Review: Hogwarts Legacy – Faithful And Good (7/10)

Background

So I'm not really an HP fan. I think I only binged all of the movies in one go last year because I heard this game was coming out. I liked the movies but I didn't really watch all of them during the time they came out so the impact is much different. And even after watching the movies, I am still not a huge fan of HP. Don't get me wrong, I liked them, I just don't LOVE them. Which also means I am not too picky when it comes to the little trivial details of the wizarding world and all of it's lore.

Combat

So let's start off with combat right? The main complaint about it on this sub is that it is far too easy. And I can definitely see why. I actually started in normal and switched it up to hard because I could tell early on that it wouldn't provide me with a challenge otherwise.

The window of recovery from each move is so short that often times the enemy can not take advantage of it. It is very easy to counter a move with Stupefy when trying because you get the flashing orange symbol. And it's easy to tell when to dodge because of the red symbol. I will admit though, there are some attacks that I did get hit by quite a bit because they didn't have those signs. Specifically the AOE from executioners and dig attack from spiders. And occasionally goblins will have this really fast attack that gets me quite a bit. Like I would see orange, thinking I had enough time to time a perfect protego, but I end up missing it. But for the most part the mechanics are fairly simple and execution isn't too hard

This of course doesn't even take into the account of all the boons and benefits the player receives. Here are some of the big ones:

Can heal whenever. It doesn't matter if you get 2-3 shot in hard mode, you can click on that healing potion whenever, even when you are knocked to the ground. Last hit invincibility. If you have some segment of health, if the next move kills you, you survive by 1hp. I don't know how this mechanic works, but I know I've encountered it quite a bit You can summon plants to fight for you Eradus potion gives you invincibility if you get the talent for it

If you pull out every trick in your book, it's very hard for the enemy to kill you. I ended up avoiding using anything but my spells, dodging and protego for the most part to make it challenging for myself. I try to avoid potions and plants. I even avoided using the ancient magic blast usually. I still use ancient magic throw though. The only times I had to go all out with plants, potions, etc was when I fought the two combat trials and that giant lvl 30 spider at lvl 22. I think even with Erudus invincibility, the spider bite still took 3/4 of my health iirc

I've seen people make the same remark as I have about combat and sometimes the people who would respond with "just don't use this thing or that". Which is essentially what I did however, the people complaining about combat being too easy isn't wrong either. The thing is that we as players shouldn't have to hamstrung ourselves for combat to be challenging. What people are asking for is a higher difficulty or a NG+ and all of that is a fairly reasonable ask and pretty easy to do as well.

Spells and Pacing

Despite combat being generally simple and easy, it is still fun and engaging to cast spells. Especially when you get into the flow of defending and combing someone with CC spells. I did find myself switching from various spell slots quite a bit.

However one huge gripe I have with this game is that this game presents you with spells as you go along the story. Now I know that SOUNDS pretty normal, but you don't even get AK until near the end of the game. By which point, I didn't have as much use for it since I was nearing the end anyways. I think part of the reason for that as well was because I did end up doing a lot of activities in the open world already. So I wasn't just almost done with the main game, but I was pretty much almost done with the side stories as well. The other unforgivables also come in a bit later as well.

I do get it though. They paced the accessibility of the spells along with the storyline so that there is a 1:1 coherency between story and actual gameplay

More Cinematic Than I'd Like

And to continue from the above, I think they did this because the game seemed to really focus on being a more cinematic experience (for a lack of a better term). It seemed like they care less about the gamer and more about the story of Hogwarts. Take my example above about the Unforgivable spells. And then also take into consideration this is true for Flipendo, Arresto Momentum, etc as well. They really wanted to make the player feel like a student. That seemed to be their goal and they did achieve it.

However the gamer in me hates this as it felt too restrictive and these restrictions are with you until most of the game.

Another example of this is that at least at the beginning and end of the game, most of it is cutscenes. I spent a whole time at the beginning wondering when I would get to play. And the end was a sequence chain of cutscenes before I got to do any real action. And then when I did, it was more cutscenes again

Open World – Engagement

I thought the open world was very engaging for someone like me. There were a lot of activities like bandit camps, Merlin trials, dungeons, beast hunting, treasure chest etc. I found myself doing pit stops in between when I travel to another place for a mission just so engage with these little things. And honestly sometimes I would just lose track of time doing it. I honestly spent about 7-10 hours just in Hogwarts at the beginning finding all of these little things.

I love that there does seem to be a lot of depth to the map. Treasure dungeons are short and linear. But the houses and building seems to have depth. Hogwarts has depth. Castle locations seems to have depth. Could there have been more depth? Sure, but this was good enough. I also liked that there was minimal decorated stuff. If you see a location you can go to it and go inside of it for the most part.

