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My wife and I both loved the original Harry Potter series, both in print and movie form, though she is frankly more devoted to the franchise than I am. We've both seen each movie multiple times and have been to the Wizarding World parks in Orlando. As such, we spent many of our evenings in the last two weeks playing Hogwarts Legacy for PlayStation 5. After investing a combined 40 hours into the game so far, we have several thoughts about it.

I hate disclaimers, but I'm going to put one here regardless. Nothing in this post will state or imply anything regarding my feelings about the social and political discourse surrounding Hogwarts Legacy, the wider Wizarding World, or J K Rowling herself. This post is nothing more than a review of the game as a game and as a tie-in to an existing fictional franchise.

One of the very first things that stood out to us is the sheer enormity of the overworld. Hogwarts Castle is labyrinthine, the Forbidden Forest is expansive, and there are endless winding roads and trails to spend hours getting lost on. The layout of the school is true to the movies and books, to the extent that it can be extremely difficult to navigate: dozens of hours in, I still often need to use the overworld map and path markers to find my way.

The fidelity of the world is frankly stunning. Stone slabs, dusty books, snaking corridors, and foggy courtyards are rendered beautifully on the PlayStation 5. Everything down to the configuration of classrooms, chair for chair, is reproduced almost exactly as seen in the movies. We were moved by how immersive the cohesive the entire experience felt--we kept saying to each other that this was the Harry Potter game we always dreamed of having as children.

There's no shortage of things to do either, especially in Hogwarts itself. The castle is brimming with puzzles and interactables, leading to hidden rooms, secret passageways, and troves of special items to collect. The items are usually clothing that give bonuses in combat, but sometimes one can find potions, ingredients and other goodies. Even things that don't give the player items or unlockables can be interacted with: levitation, mending and even attack spells can be used to wreak havoc across the school.

It should be noted that the bulk of interactability is concentrated inside Hogwarts. This isn't a big problem, as the castle is where the player will spend the largest amount of time, but the lack of things to do in fields and along hilly footpaths can be disappointing. Many activities in towns are also locked behind, well, locks, and require learning the Unlocking Charm to access.

With how big the world is and how much there is to do in it, Hogwarts Legacy would greatly benefit from the ability to place custom map markers anywhere one chooses. Unfortunately, players can put a route on the map that corresponds to a pre-marked location, such as a classroom or a shop, but they cannot place a custom marker anywhere on the map and tell the game to guide them there. This is often frustrating when one encounters a puzzle one does not yet have the required charm to solve, only to be unable to find the puzzle again once the required spell is unlocked. My wife and I ran into this issue several times.

I won't spoil the main story of the game, but much of the gameplay comprising the main story involves combat. Combat is, indeed, one of the primary mechanics of the game.

Many charms that players unlock are primarily combat charms that have secondary uses in the overworld. There are a few different categories of spells, and all except one have combat roles. The spells do allow for a variety of fighting styles, though, from ranged to pseudo-melee to even stealth.

Combat is where the game's choice of difficulty becomes most apparent. My wife and I each created our own characters, and she plays on easy difficulty while I play on normal. Fights that are almost trivial on her game file become way harder on mine, to the point that an early quest became nigh unbeatable until I learned more spells than my wife had learned at the same point. This isn't a bad thing, but the spike in difficulty was higher than I had originally expected, and that brings some great challenge to the game.

Less enjoyable is the button layout. I have been an avid (but admittedly casual) Super Smash Bros Melee player for over two decades, and as such, using R2 for a shield has been relentlessly drilled into my lead. In Hogwarts Legacy, pressing R2 fires a generic attack charm, similar to a shooting game, Holding R2 allows players to cast other spells and (after an upgrade) flip quickly between pages of spells. Shielding requires pressing triangle. Binding more than one function to the main attach button is incredibly frustrating to me, especially when one button combination replaces the shield with another spell--and R2 on the PlayStation 5 controller is very, very sensitive. The game has no option to reconfigure buttons.

The game's most prominent non-main story activity is collecting field guide pages. There are several hundred pages scattered throughout the castle and overworld, giving players something to look for no matter where they are. Many of the pages contain trivia about the location at which they're found, while others provide non-critical backstory and lore.

Other quests unlock new spells, unlock new parts of the map, or give the player new activities to do. This includes everything from raising fantastic beasts to flying on broomsticks to learning charms for Merlin Trials. Some involve main characters, while others deal with single-appearance NPCs, and some are solo adventures. Every new location has at least one quest to complete and a few field guide pages to find, ensuring the player always has something to do.

My only complaint with the side quests is that they can devolve into the same formula: be told of location, find location, find item (or battle monster to get item), return item to quest-giver. I'd like to see more puzzle-based quests, especially since so much of the lore in Harry Potter focuses on cleverness, wits and deception.

Players are given a choice to play as a male or female protagonist. My wife plays as a boy and I play as a girl. The protagonist in the game has an insane amount of recorded dialogue, so each gender has only one voice actor. There is a pitch slider for the player character's voice, but this slider simply alters the pitch of the pre-recorded lines, causing them to sound slightly distorted. I felt the variety of skin tones, facial features and hair styles to be a little lacking--we both stuck pretty close to the defaults because they looked the best to us.

The other characters in the game are written and portrayed excellently. They exhibit quite a lot of variety, and most of them have real depth. They have compelling and relatable origins, proclivities, motivations, struggles and aspirations. Almost all of them are played to perfection by their respective voice actors, and those that fall short still do a good job. Players interact with some more often than others, reminiscent of a real school schedule. And one has the sense that different characters really do come from all walks of life.

Interestingly, the game lacks a reputation system of any kind, and most dialogue choices seem to have no in-game effect. As an example, some side quests involve finding an item for a character and returning it to quest-giver. Upon returning, the player character can choose to give the item back freely or demand a fee for the trouble. Both choices seem to leave the protagonist in good standing, and the latter provides the player with money, so there appears to be no incentive to be altruistic. We found this quite odd--we figured being greedy or mean-spirited might affect what quests we get or how people treat us, but we've seen no difference so far. It's a missed opportunity in our eyes.

Hogwarts Legacy has seen some criticism for its lack of polish in places. This hasn't affected us as much as we feared it would, but the game is still imperfect. We play on PlayStation 5, the current generation of console hardware, so we might simply not be seeing what others see on PlayStation 4 and PC.

Load times for the game are cleverly hidden behind opening doors and long draw distances. I've experienced relatively few loading pauses in Hogwarts, but the game is more likely to need it if one runs very fast, or moves between places with several interactables very quickly. I have not seen any loading pauses at all in the wider overworld.

There are also fewer bugs than I was expecting, but when they happen, they can be detrimental to the experience. I reached a quest that required me to duel with other students, and in some of the fights, all my spell buttons stopped working. I was also unable to roll, and inclines in the floor disappeared--I simply ran along thin air when trying to descend some steps. Needless to say, I lost those duels in short order.

These kinds of game-breaking bugs are exceeding rare in my experience. Overall, the game is quite stable.

I've never been one to play AAA video game titles: I devote my time to retro games and indie titles almost exclusively. But as far as AAA titles go, one could do far worse than Hogwarts Legacy. And if you're a fan of the original Harry Potter, I cannot recommend this game highly enough.

Hogwarts Legacy: Impressions

2023-02-21

Overworld

Combat

Quests

Characters

Polish

Final Thoughts