Saturday Morning Gaming: Three Reviews of Hogwart’s Legacy

(Note: If you want to argue about the controversy surrounding the game, please do so in this thread dedicated to that topic. This post is about the game. Also, we’re going to have some light spoilers.)

As I am playing Hogwart’s Legacy, I am playing with three different people in mind.

1. The long-time Gamer who is vaguely aware of Harry Potter. Saw the trailers, maybe… never saw the movies or read the books. Is interested in the game because it’s a AAA game that is the #1 best-selling game in a long time and has Metacritic scores in the 80s and 90s.
2. The long-time Gamer who saw the movies (and maybe read the books? But if they read them, they only read them once). Is interested in the game because they’ve heard it’s good and they have some fond memories of the Harry Potter franchise.
3. The long-time Gamer who saw the movies, read the books, read fanfic, knows what House they got sorted into, went to Universal Studios to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, says stuff like “Points for Hufflepuff!” in real life, and so on. Is interested in the game because ARE YOU KIDDING ME IT’S AN OPPORTUNITY TO FINALLY GO TO HOGWARTS.

(For the record, I’m considering that each of these different gamers is playing on the PS5).

So let’s look at how Gamer #1 looks at the game first.

The game has really good graphics but uses them haphazardly. Like, when you’re out and about in the world, the world is GORGEOUS. But then you get into a conversation with this or that person and they’re having an uncanny conversation with you. It’s like they’ve got a thousand-yard stare as they’re talking to you and vaguely looking over your right shoulder. The voice acting is pretty good but the faces are weird. It’s like having a good talk with someone with pretty severe Asperger’s Syndrome.

There’s so much that they don’t explain. When you first get into a particular cart, it doesn’t have any horses at all but then you’re attacked by a dragon and suddenly the flying horses show up right after the attack? That doesn’t make any sense. And then you touch a key and it’s a teleporter?

The missions for your character are copy/pasted. You’ll see the ever popular “fetch quest”. You’ll see the fetch quest’s sister quest: “delivery quest”. You’ll see the “Destroy/Assassinate Quest”, “Survive Quest”, and “Race Quest”. This isn’t really the game’s fault… but it’s not really breaking any new ground here. Some of the items/potions are cute. You have to grow your stun grenade but they call it a “mandrake”. You have to make your own healing potions with stuff you grow yourself in herbology class.

Oh, speaking of class, don’t worry that you’re spending all of your time in class. You go to class the first time, the professor gives a short speech, then you get a spell and a mission. The mission hinges on the new spell. Then you never really have to go to class again. Maybe there will be a quest that says “go to class!” but you go to class and you get a 10 second cutscene where the professor animatedly gives a speech, you see your classmates nod or plant a seed or stir a cauldron, then you’ll see your classmates leave the classroom leaving you to go up to your professor who will give you a mission. You really only have to endure any given class once.

Flying around with a broom is fun, though. It’s fun enough that you won’t automatically resort to fast travel unless the travel is *REALLY* far. The graphics help with that because it’s nice to fly around and look at the gorgeous scenery. Remember how fun it was to glide around Gotham in Arkham Knight? It’s like that.

Combat is pretty strong. There’s a mechanic where you get purple spells, red spells, and yellow spells and when you see an enemy with a purple, red, or yellow shield, you have to hit them with an attack of the appropriate color. Everybody gets defensive shields but you but that makes sense on a gameplay level. There’s a parry/counterattack mechanic to make up for it that your enemies don’t enjoy. On top of that, there’s a dodge mechanic and your enemies don’t get that one either. When you see your Spidey-Sense Tingle, note the color. If it’s yellow, parry and hold parry to counterattack. If it’s red, DODGE! There’s a sneaking mechanic too… there’s some light overlap with the Batman Arkham games and that’s, seriously, a good thing. They give you too many spells, though. You need maybe half of the spells they shovel at you and, on top of that, they take forever to give you the spells that you *REALLY* want. The unlock spell? That took forever! They’re too busy giving you filler spells that you will only use once.

Speaking of taking forever, the game takes *FOREVER* to get rolling. You’re playing for multiple hours before they give you a broom. Why did they take forever to give you a broom? They take even longer to give you an unlock spell. Why did they take forever to give you an unlock spell? And to upgrade your unlock spell past the weakest level, you have to do side quests? Augh! They’ve got a nice little dolly-dress-up mechanic, though. You can get a new scarf that gives you +4 to defense but, even if it’s ugly, you can get the +4 bonus but give your character the appearance of wearing your personal favorite scarf (the one you got way back when you were level 6). They cap how much stuff you’re carrying though… Just let me carry 20 pairs of glasses! It doesn’t matter! They’re glasses!

