actual books, as other reviewers have mentioned, no ability to engage with the world beyond the surface - no Quidditch, flat dialogue, no deep exploration to find surprising hidden treasure or level up. I couldn’t believe I was sorted into a house based on two questions. Catching pages and constantly casting revelio to level is so inane it’s almost unbearable.

Not every game has to be great; but based on the hype online I expected this to be a masterpiece. It was not even close. Most great RPGs deliver high notes on at least several key aspects from this list (but not all): graphics, worldbuilding, compelling storyline, impact of choices/morality, character trait customization (diverse skill specialization options/moral pathways), puzzles and Easter eggs/exploration - rewards for going off the beaten path, rich relationship building/meters and/or party building, engagement with NPC/towns, reputation, kingdom building/environment engagement (own property, house), complex games within games with exciting reward systems (eg Gwent), intricate gear building/resource collection/potion building. HPL had stellar graphics and worldbuilding at the surface level and in my opinion NOTHING else was done to the standard of “great.”

For choice and relationship building, it touches nothing of Dragonage or Divinity II, where your outcomes affect how your party reacts and engages with you, and your choices have real consequences, and where you have to actively manage your relationships via your relationship meter (in dragonage). Even Stardew Valley which has none of the visual radiance of other mentioned RPGs is incredible because of the rich relationship and dialogue aspect. The relationship aspect of HP legacy is reduced to doing relationship quests to unlock gear, and have no impact to how the story unfolds or how people actually engage with you within the world.

For storytelling and exploration, the witcher 3 and Horizon: zero dawn are incredible. These stories were beautiful, unique, well written, and had me in tears at the end. The worlds are stunning and rich. The characters are deep, layered, and human. I generally can’t stand YA novels and HP is one of those rare exceptions that has some intelligence and actual surprising outcomes…none of which are represented in the Legacy storyline.

The puzzles in HP are achingly simple. Really, I have to break 20 pots to reveal a secret door or light 3 torches fast enough to solve a Merlin trial or pop 5 ballons or do basic arithmetic to open a door? Even the Hogwarts secret I found almost right away was solvable within a minute. I would like puzzles that have SOME respect for my intelligence as a human being.

The choice aspect of the game is nonexistent. I’d like my choices majorly affect how the game unfolds, where you can join specific factions and sides and there’s a real cost and moral weight. I want the option to be a dark wizard, I want to know what my reputation is at the school, with my teachers, with certain houses. Am I treated with disdain because I keep losing points for my house? Etc.

There’s so much to complain about but those are my main points. It disappointed me.

HP legacy is not a masterpiece and it’s not even middling. It is empty and boring. I love Harry Potter, I reread all the books at least 3 times, they meant a lot to me as a child. I’m not a Dark Souls hard mode gamer, RPGs provide the same escape and story immersion that books like Harry Potter did when I was a kid. So from my perspective, it fails to deliver in every conceivable aspect (RPG gamer and HP megafan). Yeah the graphics and world are cool, but I have a vivid enough imagination on my own that I don’t need to waste my time twaddling through a flatlining video game - I’d rather read a book or play something that actually delivers.

To begin, I'm specifying that this is as someone who is not a huge fan of the HP series. I watched the movies growing up and enjoyed them, but I'm more of a casual enjoyer rather than a die-hard.

For sheer gameplay, I'd say it's at least on par with the "open world action-adventure" genre, though I do think that calling the game an RPG is being a bit liberal with the term. It's more comparable to a modern Assassin's Creed than it is to, say, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or a typical Bioware game. The RPG systems aren't particularly deep, but they're well suited to allowing the player to express themselves in how they engage in the various systems of the game, particularly in combat.

Playing on lower difficulties may allow more mindless, "spam R2 'till they die" gameplay, but on Hard, the game is surprisingly challenging unless you consider how to use all the systems of the game in your favor. I started to feel like I had defined a character and was actually role-playing around the time that I gained access to the Room of Requirement and the potion-making system. At that point, I became a potions fiend, constantly returning to the lab and brewing so I could go into battle absolutely stocked to the gills. I would have loved the opportunity to express this in dialogue and story in a more detailed way, but it ended up having a significant impact on the way I played the game, and the way I envisioned myself fitting into Hogwarts life.

With regard to the actual storyline, I'd say that this game is a solid B+, when I consider the potential it shows. It's primarily let down by a weak main storyline. The side stories are significantly more interesting in my opinion, as they give a much more prominent feeling of being a character within the world, rather than having the world revolve around you. In my experience, there was only one really impactful moment in the main storyline (>> Kneel. >>Attack. If you know, you know). When compared to the storylines around your fellow students, it just falls relatively flat.

Overall, the game shows a great starting point for a series, but if the current trajectory is followed, I imagine it'll be vastly overshadowed by a sequel. The developers are in a hard place, having to balance the expectations of the various audiences interested in the game (I particularly feel bad for the people who somehow had the expectation this would be like "Harry Potter Animal Crossing", as one of my girlfriend's friends had said), but this is a solid foundation to start from. If there's one direction I would hope for expansion in a sequel, I'd love for there to be more emphasis on the "life-sim" aspects of being a student at Hogwarts. For better or worse, I feel more like an adventurer who occasionally takes a class, rather than a student who goes on adventures.

