Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy is a pretty decent open world action game of sorts, and an absolutely marvellous Harry Potter game. I've played older HP titles, watched the movies and, while I've never been a diehard fan of the franchise, I do like it in general. Therefore, although I enjoy certain musical cues and references, I mainly judge the game on its own merit.
Graphically, it's incredible with some caveats. The game has stunning breath-taking scenery, and spell effects are sharp and satisfying. However, the models and animations can be a bit stiff, and I constantly dropped FPS for some reason. I played on medium even though my PC should be able to handle ultra according to the specs; the game itself set everything to ultra after an auto-detect.
The game also features a day-night cycle, which changes the appearance of the location. For instance the Forbidden Forest at night looks as haunting as it rightfully should.
Moreover, there is also a season cycle with the entire map changing depending on the time of the year. Not only that, but the Hogwarts itself has different decorations for different seasons. Really cool attention to detail.
In terms of sound, it's OK. I enjoyed the female VA for the MC quite a bit, and the rest of the cast are also pretty good. I don't think it reaches the heights of, say, RDR 2, but it's definitely good enough and even excellent at certain points.
The OST is charming, though it might be my nostalgia talking since it utilises certain themes from the movies or older games.
Moving on to the gameplay and the world in general, as I mentioned, it's an open-world game, which means there are hundreds of collectibles, optional secrets, quests, etc. I found them pretty fun, but the sheer number can be a bit too much if you're a completionist. One pet peeve of mine is the level scaling: as you level up, the enemies level up with you. There is a per-area cap, so you will eventually outscale them, but I'm not a fan of this mechanic in general. It did not ruin the game, but I don't think it's particularly necessary either.
The gameplay itself is pretty fun. It mainly consists of attacking the enemies with your basic attacks while weaving in additional spells. Higher level enemies have shields around them which you have to break with a specific "type" of spell and cannot break with regular AAs. The enemies, in their turn, also attack you with basic AAs, which you can block with your shield, or with spells, which you cannot block and have to dodge.
To help you out, there are usable plants and potions, which, in my experience, can completely trivialise an encounter even on the highest difficulty. I actually think it's a plus since paying just a bit of attention to potion-brewing and herbology gives you a huge advantage.
I would not say it's the deepest or most challenging gameplay loop ever, but it's flashy, aesthetically pleasing, and does provide some challenge, at least on the hardest difficulty.
When it comes to the narrative, it's passable. As usual for me, I guess, I did not enjoy the main story as much as the side quests, specifically Sebastian's questline. It was not terrible and had its moment, but it also had some pretty dumb plot points at times.
Before summarising, I'd like to mention certain neat features the game has, which are not crucial, but are very welcome and show stellar work from the devs:
1. You can choose your house (a given, really) and there is actually house-specific dialogue, such as a character bad-mouthing Slytherin and apologising if your MC is in said house. It comes often enough to feel as if your house choice is acknowledged by the game and isn't just a checkbox in a save file.
2. Characters react to you with specific dialogue after their side-quest completion, although it can get a bit repetitive after a while.
3. There is an entire system to decorate your "base" with hundreds of cosmetic items to place, such as chairs, banners, statues, etc. I went for a more utilitarian approach and simply conjured things required to brew potions, but it's still a welcome feature.
4. You can capture beasts to care about them and periodically harvest magical ingredients. In addition, you can breed said beasts and sell the offsprings to get a bit of money.
5. The ingredients from the beasts can be used to upgrade your equipment and weave in special traits, such as "more damage with spell X".
6. An amazing feature: the way your clothes look is decoupled from what you're actually wearing, meaning you don't have to choose between min-maxing the stats or fashion, you can have both.
7. There are hundreds of snippets with HP lore about certain items, locations, people to be found in game.
To conclude, I think Hogwarts Legacy is a wonderful game. It can stand on its own without the franchise appeal, even though it does lose to titles like God of War in that regard. Taking the franchise into account, it's a must-play for any HP fan. For a non-HP fan, it can also be fun, albeit to a lesser extent.