All in all, it’s Yet Another Open World with strong combat, copy/pasted quests, more side quests than you could shake a stick at, good graphics, a nice flying mechanic, and cutscenes that don’t explain anything. Not a bad game, by any means… but it’s not the best one to come out in the last year or so and you don’t see what all of the fuss is about. You are not inspired to read the books.

—–

So let’s look at Gamer #2.

The game has really good graphics. They do a good job of showing the faces of the wizarding world but they are all staring over your right shoulder.

They’re spreading on the “you’re in Magical Britain!” with a trowel. Invisible horses! Portkeys! Gringott’s! Goblins! This is actually kinda cool seeing these places for yourself. It’s nice to explore them and really look at them instead of just having them in the background of the movie.

The missions are pretty generic, but they make sense for being at Hogwart’s. It makes sense that the potion’s professor would tell you to find some ingredients before he’ll help you learn a new spell. It makes sense that the Herbology professor will make you buy seeds before learning a new spell. But you get to grow your own mandrakes and grow ingredients for your potions that you’ll make in class.

The classes are okay. You’ll go to class the first time and it feels like going to class but after that, meh. You get a short cutscene. It doesn’t feel like you’re going to Hogwarts to go to class but you’re going there to cut class. Go to class once, then spend four days doing side quests, then maybe go to class again, but only to unlock three new side quests.

Also, you’re a fifth year starting his or her first year a Hogwarts. Why? What’s your backstory? Eh, it doesn’t matter.

Oooh, they have brooms. The brooms are pretty cool. It feels like actually flying. The game doesn’t have Quidditch, though. They probably realized that, as a sport, Quidditch sucks and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. How would you make it work? It’s tough enough flying a racing course. They’d probably just give you a Golden Snitch minigame and have that win the game by 10 points and give you a cutscene of the big play guy getting the big play and JUST BARELY winning the game. Seriously, Quidditch sucks.

Flying is nice, though.

Combat is pretty good. For some reason they taught your classmates shielding spells but they didn’t teach them to you. So just cast purple against purple shields, yellow against yellow shields, and red against red shields. They gave you stupefy and they didn’t give it to anybody else so use it to your advantage. They give you the big spells from the movies and then they decided to give you even more spells on top of that. How many spells do you need? And they take their sweet time in doling them out. Go to class and maybe get *ONE*. Do a side quest and maybe get one that you’ll never use. It’s not even that they keep the best ones for last. It’s that they give you the ones that you need and just keep giving you situational ones that you use once and then never think about again. I got the “reparo” spell to repair things and I’ve used it maybe twice. You see broken stuff all the time! Just cast “reparo”!

The game is pretty good but it has practically zero replay value. I’m playing as a member of a particular house but I can’t tell. I’m “GENERIC HOGWARTS STUDENT” and I might have a red bracelet, I might have a yellow one, I might have a blue one, or I might have a green one but it’s not like being a member of a particular house gives you anything. It’s a missed opportunity, really. They should have conversations that give you the following options: Earnest Option, Sarcastic Option, House Specific Option. So you know that if you’re a Slytherin, you say something sneaky and ambitious but if you play a Hufflepuff, you say something nice and team-building. Maybe even a handful of house-specific quests! Slytherins have to take over a situation that has devolved into chaos, Hufflepuffs have to make people stop fighting and be friends, Ravenclaws have to be clever, Griffindors have to be brave and inspire others. As it is, you have a bracelet that has a nice color on it.

All in all, it’s got good graphics, does a good job of building on the stuff they showed you in the movies, throws you in the deep end right away for the world building and takes too long to give you a broom, but it’s pretty good and worth playing even though you’ll never touch it again after you beat it.

Maybe you’ll read the books again.

—–

So let’s look at Gamer #3.

Holy cow, the game is GORGEOUS. The people who made the game knew what people who would want to play the game would want to see in Hogwarts and they provided it. They knew that Hogwarts was a museum and so they gave you a museum experience. They knew that the portraits were magical and so they gave you magical portraits. There are corners where all of the paintings have musical instruments. The paintings are playing songs together! They’re jamming! They show you skeletons around the school and globes and suits of armor and staircases that build themselves and different washrooms and you know whether you’re next to the potions classroom or the defense against the dark arts classroom or horticulture or wherever just by looking around. It’s like exploring Hogwarts. FINALLY. A GAME LETS YOU EXPLORE HOGWARTS!!! And, get this, there are various puzzles around the campus that give you bonuses for solving them. There’s a puzzle that involves the pendulum in the clock tower. There’s a puzzle that involves the braziers on one of the bridges. The game rewards you for looking at statues! And there are a *LOT* of statues! And the statues have descriptions!