If the developers keep an ear open for feedback, a future installment could easily be in the realm of truly incredible games, but hey, "great" isn't a bad place to start.

Addendum: To emphasize the idea of how much more the game could have been, I went and checked what ChatGPT's ideas were with the prompt "Can you come up with creative and surreal ideas for a quest in a Harry Potter RPG?". While a lot of them do resemble stories that have appeared in other RPGs, that's not exactly worse than the existing situation. A few highlights follow:

The Never-Ending Staircase: The player must navigate a seemingly endless staircase that constantly shifts and changes direction. At every landing, they encounter strange creatures and puzzles they must solve to progress

The Time Loop: The player finds themselves trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. They must use their knowledge of past iterations to change the future and break the cycle.

The Island of Talking Objects: The player finds themselves on an island where all objects have come to life and gained the ability to speak. They must help the objects solve their problems and restore order to the island.

The Dreamworld: The player must enter into a magical dream world, where reality is warped and anything is possible. They must navigate through a series of surreal landscapes and solve puzzles that involve bending the laws of physics and magic. The end goal is to defeat a powerful dream demon and awaken from the dream world

• Playtime: 51 hours (99% of quests done, screenshot below)

• Played: 2023 (46h) & 2026 (5h)

• Context: I thought most movies were solid or good (except 2 and 7) and i liked the books, but i'm not a fan.

Intro

Back in 2023 & 2024 i abandoned a bunch of games and this was one of them. I finally got back into it only to discover that finishing the main quest took only 1-2 hours, lol.

The Good

• Core gameplay is really fun.
• Nice music.
• Pretty visuals.
• Voice acting is well done.
• Interface makes sense.
• Story, easy, normal and hard difficulty options.
• You can save freely.
• Solid controls.
• Flying is fun and let's you avoid some climbing/puzzling.
• Optional puzzles and minigames are truly optional.
• I don't think i encountered any bugs.
• Decent to good story elements.
• Quite brutal violence for something aimed at kids.
• You can kill entire groups with abracadabra.

The Bad

• The areas outside Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are rather bland.
• Hogwarts is annoying to navigate.
• The lockpicking minigame is dumb and pointless.
• Hotkey bars should not cost skill points.
• I had to look up the location of a couple of things.

The Ugly

• JK Rowling.
• Wizards oppress goblins but the goblins are the antagonists and you murder dozens of them.
• There's an entire slave race (house elves) and you see them working all over Hogwarts Castle. It's really disturbing.

Conclusion

Hogwarts Legacy is an expertly made game with mostly just minor flaws. For the most part it's a joy to play. I imagine this is every Harry Potter fan's wet dream. However, while i did like playing in the areas not seen in the films, they are fairly generic. Combined with wizard/human supremacist elements they keep the game from being great.

PS: Don't buy this game, JK Rowling is a transphobe who is friends with Neo-Nazis.

Completion

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.

The game is interesting, and for those who are fans of the Harry Potter saga, it adds a simple but careful story that uses an old timeline, so as not to intertwine with the main stories. The graphics are very beautiful, and the soundtrack is good. I liked the dubbing in my native language (Brazilian Portuguese) and found the technology used in speech impressive, as I could clearly see that the lips moved according to the pronunciation of words in Portuguese, not in the original English. Whatever technology was used, it was very interesting.

Unfortunately, however, the game has some graphical issues here and there, and I didn't find the 'Ray Tracing' experience satisfactory, to the point that I disabled the feature even though I have an RTX 3060.

Finally, I found the quests enjoyable, even the side quests, which I found more elaborate than some other games that create any nonsense just to 'fill time.'

The gameplay starts a bit confusing, but I felt that I had more fun from the middle to the end of the game, after better understanding the use of spells and unlocking additional slots to use more spells together (using talents).

Pros:

• Beautiful graphics and a lively, vibrant world
• Very harmonious and intelligent integration with the stories of the Harry Potter universe
• Interesting quests for the most part

Cons:

• Technical and graphical issues that can be a bit bothersome at times
• I didn't like the preparation timer for potions at least

This game is a decent open world game overall. It has all the things open world games are expected to have. Lot's of map icons to check off, some side quests and some other secrets.

This game definetly tries to flirt with Harry Potter fans through different story bits that feels like it's pulled straight from the Harry Potter series. So maybe if that grabs you, it's all great. But i can't say im that easy of a date, to me it just felt cheap.

The combat is overall fun, but most of it is solved by a thunderbrew, even on harder difficulty.

In terms of spells there are a few, but a lot of them do similar things in combat, so you end up running with the ones with most utility. There are some i don't think i ever used unless i had to for puzzles.

Overall the stories are decent, but some parts of the story really threw me off in a bad way. I wouldn't say this game contains top notch writing for most of it.

There are quite a lot of things that made me personally not connect to the character in the game. Like how you go through the game, just crushing trolls, goblins, bandits by the dozens and then the character goes "i can't believe i defeated an ashwinder" when it's the 600th one today. There's also how the game REALLY tries to justify hunting down animals to sell under the guise of "rescuing them".

The 3 different styles of mounts also kinda felts pointless when a broom does everything you need really.

TLDR: It's a decent open world game, especially if you're a deep potter-fan. But it has a lot of flaws in design and writing.

PC NOTICE: i did have quite a lot of goofy bugs with the version off steam, but i had nothing game-breaking.