You play as a student at the most famous magical school of wizardry, and will follow along the expected milestones of the academic year—you’ll attend classes, learn new spells and skills, help both teachers and classmates and unravel a mystery regarding a powerful enemy. It’s as Harry-Potter-esque as it gets. If you loved the movies and books, this game is a must-play.
The gameplay is just as you’d expect for a student in the HP universe, complete with the selection process in charge of a talking hat, socializing with (or antagonizing) your colleagues, wandering around the castle and getting into trouble. Short of impersonating Potter himself, this is the closest experience you will get to enrolling in a Hogwarts school year. Of course, there is no Voldemort, but the story is sufficiently similar, and you will still feel like the prophetically-foretold boy who lived.
You can customize your student’s looks, clothing and even your magic wand and broom. The options are not a lot, but still serviceable enough. Naturally, you can belong to any of the four Hogwarts Houses, and you will be given the corresponding uniform and colored accessories. You’ll find a lot of clothes in your adventures, and each item provides different bonuses to your character. Interestingly, you can change the looks and keep the features, which means that you can always look the way you want, and have the combat perks you most like or need. This is an excellent feature.
Despite the emphasis on the wizarding experience, I believe the star of the show is Hogwarts itself. The castle is huge, rendered beautifully, and chock-full of secrets and places to explore. Ever wanted to wander around the school and grounds and see the places barely mentioned in the movies? Now’s your chance. And it’s every bit as fantastic as you imagine. Discovery is the name of the game, and every single location you’ve heard of in the books is here, and then some. Mind you, this is Hogwarts, not London—so no Ministry of Magic and such. Want to dare visiting the Forbidden Forest at night, looking for the dangerous arachnid lair? Try your luck at finding the common rooms of the other houses? Venture into the Library’s forbidden section? You can do all that. NPCs are quirky, diverse and in tune with the Potterverse. You will finally get to meet Peeves!
Interestingly, there’s no curfews or hard enforced rules. Considering this is a school, and the importance of norms in the movies, this is weird—but perfectly understandable, from a gameplay standpoint. Still, there are moments when stealth is the better approach to trouble, and the student is perfectly capable of hiding and defeating opponents while unseen.
Unlike with many games these days, I found myself avoiding fast travel almost every time. It’s nice to walk to the surrounding villages, and even nicer to fly there on your magic broom. You will find merchants, wild animals, rogue trolls, abandoned ruins and dark wizard camps. You can even explore ancient tombs, and there are many puzzles scattered all over the place for you to solve, courtesy of the late Merlin. Solving them will grant bonuses that aid you in several ways.
The story is interesting, usually predictable and mildly convoluted. It also echoes Potter's journey with small twists here and there. The dark figure of the mysterious looming enemy is still present, only this time the goblins play a bigger part. As usual, there are undertones of real-life problems, like racism and segregation.
An interesting choice regarding ethics is the use of the Unforgivable Curses. This topic is dealt with somewhat lightly, but the implied values and decisions are still there. Will you become a pre-teen murderous criminal and use these curses indiscriminately? Your choice. As for me, I decided I wouldn’t—and this meant a whole branch of the skill tree was unavailable to me. While you can’t pickpocket and rob to your heart’s desire, you can most definitely steal from every home in Hogsmeade, even in front of the owner, with no consequence at all. From a modern gaming perspective, I expected something less immersion-breaking.
The music is fantastic. Not Williams, but deeply reminiscent of his work. Once again, the similarity was pushed to the limit, stopping only short of exorbitant royalties. You’ll recognize the notes and motifs over and over, and it’s never invasive in terms of gameplay. Some comments from your character can get repetitive, though—and the flu stations suffer from the same.
The Room of Requirement is at your disposal as your main base of operations. You can decorate it to your heart’s desire, and gradually expand its size and functionality as the story progresses. Different props and magical stations will become available to find or purchase, and you can place them wherever you want. Eventually, you’ll get your own magical spaces to keep fantastic beasts like the famed magizoologist of the movies. The potion-making mechanics, however, are cumbersome and—at least to me—almost completely unnecessary.
True, there is little variety in the enemy department. Combat mechanics are a bit simplistic, but serviceable. The student is not very agile, but it works well. Sometimes the enemies will feel bland. Unlike Voldemort and his minions, these guys lack depth and personality, and you will frequently end up fighting and defeating mindless golems and statues that always act and look the same.
The graphics are really beautiful. And not only the world: the map, the cards, everything contributes to the gorgeous look of the game. A general sense of quality can be seen everywhere. The details are wonderful and always in line with the Potter universe.
The voice acting is excellent, varied in mood and accents. The only ugly detail is the sound editing, especially the pitch slider for the main character’s voice, but this is also present with other characters and even cats. This produces weird sound aberrations that are sadly somewhat common.
I did encounter a pair of bugs, but not game-breaking ones. In a weird case where my character clipped into a wall because I tried to use the broom too close to it, the reverse action solved the problem. I am aware of the complaints by other players, but for me it was a stutter-free experience, with no crashes at all, although texture popping can break the immersion from time to time. Loading times are not annoying save for the "shades loading" that always happens at launch.
I used the Xbox One wireless controller to excellent results.
In terms of mechanics, Hogwarts Legacy is plagued by a sign of the times: lots of errands, collecting items, fetching quests, and the like take place in a very large open world. The beautiful castle and scenery help in that department, and you've got travel points, a flying broom and a magical steed to aid you in your travels. Thankfully, there are no microtransactions, gems, crystals, or any other annoying token currency so common today. Sadly, no Quidditch!
I could not help but to feel a little empty at times—in Hogwarts Legacy, the sense of “game-ness” is a bit painful, given the wondrous world and potential for immersion. The game could be much better with a bit more complexity, from more interaction with the environment to maybe better customization options. However, the game is complete and functional as it is, and I understand why these design decisions were made.
The price is a little high to my liking, but with a 15-20% off it would be fair.
Playing Hogwarts Legacy has left me a sense of wonder I have seldom felt in a game lately. Even the story itself evokes that of Harry, and purposefully so. But it works. If you are a Potter fan, this is a must buy. You'll thoroughly enjoy the experience. This is the best alternative yet to be a Hogwarts student.
Charmingly recommended.

