Hogwarts Legacy Review

Harry Potter gamers got to finally rejoice on 10th Feb when the long awaited Hogwarts Legacy finally released.

A third person action Role Playing Game (RPG) that is set in the magical wizarding world of Harry Potter. Set many years before the events of the book, in the late 1800s, where you are the character. And we do mean you, because you create the custom character, choose the house and even your character’s name.

This game is huge and we have a lot to talk about, so let’s get into it.

Before Starting Hogwarts Legacy

Connecting Accounts

It would be best if you go through the process of creating a Wizarding World account. This is the official Harry Potter website. Yes, this is the website that replaced Pottermore (IYKYK).

It would also be good to get the WB account.

Getting these two accounts is optional, but your house choice and wand choice will be pre selected based on what you have in the Wizarding World account. Don’t worry, you can choose something else if you want. But you also get some free stuff if you connect these accounts. So we recommend doing it.

Name and Wand

When you start the game, one of the first things you will have to do is build your character. This can either take you a lot of time, or no time at all. Depending on how much you care.

You can change some aspects of your character’s appearance (like hair style, colours and eye colour to name a few) later in the game (which costs in-game money). You can’t change the major appearance thought, e.g. body shape, face shape etc.

Part of creating your character is the name. I suggest you pick a good name because you can’t change it later.

The wand is also another thing you get choose, from the type of wood, length, core and look. This also can’t be changed later. You can brandish your wand with stylish wand handles, but the wand itself is permanent. This was not much of a concern for me personally, since you can barely see the wand while you play.

Those are the main things related to the game.

Story

As you would expect in an RPG, you have the main overarching story and side quests. The side quests are broken down into “should do”, and “may be skipped” (These are not the official categorisations). Some of the side quests are absolutely amazing and even unlock many skills and abilities for your character. My rule of thumb is, if you see a chat bubble icon, do that side quest, if you don’t want to be bothered, forget the rest.

The main story of Hogwarts Legacy is pretty decent. It may not have you coming back to it again and again, as it’s mostly linear and in-game choices don’t seem to have much of an impact on the outcome of the main story.

You unlock various things as you progress through the game, including a broom and the room of requirements. These things are part of the main story and so are unmissable.

The story at times felt a bit grindy and annoying. Especially if you wanted to unlock the spells quickly. Unlocking spells had requirements, then class, then learning the spell and finally it unlocks. Thankfully there aren’t too many of these and it can be done relatively quickly.

Overall the story is refreshing and fun, while also keeping true to the Harry Potter world (now known as The Wizarding World) as a whole, with lots of fun easter eggs.

There are some house specific side quests, and you can create more characters (upto 4) so you can try out each house if you like. We especially loved the Hufflepuff and Slytherin common rooms. Additionally, Hufflepuff has one of the best house specific quests that is absolutely worth trying. The house that got the least attention from the movie and books, gets some respect in this game.

A few things missing from the story that would have been great additions. 

1. You don’t get a pet. Hedwig was a very nice part of the books, and while you technically do have an owl, it’s not the same. You get to rescue animals in the game. While that is a kind of substitute, it’s also not the same as a specific pet that factors into the actual story.
2. You never get the possibility of becoming an animagus. This would have been a great gameplay experience.
3. Most importantly, Quidditch. It is completely missing from the game. The best other HP game was Quidditch WorldCup, which was loads of fun when it came out around 20 years ago!

Hopefully the developers will bring these story/gameplay elements as DLCs or maybe in Hogwarts Legacy 2.

Game Play

There are 2 different styles of combat (hit or hide), and 2 different styles of traversal (floo or fly) that can be combined in order to play this game. 

Combat:

Hit: You can choose to hit your enemies head on and fight through every battle. This is a lot of fun once you unlock all the spells and get around to creating your perfect spell sets.

Hide: Alternately you can stealth your way through major sections of the game and simply one-hit-stun (It’s like assassinating, without sounding so brutal) most enemies.

Traversal:

Floo is the fast travel mechanism in the game, which you can use to fast travel everywhere, seriously cutting out travel time.

Flying is extremely beautiful with the beautiful world created in the game. There are two ways you can do this, broom or mount. You get the broom pretty early on in the game and if you do the related side quest/missions you can make the broom pretty fast. The mount is unlocked further along, and is also a fun way to get around, but for me the novelty of it wore off pretty fast. The mounts can be a Hippogriff or a Thestral, both are really cool.

The broom is pretty much our choice for flying, especially when we just want to hang around in this beautiful and magical world. Thought it must be said that the flight controls can be quite frustrating.

Another great element of the game is the Room of Requirements. Any Harry Potter fan will know exactly what this is. Your character gets their own room that expands as you progress through the game. This is a very critical game element, and has many stride quests and trophies attached. It can be fun but also cumbersome, it all depends on how you like to go about the game.

The Developers have been quite frequent with updates, which is great to see. Some bugs are fixed, and some cheats are nerfed. The good thing is that the developers are constantly working on the game.

For PC games, you would be happy to know there are a ton of modders adding great features to the game and we’re especially jealous of the companion and camera mod. If you get your hands on the PC version, you should head over to reddit and try them out.

Hints

Here are a few hints to make the game more enjoyable.

1. Unlock with Magic. The spell Alohamora is annoying, once you unlock it you have to play this repetitive boring mini game to unlock locks. Be it level 1, 2 or 3 they are the exact same. If, like me, you got annoyed, you can simply change your difficulty level to “story” and then you get the Auto Solve option. Whenever I saw myself unlocking more than 1 lock, I quickly changed my difficulty and skipped all the locks, and then changed the difficulty back.
2. Practice combat. There are 3 total unlockable combat arenas in the map (though one requires the dark arts pack), make sure you head there as it gives you a lot of experience with different enemies and spell combinations.
3. Look up the enemies weaknesses, some are not obvious, but finding them can make a huge difference between an enemy that is a sponge vs a quick win.
4. Pay attention to combat challenges, they hint at enemy weaknesses and give some bonus XP.
5. Use your plants!

Summary

While the game may not have the best replayability, especially given that you have a huge intro part to get through to start the game again, it still is lots of fun to play and we highly recommend it.

We’re especially peeved about the lack of NewGame+ mode (on PS).

Personally, it got me back to the initial love and wonder for HP, and made me re-read all the books and re-watch all the movies.

For those looking for a true RPG, this game may not be it, as the story is mostly linear. Most of your choices don’t really have a huge effect on the story. Which might be a relief for casual gamers. 

We hope that there will be some fun DLCs coming soon so you can keep coming back and playing the game.

This is definitely the best Harry Potter game yet. Get it, you will not regret it.