Open World – Repetition

The open world does have a lot of activities to do, but they often get repetitive. Sure there are various Merlin trials and different ways to open the treasure dungeons, but after a few hours in it's pretty trivial. The only time consuming part for the Merlin trials was finding where the intractables are. The same is said of the butterfly portraits and math quiz puzzles. It's kinda cool the first few times, but afterwards it suffers the same fate as every other puzzle. Depulso puzzles were interesting, but that was probably why there weren't more of them, because to make each one unique enough and challenging enough takes effort.

I generally hate grinding, but I do still have a forgiving spot for various exploration activities such as these. It's not worse than most open world games in that regard. However, if I think back to the Arkham series, specifically starting for city, I recall that while that game also had a lot of activities and collectibles, they implemented it in such a way that a lot of them were uniquely engaging. But that could be just rose tinted lens

Open World – Traversal And Mounts

I do love flying on a broom, that's fun and it's about as fun as I thought it would be. I do have gripes with it though. Sometimes I am trying to find something a broom and I want to look down, but I can't This game decided to give your character a blind spot at the bottom of them which makes absolutely no sense to me. I can think of a good gameplay reason for it whatsoever. It just seemed like it was missed.

Later on you do get to ride a Griffon and the Graphorn. And they are kinda cool. But you aren't likely to use them over your broom most of the time. Or rather at least I wouldn't. When it comes to speed of traversal, broom is king. There is really no reason to use the Griffon at all. And the Graphorn has to take a non-direct route from A-Z because it is on land. It's cool the first time you use them, but they almost seem pointless when you get them outside of aesthetics at the cost of speed and flexibility.

Choices Matter Very Little

I think when I saw that there were dialogue options, the first thing I thought of was Elder Scrolls and Fallout. And I thought that a lot of the choices that I made would matter. A lot of them did not. The storylines are fairly straightforward and you don't really have much of an option to go evil. At most you get an ending that alludes you to maybe become evil in the future. You can probably respond in a way that makes you sound like an asshole but that's it. You can turn down quests or take on quests but that's it.

Only a few times do you get to make a choice like in the Sebastian storyline. A lot of people say it's the more compelling storyline even when compared to the main story. But if I am being honest, while that might be true in Hogwarts Legacy, that is most certainly not true when I compare it to games like Skyrim or Fallout 4.

So I get it, the developers didn't have that in mind and I made an assumption based on a similar UI regarding dialogue.

Side Quests – Flat and Lack Of Choice

Continuing from what I just mentioned above, the side quests are mostly bland. There isn't a lot of follow up in those quests and the online quest lines outside of the main one are the 3 companion quests. Additionally most side quests are one and done. There often isn't too many follow ups to it if any.

If I am comparing it to open world games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, with many different quests lines it does seem kind of sparse. Additionally, there isn't a lot of choice in these one off quests. The most I've seen is that you get to choose to relay the truth of the results to the quest giver or lie to them to spare their feelings in front of you.

Potions and Planting

So we get to do these things at scale in this lab known as the Room of Requirements. And you know what, it's kind of a chore. At first I was kinda pissed because I had all of these ingredients and it actually TOOK TIME to plant stuff and to brew stuff. At the beginning, this is going to feel insane. And there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it outside of them trying to be immersive without understanding being immersive. They took an anti-pattern from money grabbing mobile games and don't even have the monetization part in place (not that I'm complaining). But there is no reason to this.

I have seen people make the argument of just come back to the game later. And to me that's about as stupid of a response as needing to nerf yourself to make the game more challenging for you. Like yea we know what we need to do to accommodate for the system, but what we are saying is that there is a very obvious quality of life change that is very much needed here.

Later on as you get money, that becomes less of a burden as you will have a lot of tables for planting and potions. I would end up brewing my potions with the highest time at the first table and slowly go around. Then come back to the beginning to see if it is done. I personally didn't have issues with the plants and potions later on in the game because I ended up avoiding usage of them anyways.

Beasts

As for the beasts, they were okay. I liked to have them for materials for upgrading my equipment, but like the potions and the plants, they were more of a chore than they were worth. You can't do anything with your beasts besides feed them and brush their hair. Each of which is a one button activity with lack lustered animation. You can breed them too. Wooooooooooooo~~…

What I Thought It Did Well

Despite my many complaints, I thought the game was good for what it was. It was a pretty faithful HP game. It's open world wasn't bland and had depth to it. It's combat was on the easy side, but still engaging and fun. While it certainly has a lot of flaws, the overall tradeoff of what it succeeds with is pretty positive.

Endgame

Aside from a few minor post game quests, there isn't anything. We don't know if there will be a DLC or not. I think someone linked to something saying there wouldn't be. Basically end game is mostly open world stuff you haven't done yet. Side quests, Merlin Trials, Treasure Dungeons (really a small tunnel and not dungeon), capture more beasts, Astronomy table, etc. The most compelling stuff is probably the combat trials. But I think I only found 2 of them and I feel like there should be more but for some reason I didn't see any of them?

submitted by /u/livingroomsessions
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