I enjoyed the game, but definitely wouldn't say it has a re-playable quality. After a while the combat is repetitive, the "treasures" that you find around the map quickly become boring and useless to your leveled character, and the story was a bit flat for me. It has an absolutely beautiful map, and you can tell the creators spent most of their time on that aspect. Anyone who is a Harry Potter fan will enjoy playing this if not solely for the feel of being a part of the Wizarding World. And for those of us still begrudgingly waiting for our letter, this is a nice bandaid to console us for the present.

Game is pretty fun. Wait until it goes on sale.

Stuff I like:

Graphics are pretty good, even on my old 2070. Exploration / puzzle solving / collecting secrets is all pretty good so if you like those types of games you'll have fun. Quests are all pretty engaging and the side quests still relate to the main story. They won't absolutely blow your mind but they're fun, even if some delve down into the simplicity of "go root out that bandit camp of goblins" or "fetch-quest these cabbages to some other idiot." You know, the standard MMO / RPG "kill 10 boars" junk. The combat is engaging and interesting. Probably best to suck it up and play on controller because I've been muscling through it on M&K and it can get rough when you're fighting multiple strong enemies doing guitar chord poses all over your keyboard to reach all the keys to dodge, block, roll, cast, change spell sets. Character creation is better than WoW but not as good as some in-depth RPG like Baldur's Gate 3 or Fallout or something. What I like most (that a ton of HP fans seem to hate) is the game's timeline takes place like 100 years before the movies / books, so you get a semi fresh take on the HP universe / setting, and like the KotOR games, you aren't force fed some famous NPC 'member-berries every five minutes to remind you HEY! THIS IS HARRY POTTER! 'MEMBER IN THE MOVIES HAGRID? HERE HE IS! 'MEMBER SNAPE!? HERE HE IS!!! Yeah none of that crap and it's nice. (Star Wars games are notorious for this) Oh, and the voice acting is all really well done. Most of the characters do seem to have their own personalities, and I haven't run into that Skyrim issue where you notice every 3rd Nord sounds the same.

