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The Alien CriticReviews...

TAC Reviews...Hogwarts Legacy

Date Posted 1/09/24

 

Released in 2023, Hogwarts Legacy is a RPG that takes place in the 1800s, and is set primarily in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hogsmead and the Forbidden Forest. As it is set a couple of hundred years before the events of the Harry Potter franchise, none of the characters from the books or films appear in this adventure. The game is from the third person perspective and the player can choose whether to play as a male or female student. There is a customisation option to allow you to create your own custom student attending the famous wizard school.

 

Art work

 

I have to admit that whilst I have been planning on reviewing this game for ages, Sea of Thieves is still holding a lot of my attention, mainly because it knows exactly how to keep me interested. The more I have delved into that game the more I have learned how to play it in a manner that allows me to earn vast quantities of gold and level up my perspective alliances, which in turn unlocks more missions and grants better ways to increase reputation and naturally gold as well. But whilst I doubt that I will not talk about Sea of Thieves again in the future, for now, it is finally time to give my review of Hogwarts Legacy.

 

Full disclosure before we go on that I cannot recall playing any Harry Potter games before even though several game out that were tied to the films and books featuring Harry Potter, Ron, and Co. I did watch Angry Joe review them and typically with most movie tie-in games, they were poorly executed with dull gameplay, bad wand mechanics, and ultimately fell into the lazy movie tie-in game trope that so many titles have fallen into. However, things seemed to be different with Hogwarts Legacy which is a standalone adventure set in the same world as Harry Potter but actually takes the time to create an interesting world and story for players to get their teeth into.

 

You take control of a custom designed protagonist that you choose to be a male or female. The face customisations are just complicated enough to create a unique character but not so in-depth that caused me to just get bored and go with whatever as it did in Cyberpunk. You can give your character a name, but unlike any other game I can think of, you need a first name and a surname here. My characters are always named Couvard, this is a name I obviously made up that is taken from one of my first novels. The reason I use this name is two-fold, one, I like it and two as it is a name that I have made up no other players ever have it so I don’t end up playing a game as TAC2097689# or whatever. Uniquely though as I needed a surname and I wanted one with a wizarding edge, I entered this game as Couvard Darkfire. Regardless of your name and design, your character is a new student to Hogwarts but as he or she has only recently discovered magic, and due to their age, they are entered into the fifth year rather than starting in year one.

 

The game opens with your protagonist being accepted into the school and being assigned Professor Fig as their mentor. Whilst on route to London, the flying coach that you and professor Fig are in is attacked by a dragon, the driver is killed, and you and Fig use a Portkey to escape to Gringotts Bank. It is here that the protagonist learns that they can see traces of an ancient magic and after a confrontation with a hostile goblin named Ranrok the pair once again escape to Hogwarts, where the student is sorted into their House.

 

There is a slight crack in the immersion at this point because you make choices and the Sorting Hat picks your House, however, if it tries to put you into a House you do not wish to be in, then you can choose whichever one you want. Now despite being strongly tempted to choose Slytherin, I was sorted into Gryffindor so decided to stick with the game’s selection.

 

Your character meets other members of their House and starts making friends. They attend various classes and begin to learn to master new spells. Trouble is looming on the horizon as Ranrok has rallied hostile goblins and dark wizards into leading a rebellion against other wizards. Ranrok is seeking a vault containing the ancient magic that you can see, and it may fall to your fifth year student to save the entire wizarding world…

 

There were immediately things about this game that I liked straight off the bat and the first one being that after a mission or two basically the world sandbox map opens up allowing you to go basically wherever you want. You can explore the Forbidden Forest, go to Hogsmead, and there is a massive open countryside which will grant you access to more NPCs and more missions. As you explore you unlock new fast travel points which utilise the in-universe’s Floo Network, so if you have previously travelled to a region then you can easily go back again whenever you choose.

