Hogwarts Legacy: A game brimming with magic and life

Hogwarts Legacy is perfect for Harry Potter fans who have always dreamed of casting spells, concocting potions, and taking on Harry’s persona, but it also excels without being a fan of the books or movies. You will spend hours exploring the wonderful world, since there is so much content available, which includes puzzles, defeating fantastic beasts, meeting wizards or witches like yourself and endless exploration. The game isn’t perfect but offers an all-round great experience.

The game plunges you right into the action once you customise your character’s appearance and voice, complete with thrilling cut sequences and top-notch dialogue. A key component of your wizarding training is Professor Fig, with whom you immediately strike up a friendship. The game’s introductory tutorial, which lasts for about an hour, involves touring Gringotts, engaging in combat, learning the magic system, and experiencing the amazing experience of being a wizard while also becoming familiar with some of the fundamental controls. The character growth and worldbuilding are both evident practically right away, as are the spells that the game gives you access to right away to help you get closer to the sorting ceremony.

You have two choices during the sorting ceremony: choose your own house or let the hat choose for you. We allowed the sorting hat to do its work, and it became clear right away how similar the movies were. Your first genuine view of Hogwarts in the game is when you arrive, and let me tell you, it’s far better than we could have ever dreamed. Take in all the minute nuances Hogwarts has to offer, from moving paintings to stunning furnishings, which combine to create an unforgettable Harry Potter experience. Explore the Great Hall, house common rooms, and so much more. As well as this, the beautiful soundtrack also adds to the immersive experience.

The developers clearly spent a lot of effort making Hogwarts feel precisely the way you would like it to by filling the school with a never-ending supply of riddles and interesting locations. There are riddles to solve that may be solved using various hints, doors that can only be opened by the spell Alohomora, and numerous side quests that can only be completed by engaging with your fellow students. After playing one or two of these, though, they might start to seem a little dull, and the conversation can start to sound a little too familiar.

The game instantly throws you into character development with the different Hogwarts classes available, and you start to meet students who will be very helpful as you explore the world. As a student, you are required to practise your spells in front of your instructors and peers, as well as brewing and learning how to create potent potions. One such spell is Wingardium Leviosa, which proves to be quite useful and important in the early stages of combat. Although the classes occasionally felt rushed and left me wanting more, the teachers at Hogwarts frequently made up for it with ridiculous comedy and witty exchanges. Just a little bit more detail and slower pace would be nice in the classes, please.

The NPCs you encounter both outside of Hogwarts and inside of it are as weird and bizarre as you might anticipate. The majority of NPCs have distinct personalities and add to the game’s uniqueness. As you explore and delve deeper into the game, you will grow attached to the well-developed students you will frequently engage with. Sebastien serves as the best illustration of this, since he immediately fits the mould of the average Slitherin student thanks to his devious nature.

You quickly gain the freedom to go around at will, and the first area you visit is Hogsmeade after completing a few assignments. The shops and sellers in Hogsmeade can offer a wide range of goods, including clothing and potions. Similar to Hogwarts, a lot of effort has been made to make Hogsmeade feel special because you’ll probably visit there frequently as you go through the game. Similar to how Hogwarts is set out, but without as many obstacles. You can sample the renowned butter beer, go to Ollivander’s, and even interact with additional Wizards and Witches. Each vendor has a unique offering and will help you build up your characters better.

The world has a little bit of everything, so Hogsmeade isn’t the only intriguing site to explore. The game has a captivating open world that does not fall short. Whether it’s taking over a bandit camp, exploring the Forbidden Forest in search of spiders, looking for collectibles, or seeking out creatures to capture, there’s always something to do. You can even practise your combos in the duelling club. Hogwarts Legacy has a lot of activities, creatures, and different tasks to complete, which makes it quite easy to get distracted. Unfortunately, the lack of variation in its enemies leaves it feeling a little flat because you would frequently come up against the same group of foes.