Stuff I dislike:

Game was def made for consoles and controllers first so like I said it might be easier to just play with a controller. Jumping is really derpy and there are some puzzles that do require parkour. The flight controls are absolutely horrid, and you do NOT have free-look camera when in flight, the camera follows your character on a flat horizontal plane which is the dumbest thing ever. WoW's flight controls are 100x better than this decision. Imagine giving the player a large world to explore only to not allow them to look down. It also makes it derpy when trying to do races. Even if the devs thought this way might be "easier" for people, at least give us the option? There are mods on nexus that fix this but even then they're a little derpy, but worth it. One last gripe is the inventory. I dislike it being so limited (it can be expanded) and I'm constantly full to the max right in the middle of some long quest, which don't seem to have checkpoints if you abandon them.

I'm not a gigantic Harry Potter fan but I do like games like this where you get to explore and discover things while a story plays out, collecting all the stuff scattered around.

I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but Hogwarts Legacy is hands down one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. The open-world design is incredible, reminding me of the sense of wonder and freedom I felt when Skyrim first came out. Every corner of the world is filled with detail, and the game offers a rich, immersive experience that kept me hooked for hours.
One thing I kept thinking while playing is how amazing this game would be with a co-op or multiplayer mode. Imagine exploring Hogwarts with friends, tackling challenges together, breeding beasts, grinding or just roaming the world side by side. It would take an already great game and elevate it to a whole new level.
If you’re on the fence because you’re not into Harry Potter, don’t let that stop you. Hogwarts Legacy is a mustplay for any fan of openworld games. It captures that same thrill and excitement that made Skyrim a legend, and I can’t recommend it enough.

First Impressions
I’m a grown wizard running around Hogwarts, casting spells and flying on broomsticks, while dodging curses and uncovering secrets. Feels magical!
TL;DR
Positive
Mediocre
Negative
+ Stunning visuals
~ Side quests can feel repetitive
- Some NPCs are bland and robotic
+ Music and ambient sounds are pure magic
~ Fast travel is convenient but can make exploration less immersive
- No quidditch matches :'(
+ Wand duels and spell casting are super satisfying
~ Some puzzles take too long to solve, got stuck in the dungeons for 10 minutes
- The ending could’ve been more epic
The verdict
As a lifelong Harry Potter fan, stepping into the world of Hogwarts Legacy feels like a dream come true. The finale could've used a bit more magic, but overall, this game captures the heart and soul of the Wizarding World. From casting spells to exploring iconic locations, it’s the closest you’ll get to living your own Hogwarts adventure. A must-play for any Potterhead!

Hogwarts Legacy
”Without a doubt the best wizarding world game to date”
Not a super in depth review and no spoilers. This is now the gold standard of Wizarding world games going forward.
Sure there are things that could have been better but this is an incredible starting point for things going forward.
Fantastic graphics, gameplay, story and characters.
The devs were clearly fans of the source material, the world and especially the castle is so well made and brimming with easter eggs and fan service. The amount of Lore in this game is huge, long term fans are in for a treat.
All 4 houses have massively fleshed out common rooms and each house has it's own twist on the main story line too.
The combat is meaty and satisfying, very similar to Arkham in a way which would make sense due to it being a WB game. All the famous spells including dark arts.
Lots of side missions and collectables
As a Harry Potter fan I loved this game, but it could totally be an entry point to non or new fans.
I am really looking forward to whatever comes next from Avalanche & Portkey games
Trail-Dave
”Revelio, Revelio, Revelio, Revelio, Revelio“