Hogwarts Legacy Review: A Magical Adventure with Some Flaws

Do you want to cast spells, fly on dragons and discover a magical school? Then you might like Hogwarts Legacy, a game that lets you make your own wizard and live in the Harry Potter world.

Video games are meant to be played. They can keep you at peace and distract you from the world for a few hours to cleanse your mind and recharge you to head back out with somewhat of a smile. It’s a hobby, sometimes it’s a job, but if you aren’t loving it or afraid to play a game, then ask yourself why. Is it because of the people around you or is it just a feeling you have in your heart? Remember, you make your own decisions in life, not others. And with that being said, it’s ok to separate a creator from their art at times. Especially with this game because J.K. Rowling was not involved with the creation of this game, but the developers in Avalanche Software were, so it’s exciting to play and experience their vision! Hogwarts Legacy is without a doubt surprisingly good. It’s the best Harry Potter game for this generation as it also caters to the fans of the series in a remarkable way.

I felt like a kid again discovering the wizarding world for the first time. This game has so much charm and heart to it. Portkey Games and Avalanche did an amazing job capturing the essence of Harry Potter in their own way. If someone wanted to try out an RPG for the first time, I’d recommend this game. It’s a fresh, beautiful game that we haven’t had in a long time. It reminded me of when I played Kingdoms of Amalur for the first time, with the intro grabbing my attention and a new world to explore.

In Hogwarts Legacy they added everything you could think of. They have all four houses to choose from with each one having their unique rooms, cosmetics and quests, a good character customization and much more. The amount of freedom and things you can do in this game is overwhelming. There are puzzles left and right; a bunch of easter eggs and characters to see. Wandering around Hogwarts itself is insane! The amount of detail they put in the castle alone is ridiculous. There’s an enormous number of secret routes, rooms, and interesting lore. It could have just been that and I think the game would have been fine.

Once you go outside the castle and explore, it becomes an RPG player’s playground. You got the bandit camps like Assassin’s Creed/Ghost of Tsushima, a bunch of puzzles and collectibles. Hell, I’d say it’s a bit too much! If you’re a player that gets easily distracted, then I suggest you just play at your own pace. Each activity you do rewards you with something like cool cosmetics, more inventory or increased ancient magic. Everything matters in Hogwarts Legacy and surprisingly there wasn’t a waste of space in the open world. There was always something to do. But sometimes trying to do all of these can lead to open world fatigue, especially with most of the puzzles being the same – with the only difference being using different spells. There’s so much you’ll just grow tired of them in just a few hours like I have.

What kept the game fun for me though was the combat. The number of cool spells you unlock is unbelievable. You can use them in and outside of combat like to solve certain puzzles but using them to dispatch your enemies is pretty cool. You can juggle them with spells like Accio and then decimate them with Inferno or Bombarda. It’s a pretty satisfying thing to do. But the nice part is the way you get the spells. Granted, I wish there was more involvement with the classes, but the professors teach you how to use the spells and their origin. You do little challenges to see if you’re worthy of them, including learning the dark arts. The quests for it were pretty interesting and DARK.

The craziest thing Hogwarts Legacy has is a huge house customization and beast-catching island like from the Fantastic Beasts movies. You can customize the area, breed animals and play with them. It’s pretty cool. And for your room, the amount of customization you can do is immense. You can even change the type of day to fit the mood. I wished the story had more to it but it’s pretty straightforward at best.

I wanted to see more of the villains’ influence during the quests or go more in depth with the classes and houses a bit more. What carries it though are the side quests, including the companion quests. It reminded me of Mass Effect! Going on adventures with these characters, gaining their trust and learning more about them was wholesome. And after you complete their quest, you get to see how the friendship grows over time and how much they have your back till the end.

Hogwarts Legacy is not without its faults though. Oh lord, the bugs are terrible. At first, they were funny; seeing some of the NPC’s glitch through the floor or enemies fly to the sky; but when it happened to me, affecting my gameplay, it was annoying. I went into a dry cave only to somehow swim in there. Mission objectives bugged out at times and characters I needed to speak to disappeared in thin air. Thankfully the autosave is good or I think a lot more people would hate this game if they lost a lot of progress.

The character models outside from the main characters/quest-givers are also bad. Those NPCs look like they are from 2010. They have the same facial models and you can’t really interact with them, so they are just there as background ambiance. Oh and don’t get me started on the performance issues on PC. I feel like it’s poorly optimized and I have a 3070. Come on now! There are framerate issues left and right and the stuttering at times is abysmal. Hopefully it’s fixed in the future but for now you have to mess around with the settings to find what’s best for you.

Hogwarts Legacy was an ambitious start of the games franchise. It sold over 12 million copies and it’s only going to grow. My question for the sequel is what more can they add? We have most of the spells. Are we going to have to learn them again in the sequel? What other areas are we going to explore? Will there be more mounts? How about classes like in Bully? But I’m hopeful to see what more can be done with Hogwarts Legacy. It was different from any game I’ve played in a long time. There are no microtransactions or gimmicks but an actual full game. Granted, I wished there was Quidditch or multiplayer, but it felt complete. So, I recommend Hogwarts Legacy. It’s currently out on Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC. It will be released for PS4 and Xbox One on May 5th, 2023, and for the Nintendo Switch it will be released on July 25th, 2023.