Flying alone makes this process more enjoyable. Whether on a broomstick or on the back of a thestral, I fly on Hogwarts Legacy It feels exactly the way I wanted it to: fluid, fast and elegant, and always with beautiful views.
As the map expands beyond Hogwarts, beyond the streets of Hogsmeade and the borders of the Forbidden Forest, players encounter sidequests, challenges, secrets, puzzles, and obstacle courses at a persistent pace. The world is big, but useful and truly beautiful; it is clearly the result of intentional design, rather than procedural generation. There’s always something to find, a new puzzle to solve or a skill to learn, and my Quests tab is constantly growing. What’s more, I’m really excited to complete the activities I find, whenever I want to grind or take a breather from the main story.
The list of things to do in Hogwarts Legacy it feels endless. For example, some 10 hours later, the game introduces interior design mechanics in the Room of Requirement, allowing players to decorate a cavernous space from architectural touches to the placement and color of tables, chairs, paintings, rugs and individual knick-knacks. It is also a useful room; This is where players keep their clothing upgrade loom, potion tables, herbology boxes, and captured beasts. I’ve spent too much time modifying the appearance of my own Room of Requirement, like, hours — but I am in love with the results and have enjoyed the process immensely.
Warner Bros. Games
I see potential for excess stuff in Hogwarts Legacy get tedious, but this hasn’t happened in my game yet. More than 20 hours and the magic is still alive for me.
Before playing the game, I was especially excited about brewing potions because this was my favorite activity on Pottermore, the browser-based Hogwarts student sim that disintegrated into gibberish in the mid-2010s. On Pottermore, brewing potions involved reading recipes and physically manipulating ingredients at the right times, and I found the process incredibly peaceful. However, making potions is not a very complicated matter in Hogwarts Legacy. You just get the ingredients and then leave them on the table for a while, just like you’re growing plants. The mechanics suit the game: In a world this busy and vast, gathering ingredients is the challenge, not the minutiae of chopping, stirring, grinding, measuring and timing, but it’s a missed opportunity.
Even just writing that, I’m looking forward to having a good time in a potion bank doing all these things. Maybe this would be a solid piece of DLC in the future, advanced potion making? Just a thought, Avalanche.
Right, back to the actual game.
Warner Bros. Games
The main plots of Hogwarts Legacy they are generic fantasy platformers. Two main arcs collide: one pits players against goblin revolutionaries who plan to destroy wizards, and the other is an exhaustive investigation of ancient and powerful magic, the same magic that you, the main character, can wield in unique ways. The last arc will be painfully familiar to Harry Potter fans, as it involves a bunch of old men repeatedly throwing a boy into deadly situations while hiding crucial information and stroking his long white beards. I suppose we know where Dumbledore got it from.
Personally, I don’t like the focus on Goblin Rebellions. It’s functional as a basic fantasy premise, but it’s an obvious choice for a Harry Potter prequel and the game has yet to show that it was a particularly thoughtful decision. The concept so far is, “goblins are bad, wizards are good,” and there hasn’t been a convoluted discussion of class, power, and revolution within this framework, though these opportunities prevail. Regardless of how this story concludes, I would have appreciated a more nuanced approach or an original enemy.
There are valid questions about whether Harry Potter’s portrayal of goblins is inherently anti-Semitic or the result of centuries of European fiction that encoded vampires, dwarfs, and other creatures with their authors’ anti-Semitism. What you need to know is that the goblins in Hogwarts Legacy they’re not significantly different from those in the novels, so it’s unlikely your stance on the subject will change with this presentation.
Warner Bros. Games
The talk of goblins and anti-Semitism is probably top of mind in reviews and tweets about the game, but the author of the Harry Potter novels has come out as transphobic, and this has understandably dominated the discourse. It has led some people to call for a boycott of Hogwarts Legacy, and a portion of these people are berating anyone who rates, streams, or talks about playing it. This controversy has consumed any broader criticism of the game itself. I addressed my personal decision to review this game for Engadget in an editorial earlier in the week, which is available to read here.
For anyone concerned about finding transphobic or bigoted content on Hogwarts Legacy: The author of the Harry Potter novels was not involved in the writing or creation of the game and, in fact, his world is more inclusive than the series. Crucially, the Hogwarts Legacy The character creator allows for a variety of gender, voice, and appearance configurations, and allows players to choose their own names. In fanfiction terms, it’s basically a Mary Sue machine. This is ideal for an interactive role-playing medium: customization options allow players to project their own identities onto the main character, who is an extra-special, superpowered student wizard surrounded by basic magic users. It’s a familiar premise to fantasy RPG players.
what are you doing This game stands out among open-world RPGs for its density of activities, mysteries and breathtaking moments, and its expertly honed combat mechanics. Hogwarts Legacy is full of magic and expands not only the landscape around Hogwarts, but also the boundaries of representation in an incredibly popular fantasy universe. It’s the coolest work of Harry Potter fanfiction I’ve come across in years, and I’m excited to keep playing. Especially if there is an Advanced Potion-Making DLC in the future.
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