 

The only thing that can limit you early exploration is you limited spell knowledge, because you have to go to different Classes to learn new spells. You do a quick mini-game to learn the spell then it is yours to use whenever you want. As usual with game like this each spell has a cool down which more powerful spells taking longer to recharge before you can use them again. I was racing around in the world almost as soon as I was able to do so but kept running into bandit camps, or spider nests, or goblin forts. The game has a level based structure so if you are battling a level 3 enemy and you are level 5 then you will win relatively easily. If you are 5 taking on a level 15 then you are pretty much going to get wrecked very quickly. The thing is that you will gain XP if you defeat higher levels enemies so I started to become a little overpowered as the game continued. Thing is that I like that because I wanted to be a badass wizard and the name Couvard Darkfire would make [his] enemies quiver with fear at the mention of his name. So yeah, you can go basically full fan-fiction with this game.

 

The combat itself doesn’t just utilise wand combat which in the past has basically taken on the function of a gun with short spells (pistol), rapid fire spells (machine gun), wide spread spells (shotgun) and so on. But here you have attack spells, defensive, environmental, and you can learn the unforgivable curses too. The spells also do what they do in universe. Use Expelliarmus and the weapon in enemy’s hand will be flung from their grasp, use Levioso to levitate them, Reparo to fix broken structures etcetera. The spells can be utilised for puzzle solving as well. However, you are not only limited to spells, you can throw chomping cabbages or screaming mandrakes at your foes, and use potions on them and yourself to aid during combat. It allows you to basically pick your own style and whilst I favoured using spells, there were a few occasions when I threw around chomping cabbages and watched them go to town on dark wizards.

 

You also go to the Wand maker and design your own wand, choosing its colour, its size, its core, and throughout the course of the game unlock new handles for it. This is naturally pure fan service but it was such a cool feature and made you feel like your own wizard entering this Wizarding world. You unlock new brooms and whilst you cannot customise them, it is great to leap to a cliff, pull out your broom and shoot off before you hit the ground.

 

As you explore the castle and surrounding landscape you meet new people and quite often they will have quests that they need your help with. One of the highlights being with a Slytherin student named Sebastian who is desperately trying to cure his sister of what he believes is a curse. His determination to save her takes him, you and another of his friends down a very dark path. It was the epitome of the phrase “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Honestly it was such a good quest line that really blurred the line between what doing the wrong thing for the right reason really means. It is a slow boil as well with Sebastian’s actions slowing becoming more extreme as he tries to save his beloved sister.

 

The other characters are also very likable and you can basically choose whether you are going to help them, if you help them but demand a reward for your assistance, or just flat out refuse to help them. I wouldn’t say their character arcs are massively surprising with a fellow student living with the guilt of their father’s death finally coming to terms with it thanks to your help, which I felt could have been sorted much easier but it was fun to do these missions regardless.

 

Now comes one of the things that might take you a little bit of time to get your head around, the clothing. Different items of clothing like hats, glasses, and robes etcetera give you different buffs, pretty par for the course with games like this. But what too me quite a while to notice was the fact that you can equip certain items but using magic I guess change its appearance so you don’t end up looking like some kind of court jester when you want to look cool. In the early game you had cutscenes in which everyone else was in their Hogwarts uniforms and there was the becoming Legendary Couvard Darkfire sitting in the corner with a top hat, green Dame Edna specs, a gold colour cape and his pyjamas with knee high riding boots because that combination of clothing gave the best boosts to my chosen gameplay style. However, if you hide those items in the customisation menu then you can pick and choose your outfits without them looking ridiculous. Admittedly this did still result in everyone else wearing their uniforms whilst my protagonist sat in the corner wearing what I realise now was basically a Rick-with-Crows cosplay outfit.

 

You are given access to the Room of Requirement which gives you the benefit of unlocking potion stations, growing beds for plants, and habitats to house different animals. You are able to capture animals like unicorns, hippogriffs, and thestrals amongst others. If you capture a male and a female you can breed them resulting in offspring. It is a neat little mechanic and serves a purpose because you need unicorn hair or thestral feathers to upgrade you clothing to improve your stats. Plus it is quite Zen to just wander around one of these areas watching your unicorns play with a toy or feeding a phoenix, sadly whilst I thought we would get the opportunity to adopt a dragon that one you don’t.

