Hogwarts Legacy Review

Lots of battles will look like the above

Quick Info
Reviewed by:	Mark Goninon
Developer:	Avalanche Software
Publisher:	Warner Bros
Release Date:	10 Feb 2023
Time played:	28 hours (INCOMPLETE)

I live in a household filled with Wizarding World fans, and while I've been made to watch the movies, I'm only a few books in with respect to reading the series with one of my daughters. So while I have a very rudimentary grasp of the lore, I'd never be a serious contender in a game of "Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit". I find that I tend to get a better grasp of lore when playing games. For example, I knew hardly anything about "Game of Thrones" but thanks to Telltale's Game of Thrones game, I've learnt about Jon Snow, the depraved Ramsay Bolton along with a few other major characters which make cameos. I also learned more about Celebrimbor after playing Shadow of Mordor, helping expand my Lord of the Rings knowledge.

Despite Hogwarts Legacy being set at a different time to the books and films, I thought the game would be a good opportunity to swot up on the "Harry Potter" universe. Hogwarts Legacy is set in and around a 19th century Hogwarts. You play the role of a student who soon discovers that evil is afoot and in order to get to the bottom of it, you'll learn new spells in class, gather loot from vanquishing enemies in the surrounding countryside and cast the "Revelio" spell an obscene number of times. It's actually been a while since I played this game since I originally played it soon after release, but for some reason or another, lost interest in it. The following review is based off notes I made about the game back in 2023 and yes, I know I didn't complete the game, but Hogwarts Legacy, like many open world RPGs, is hard to get back into if left dormant for too long.

Anyway I did get to play it for 28 hours, so how was it?

Travelling by broom is one of many ways you can get around the valley

Far Cry: Hogwarts

From the very start, it's clear that Hogwarts Legacy draws inspiration from other open world RPG games such as Skyrim and Far Cry. Many of the game's sidequests keep you busy for the sake of increasing your playtime and some draw parallels with the challenges you get in games such as Far Cry 3. For example, in the Far Cry games you often receive a challenge to beat a best course time while driving a vehicle: replace that vehicle with a broom on an aerial course and you've suddenly got Hogwarts Legacy. Remember how you'd have to hunt animals down in order to extract crafting materials in the Far Cry games? In Hogwarts Legacy, you're also hunting down animals but you rescue them instead, using a bag similar to Newt Scamander's: the end result is the same though as you use the fur from these creatures to craft things. Also, similar to other games of this genre, there is a lot of killing in this game, and I'm not so sure what the books or films have to say about the body count you rack up considering it gives Rambo a run for his money.

The main "gimmick" in this game or thing that makes it stand out from other open world RPGs is its magic system. Not only is magic used in combat where a rock paper scissors model is employed meaning you have to match the colour of your spell with the colour of the opponent's shield, but you also use well known spells from the books and films in order to solve puzzles. For example, while navigating a secret tunnel to Hogsmeade you're required to use a combination of Levioso, Accio and Incendio spells in order to get through, instead of just bludgeoning your way through waves of goblins (although that does happen too).

You'll notice the ancestors of many well known characters in this game

Attempt at Authenticity

While a majority of the game employs the usual tropes from open world RPGs, the developer makes good attempts at remaining authentic to many aspects of the series. Of course, it wouldn't be a game about Hogwarts without a Sorting Hat quiz (and I'm glad to say, it sorted me in the correct house: Hufflepuff). While there's no score by John Williams in this game, lead composer Chuck E. Myers along with J. Scott Rakozy and Peter Murray do a fantastic job in imitating the style of his iconic soundtrack. Many of the locations will be familiar to fans, including common rooms and classrooms at Hogwarts, shops at Hogsmeade and other places around the valley. Even the sidequests draw inspiration from previous media including a sidequest called "Follow the Butterfiles", a reference to a line Ron Weasley utters in "Chamber of Secrets".

The game definitely looks pretty

Graphically Impressive, If You Have the Hardware

This game is the prettiest "Harry Potter" game I've ever seen although I did notice some graphical glitches and issues when I initially played the game. When I first played the game, I experienced frequent loading screens and each time you booted the game, it took a couple of minutes for the shaders to load. To be fair though, this was all while using my standard 7200RPM hard disk and Hogwarts Legacy made me realise we are now way past the era of running AAA games (especially large ones like Hogwarts Legacy which takes 71GB of disk space) on the hard disks of yesteryear: SSD is the way to go. Thankfully, after transferring the game to the SSD, the performance did improve by quite a bit. The framerate drops seemed to disappear and loading only took a matter of seconds. So if you do ever play this game, a word of advice: install it on an SSD! It runs terribly otherwise.

He looks thrilled

Gaming Dialogue Tropes Breaks Immersion

While I did mention earlier that attempts were made to make this as authentic an experience as possible, there are some oldschool gaming dialogue tropes that rear their ugly heads. For starters, the player character sometimes goes from 0 up to 11 in terms of their mood, such as when they're fighting goblins. Normally, your player character sounds quite placid, stoic, polite, even bored whenever interacting with anybody else. But when it comes to clearing goblin camps, your player character sounds angry and vengeful, as if they were a firebrand preacher exorcising the Devil from the lands.

This changing of mood at the drop of a hat isn't just reserved for the player character though, NPCs are sometimes guilty of this too. In completing one side quest, when delivering bad news to a merchant about their dead brother, she is literally distraught for three seconds and after that, she's back to trading with you as if nothing had happened. It's a usual trope of gaming for sure, but it really breaks the immersion. Maybe they shouldn't have associated quests that are intended to pull at the heart strings with merchant NPCs? It would prevent this kind of thing happening in the first place.

Also, whenever you set foot in Hogsmeade or a nearby hamlet, your character always has to make a comment about it which gets old really quick. Save for major quests, it probably would be best if nothing is mentioned at all.

8	Hogwarts Legacy feels a lot like Far Cry with magic and it succeeds at being authentic to the source material more often than not. It presents a visually appealing 19th century Hogwarts to explore despite suffering from some of the usual tropes of the open world RPG genre.

If you like this game, you might like…

• Far Cry 3 (2012)
• Shadow of Mordor (2014)
• Dragon Age Inquisition (2014)