Hogwarts Legacy – The Review

Many gamers and Harry Potter fans have been waiting many months for Hogwarts Legacy to be released since the announcement of the game.

Available on: PS5, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Windows

Although we have seen many developers try and fail at delivering a harry potter themed game, such as the Lego Potter games and Harry Potter Kinect, none have come close to satisfying our gaming needs.

With this new game, Hogwarts Legacy, we are finally able to see a game manage to capture the true magic from the wizarding world. The game gives you the complete Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry vibe and feeling that you expect to get from the film or the books. This game has managed to master the elements of spellcasting combat making it actually very thrilling instead of the usual awkwardness that a lot of spell casting games tend to project.

Each character that you get to interact with in this story is also unforgettable and you’ll be able to make strong bonds with many fellow students and professors. 

The Plot

Just as you’d expect from any of the Harry Potter tales, the Hogwarts Legacy plot has a lot of unknowns in it that you’ll just be expected to accept as it is a magical world that just won’t make sense to you all the time. This magical third-person RPG game starts with you, a young wizard, who has just been transferred to Hogwarts starting as a fifth year student. In this game you’ll be able to do everything from just attending regular classes at Hogwarts to fighting huge monsters with your wand and flying around the map on your hippogriff. 

Before you start the game you will get the opportunity to create your unique character and since there are so many different customizable options that you are able to choose from you can really spend a lot of time here and make your character your own.

You also quickly learn that your character is super special and has some sort of super-charged magical abilities that no one explains to you. Then when you are in the game you’ll be able to learn a lot of lore about different things around the school such as paintings and get advice from 100 years worth of dead characters about how to save the world. Which if you’re a wizarding world fan will be extremely interesting to you.

Then once you’ve been able to gather all this knowledge and meet all the characters you’ll embark on a huge adventure of good guys vs bad guys battle, which turns into an extremely enjoyable tale to remember. 

The Characters

The wizards and characters that you will interact with the most will be your fellow classmates, the bonds that you form with them will be important as they’ll be helping you out on quests. They will also be able to help you progress faster when it comes to your magical abilities. Some of the more memorable characters and students that you’ll form an instant connection with is Sebastian, who is a cocky student in the house Slytherin, and Natsai, who is smart and is in house Gryffindor.

Building these bonds with different students is important not only because it improves all your social links in the school but it will most definitely make your whole Hogwarts Legacy experience a lot more enjoyable. 

Then you also have professors in this game, with whom you can actually form quite a strong bond. One example is Professor Fig, who you meet as soon as you start the game and he’ll act as a mentor and a sidekick to you throughout your journey in the wizarding world.

Hogwarts Legacy does an amazing job at making each character feel important to the story of the game and an indispensable piece to the Hogwarts School. When you aren’t on adventures with them you’ll find them wandering around doing their own things and living their own lives, until you call upon them again or just want to hang out with them. This is definitely an area of the game that Hogwarts Legacy has perfected. 

The Wizarding World

Moving past all the brilliant characters and the amazing storyline, we get to look at where all of this takes place, and as soon as you jump into the game you will be awestruck as this world is everything that you could’ve wanted from a Potter game. The map is huge, as you will find yourself exploring and roaming through the halls and secret passageways of Hogwart. Flying through the Forbidden Forest on your broomstick to explore caves that are so dark you’ll have to use the Lumos spell to light it up.

So, no matter what type of mission, whether it be a boring side quest that you will have to complete, just being in this Wizarding World will make it both feel and look amazing. 

Sadly, there have been some downsides and little quirks in the games performance that some gamers have already started to notice. These issues include an inconsistent framerate at times and issues where the lighting changes from being too bright to too dark and come up mostly when you are travelling across the map at a fast pace.

Some people have even noticed that each door in Hogwarts also has a quick loading screen before you are able to enter into the room that you want, however, this is very understandable since there is so much to every room. 

Apart from these small performance issues that you may encounter in the game the Hogwarts Legacy game does actually tend to be pretty glitchy in general as it is quite a huge game. Some of these glitches that you may encounter could be you falling through the map, seeing one of the characters or students stuck in the environment or even something small like the person you’ll be talking to will just walk away from you during your conversation. Although these glitches may not be game-breaking they are still annoying and could make you pretty irritated when you are just trying to enjoy your new game. 

Combat

Most people wouldn’t expect the wand combat in this game would be thrilling or interesting at the least, but that is where you are mistaken. Hogwarts Legacy have found a way to make this combat style incredible as it’s challenging and captivates you at every combat encounter you are in.

Most people would’ve expected to just be shooting these magical balls of lights at enemies, over and over again, but that is just the tip of the ice-berg. When you find yourself in these battles you’ll have to dodge your enemies’ attacks and counter them with creative combos. A cool example of a combo that you will be able to perform on these enemies would be to pull them in close, with Accio, light them on fire, with Incendio, and then just blow them away with the explosive spell, Bombarda. With all the different combos that you’ll be able to learn and perfect, using them on enemies and making them look like fools will never get boring. 

However, even though you may have cool combos at the ready you should never go into a battle too cocky, because combat encounters can be very challenging and you might find yourself in a tough situation if you try showing off the new spells and skills you have just acquired.

Experimentation is the most important thing, when it comes to combat, as you’ll need to try the different spells that work best for you and then improve these skills to be the best wizard you can be. Just remember to not focus too hard on only one type of spell because as you progress in the fame you’ll notice that some enemies will have colour-coded shields that will only be able to be broken by a specific spell type, so be sure to try and learn as many as possible so you are well prepared for anything the battlefield throws at you. 

How Legacy Keeps You Intrigued As A Student At Hogwarts

One way that Hogwarts Legacy manages to keep their gamers playing, apart from the stunning environment and brilliant story, is that they reward the things that you do. This can range from earning some new gear to upgrade your stats, cosmetic items that you can use to improve your clothing, or the thing that most people will be chasing, new spells. Because in this game the only thing that will limit you from doing anything will be your spell casting knowledge.

For example, there is one sidequest, which upon completion, will grant you the Alohomora spell, which you will be able to use to unlock different doors that you previously weren’t able to get into. So by collecting these spells you won’t only have more tricks to choose from during battle but you’ll expand the map quite a bit. 

The gear that you find along your journey will be able to give you some extra resistances and buffs but won’t be thought of as a “build’ per say, it would more just be giving minor upgrades to your best items that grant minor improvements and not really game-changing.

One thing that Hogwarts Legacy does pride themselves on is their cool-looking clothing and different cosmetics, which they have hidden throughout the map for you to find. Even though these things may not add any value to the gameplay or performance of your character, you will definitely feel a lot cooler and special if you find something that you really like. 

Before you go on a rampage to try and find all these treasures and items, hidden all over the map, you’ll be pretty disappointed to hear that there won’t be enough space in your inventory to hoard all of the items as there is only space for a couple dozen items. So be sure to always have space in your inventory and clear out what isn’t needed in case you open a chest and find something that you love but won’t be able to take because your inventory is completely full.

Further on in the game you will be able to upgrade your inventory to cater for more objects but even this won’t be enough for the hoarders out there looking to try and collect every item in the game. 

Final thoughts

In almost every aspect of this game we see that Hogwarts Legacy just proves to be the best Harry Potter RPG game out there to this date. The huge open-world map that you will get to explore in this game manages to capture all of the wonders of the wizarding world in all its glory, whether that be the memorable characters, challenging battles or the amazing Hogwarts student fantasy that you get to live out.

Even though this game may have a few technical issues here and there and some poor enemy variety, this game still manages to capture you immediately and is definitely a game worth purchasing even if you haven’t watched the Harry Potter films or read the books.