 

Sadly it has to be said that naturally things are not all good. Some of the missions are a bit of a grind or don’t really seem to serve a purpose beyond just 100% completion. The astronomy springs to mind, and the one in which you take over ownership of a shop in Hogsmead. That mission in particular was a paradox because whilst the mission was pretty fun with a good wizard duel at the end, once you own the shop there really is no gameplay benefit for doing it. You can sell any gear that you no longer want in the shop or to the shop but you can do that at any shop in town anyway. It would have been nice if the shop gave you some living quarters that perhaps you could customise or a Room of Requirement-esque option so you didn’t need to keep returning the school to brew potions or whatever.

 

Hogwarts itself is also a bit of an elephant in the room because for a game that is called Hogwarts Legacy not a lot of your time is actually spent in Hogwarts itself. Yes you need to return to use the Room, or attend classes, but apart from that I spent very little time at the school. There were some busy work quests to do there but personally I found almost no point to role playing as an actual student when I could go where I want, do what I want, and as I was some kind of “Chosen One” because of the whole being able to see Ancient Magic thing, was allowed by the teacher so do whatever I wanted without consequences.

 

Which leads me to one of the biggest questions regarding your character’s morality. As I said you fight various magical creatures, like spiders, and trolls. However, a large percentage of the game you battle dark wizards and goblins. One of the spells that I really liked using was an upgrade to transfiguration in which you could turn an enemy into an exploding barrel and throw them at their mates whereupon they exploded. This presumably killed the person who was the exploding barrel as well as anyone you defeated by throwing it at them. But the game only ever says they were “Defeated”. A lot of the commendation rewards are gained from defeating enemies, but let’s not beat around the bush, you have killed them, they haven’t gone to Azkaban, they are dead. So running around the countryside slaughtering any dark wizard that dares to be in the same county as you is absolutely fine. You can even learn the unforgivable curses and use them to your heart’s content in combat. Admittedly I missed the Killing Curse because in the mission, the context to learn it was not what I imagined my character would do, so I decided to decline to learn it. Sadly this was basically the only opportunity so if you like I, missed that opportunity then it was gone forever. Still, from what I have seen if you do learn it then you can basically one shot every enemy in the game including bosses. Again why is there no consequence to using these dark spells when there could have been an interesting Lightside/Darkside element to the game in which you become more corrupted the more you use these Unforgivable Curses?

 

There is also a massive disconnect between the cutscenes and the gameplay. As I am ridiculously sandbox happy I was charging around doing side missions, levelling up, upgrading my gear, and becoming as powerful as I could. I even did stuff that would have been part of missions later, such as clearing out a mine just for the hell of it, which I had to do later as part of a quest, but because I had already done it I just breezed to the objective which was great because the game remembered I had done it and the enemies didn’t just respawn meaning you are not actually making any difference to the game world. Unfortunately, by the late game Couvard Darkfire was so powerful that cutscenes did not make sense. Ranrok pops up repeatedly with his minions, minions that I was basically taking apart in their dozens in the open world but in cutscenes were too much to be handled. This disconnect also happened in some of the other cutscenes when Couvard Darkfire stood by and watched as things happened when if I had been in control he would have easily stepped in to nip what was taking place in the bud almost immediately. Perhaps the interactive cutscenes of Cyberpunk have spoiled things a little because being able to make a quick decision does put pressure on you to make a snap decision, being unable to do so because the game won’t let you does lead to this grinding of gears between cutscene and gameplay

 

All in all my complaints were few and far between, and the game was massively fun to play so naturally my Thumb is Up. Bosses were challenging to fight, the characters were interesting, and the mission had enough variety to keep things from getting repetitive. It would be nice if there was a way to learn spells that it is possible to miss without having to restart the game, however, when all is said and done this is a great game in which prior knowledge of the Harry Potter universe is not actually necessary. If you liked the Harry Potter books then I’m sure you will like this because it allows you to dive into the wizarding world and play as a powerful wizard that would have given He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named a run for his money. If you just like fantasy games with magic, spells, and creative, fun worlds to explore then this is still a good game to play.

 

9/10 – Fantastic game that doesn’t suffer without Harry Potter which demonstrates how rich the Wizarding World that J.K Rowling created actually is, and I for one look forward to any sequel or story DLCs that might come out down the line. 

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