The game takes the history of Magical Britain seriously and doesn’t dumb it down. Early on, they give you a cutscene where you’re in a cart drawn by thestrals. You’re a new fifth year and you’re a young and innocent kid. You can’t see them! When your cart gets attacked, you’re given first-hand experience of Death Itself and then the thestrals come into view. My arm hairs stood up.

You talk to a lot of people about a lot of things. They give you different quests to do and, yeah, they’re fetch quests or destroy quests or whatever, but they all make sense. The history buff wants you to learn about the Trials of Merlin scattered across the land. Your fellow student wants you to collect her gobstones that had been stolen and hidden. The groundskeeper (also a squib!) wants you to collect statues from around the grounds at night… but he teaches you a spell? How would a squib teach you a spell?

They tease you with the classes but you don’t really go to classes much. You go once, the professor gives a good lesson, but then you never really have to go to class again. You read the books and you see that Harry Potter goes to class every day, pretty much. He does his shenanigans after the school day or on weekends. In this game? Meh. Classes are assumed. Go! Do your side quest! Get some extra credit by seeing me during my office hours! I suppose it wouldn’t be much of a game if you were just sitting there listening to the “bottled fire” speech over and over again, but they should have had *MORE* classes. You’re a fifth year! A fifth year without a backstory but a fifth year nonetheless!

It might have been nice to learn whether you were a member of a muggle family who only just now got found or a member of a magical family where everybody thought you were a squib instead of a late bloomer who had Protagonist Powers. What’s your backstory? Did you live under the stairs? Were you a much loved member of a loving family? They don’t tell you! Your story starts when you go to Hogwarts! Maybe that’s the point…

Holy cow, they have brooms. Albie Weekes not only sells you brooms, he sells you BROOM UPGRADES!!! They don’t have the Nimbus 2000 or the Firebolt but those didn’t come out for a hundred years after this game. The point is that you have the best brooms available in 1890 and you are helping Albie figure out the upgrades required that provide the necessary foundation to make the Firebolt in 100 years.

They don’t have Quidditch yet, but they’ll probably try to offer it as DLC. They made such a big deal of the Headmaster cancelling the Quidditch season, surely it’s because we’re finally going to play Quidditch if we shell out another $10. Those jerks. They just know I’m going to play it. I want to be a Seeker. I’ll be the best Seeker for a century.

COMBAT IS AMAZING. They give you control spells, force spells, and damage spells. (There are a bunch of “essential spells” but you’re just going to get those anyway.) They color code them! Control are yellow, force are purple, damage are red. If you see someone with a special shield, hit them with the associated spell! Maybe it’d have been more themely to be able to get through a damage shield with a force or control spell… but who cares? It’s easy on the eyes to see: Red Shield means cast a red spell. And so on through all the colors.

AND THEY GIVE YOU SO MANY SPELLS! Seriously, most of the spells you read about in the books show up in the game. They even let you learn some of the unforgivable curses! Don’t worry, though. They’re not *THAT* unforgiveable. And it’s not like you don’t kill a bunch of people. It’s kind of unsettling. It’s one thing to fight against enchanted suits of armor or giant frogs attacking you, but they have you fight goblins and humans! And you kill them! Sure, the game says “they’re just napping” but we all know what’s up. That was a fire spell I hit them with. They’re not tuckered out. And unforgiveable curses? There are Aurors that go their whole careers that never pull their wands in self-defense but you kill a handful of dark mages starting a couple of hours after the game starts! “It’s okay! They’re dark wizards!”, you may say. Dude. I’m a fifth year. Killing dark wizards shouldn’t come so naturally.

The game is everything I’ve dreamed about. I don’t know how much replay value it has, but it’s awfully nice to visit for the first time and feel like a thriving member of the Hogwarts community. Seriously, I’ve run around and seen stuff from the movies, I’ve run around and seen stuff from the books, and I’ve run around and seen stuff from fanfics that I wrote and submitted.

This is the game that I’ve dreamt about. I’m so glad that it’s finally here.

—–

My buddy is married to a wonderful woman who is not a gamer. Sure, she knows how to hold a controller and can play a game if you held a wand to her head but, for the most part, she doesn’t really get into games that much. HOWEVER: She is very much into Harry Potter. She grew up with the books. The books helped her through a rough patch in her adolescence. She had the daydreams about going to Hogwarts.

She got her hands on the game.

I asked my buddy about how she felt about the game and he told me: “I’m not allowed to play it when she’s not in the house. She told me that this is *HER* game and not *MY* game. I can play it when she is in the room and only the parts of the game that she has already played. I am allowed to take over when she is in a fight she can’t win or dealing with a mechanic that isn’t intuitive enough. But she is playing this game and loves it and she doesn’t want me to play it and get past where she is. Because she loves it. My goodness, she loves it.”

—–

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is the splash screen of Hogwarts Legacy. Screenshot taken by the author.)