When playing the game, the bad performance was one of the first things we noticed. Even though the game normally stabilised at a steady 60 frames per second while we were playing on a 3070 on medium settings, we encountered a number of performance spikes during cut scenes and while moving around congested regions. This became more and more annoying because it frequently occurred at Hogwarts and occasionally rendered the game unusable. Various problems have subsequently been resolved by an update, although a few minor performance issues remain.

As you can see, the game has a straightforward gear system that allows you to equip and disarm any items while you’re in motion. Each object you possess helps with either offence or defence, and some are more rare than others based on colour, ranging from green to orange. Most of the best equipment comes from exploring and looting, and the higher level and rarer the colour, the better stats you earn. Additionally, you can add characteristics to your gear, which grant you highly specific bonuses like raising a spell’s damage. Although the game has many bizarre clothes available, you may utilise the reskin tool to change your character’s appearance so that they resemble wizards rather than clowns. Aside from that, having a limited amount of gear in your inventory at once became a little annoying because it frequently required dropping or destroying multiple items in order to pick up another. The amount can be raised by completing Merlin Trials, however these are not always accessible due to the development of the plot and are, once more, quite tedious to complete.

Hogwarts Legacy’s missions are typically enjoyable, and it’s crucial to complete them in order to advance and unlock the game’s more crucial abilities, including flying and black magic. Many of the adventures give you the opportunity to discover new spells and explore the entire world. The game includes over 100 side quests to complete and an engaging story, which takes approximately 30 hours to complete. The side missions, though, seemed quite tiresome. The side missions often seemed to have the identical tasks for you to complete. As is common in RPGs, you were frequently given the same straightforward duty, and Hogwarts Legacy regrettably followed the norm. It became like a chore rather than making side missions feel interesting to complete. I simply anticipated a little bit more diversity than what was provided.

The game’s combat is actually a breath of fresh air. Your magic arsenal grows as you complete missions and other tasks all throughout the world, starting out with a modest selection. The game’s bosses and adversaries get tougher as you progress, so you need to learn more combos and cast stronger spells. The gameplay presents a little difficulty to fully learn, and employing the right spells is essential to defeating a variety of adversaries because the game uses a color-based spell system to counter the threat you are facing. The concept is that only a particular set of spells can be used to break shields of a given color. In addition, the parrying and rolling in the game adds an element of skill to your combos. It’s definitely not on the level of Elden Ring, however, it does still take time to master and becoming a high-level wizard is not so simple.

Only 23 of the game’s 31 spells can be equipped in actual play. The remaining spells open doors and treasure chests, such as Alohomora. We found a few spells that we stuck with because they seemed to be the meta in the game and others were frequently ignored, but it’s good to have a wide variety because frequently some spells serve a very specific purpose, like Repairo, which can be used to simply repair broken objects or items. Unfortunately, when it came to dark magic, we found the Avada Kedavra to be far too overpowered, as it simply one-hits enemies, and as a result, we avoided using it because it destroyed the game’s challenging aspect. Overall, the spell selection is excellent, and it’s especially great that it takes some effort to obtain each spell rather than simply being able to obtain them all at once, as learning new spells is more rewarding. As you can only use four spells at once in battle, the process that allows you to equip and de-equip them is often cumbersome and annoying, so this let the combat down significantly.

The room of requirements was a fantastic addition to the game because it allows for a great deal of customization and lets you practically design your own space with any furniture you like. The room includes a place to identify unidentified goods, a place to cultivate plants for various purposes, a place to feed and pet special beasts, a way to upgrade your items, and a place to unwind away from the magic. The more beasts you capture, the more opportunities to upgrade your gear to its fullest as they provide various items in order to be used for this purpose.

Hogwarts Legacy is a remarkable Harry Potter experience all around. We were pleasantly impressed by the amount of material and the difficult combat because it has a little bit of everything. We honestly never thought that the game’s idiosyncrasies or little problems were enough to prevent me from enjoying it. The open world was fascinating and gave me the impression that we were playing a Harry Potter game right away, which clearly is the goal. Aside from these little difficulties, the game is much better than we could have anticipated and is highly recommended if you are interested in an incredible open world experience and casting spells excites you.