Short Review of Hogwarts Legacy After 22 hours
If you don’t want to spoil the game with spoilers, skip the article
When this game was announced, and pre-sales were made available, I knew I would want to get it as the setting of the magical world where Harry Potter was set close to my heart. However, the question was what platform I would choose to play the game on.
Since the game was a target for modders, I decided to go for the PC platform, where I had already tried some mods. Playstation tempted me through an exclusive quest, but that will probably be made available to everyone after a year anyway, and the Nintendo Switch version was still a long way off.
So I bought the game in the Digital Deluxe edition for PC, where there was early access 72h before the official release. It didn’t work out through the difficulties on Steam, where keys acquired outside the steam platform were not allowed to be activated before the official release, everything was eventually resolved after a few hours, and the game was able to be downloaded and eventually launched.
First impressions
When you start the game, you have to create a character. The characters don’t seem to me personally either downright female or male, it’s something in between, but after a few minutes in “The Sims” editor, you can customize the character to your image.
I chose a female character, now you will laugh for sure, but I wouldn’t say I like to look for hours at a male background from the third view. After booting up, the game was very smooth, although compared to the game after modding, where some things are greatly optimized, including fixing some FPS drops but mainly more pleasing colours, it doesn’t reach much.
Still, I would have played the game without mods if I had to. So far, I’ve played about 22 hours, and in that time, I’ve gotten to level 20.
I haven’t done that many quests from the main storyline, as I’ve been more into exploring the world. The game itself I enjoy immensely. There is some excellent dialogue, which sometimes sounded weird as if someone was trying to move their voice level down and up after dubbing them.
The castle environments are great, and when the game has to load when moving between locations, it’s all very snappy, there’s a trick in the game to do this where you slow down walking, and in most cases, that’s enough to load the next part of the castle. However, the game doesn’t just occur within the Hogwarts castle but outside of it.
Spells
New spells are mostly learned in the main storyline. No harm in that, but if you decide to explore the island first, as I did, then you will run into the problem that some enemies will be too difficult to defeat. Still, it’s all solved by visiting a few classes where you learn new spells.
Suddenly the duels will be much more fun cards will be shuffled again when you unlock the talent system because the talent distribution can significantly change the rules of duels in your favour.
The whole duelling system is very well balanced, as for each talent you make or spell you learn and then assign to your list of spells, you use scales with how you know everything. As time goes on, you’ll enjoy the fights more and more.
Since we’re in a magical world, you’ll also be using spells to solve various puzzles or playing “The Sims” in the chamber of ultimate need, where you’ll place various desks and decorations. However, the work tables are not just for decoration. For example, a table for identifying objects or a botanical table where you can plant plants will be useful.
For a smooth progression through the game, you will need to know how to make or buy potions, but everything will be spiced up by magical plants, where such biting cabbage will be your OP helper in the toughest fights.
Travel
You can use either the fast travel net or the broom to travel, and when you catch a flying creature, you can also use it. I don’t use fast travel much and rarely walk or fly everywhere, as I enjoy the game environment.
If I want to finish the game 100%, I wouldn’t be surprised if I do since the side quests are very fun, the puzzles are fine, and even the main storyline is great so far. Everything fits naturally into the game.
It’s not like a forced hunt for pointless activities to get an achievement. Here, you naturally go through the game and meet all sorts of quests that are very natural in the game, and when you go around, you catch a flying page or find some hidden parchment.
Conclusion
Quite often, I have a problem with games I stop enjoying because of their repetitiveness. For example, I didn’t finish the albeit great Horizon Zero Dawn on the PlayStation because after playing 20 hours, everything was over and over again.
In Hogwarts Legacy, it feels more natural and better dosed to me. Maybe it’s all because the fights vary in difficulty, and I don’t always have to hit a specific point to reveal a mechanical creature’s weakness, like in Horizon.
At the moment, I can see many more hours of fun. In any case, this is one of the games that deserves a Game of the Year (GOTY) award.
The biggest damage I see as the fact that the game will be available on the Nintendo Switch, so even on this “very limited” hardware, the game will be playable, so maybe it would be interesting to port the game to the Apple Silicon platform, as the hardware would be ready there, we just need to have developers willing to prepare their games for this smaller market.
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