Hogwarts Legacy: A childhood dream come true
Released: 7th February 2023
Developer: Portkey Games
System: PC / PS5 / XBox Series X/S / PS4 & XBox One (May 2023) / Nintendo Switch (July 2023)
Price: $59.99 USD / £49.99 GBP
The time has finally come to go to Hogwarts - we’ve all been waiting for this since we turned 11 years old! I have been a huge Harry Potter fan for over 25 years so when the first reveal showcased Hogwarts Legacy I was extremely excited. I have played previous versions of Harry Potter video games, notably the original PC ports of Philosopher’s Stone & Chamber of Secrets (They went a bit downhill after those two) as well as the Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and 5-7 games - which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, none of these predecessors really scratched that itch of being able to fully explore Hogwarts and the surrounding areas, discovering all of Hogwarts’ many secrets. Hogwarts Legacy changed all of that.
Even with the surrounding criticisms - Hogwarts Legacy was one of the most awaited games of 2023. Despite the backlash and attempts to ‘cancel’ the game, it still went on to sell 15 million copies and earned 1 billion dollars globally.
So let’s start with the graphics. There is no denying this game is beautiful. I was lucky to be able to play the game on PC and I have a fairly decent set up (RTX 3080) and went with the recommended High settings that the game suggested. I did have some strange lighting issues while inside caves or inside Hogwarts castle whenever I had ray-tracing switched on, so I played the majority of the game with this switched off.
Luckily I was also able to play the Steam Deck version which I used for a huge portion of my playthrough. It ran pretty well on Steam Deck if I set the graphics to low. However, I ultimately did switch back to playing on PC in the end. I was infuriated to find that, during a 5 hour flight I was unable to load my save file as there was no internet connection. At the time of writing this review a patch has been released which greatly increases the performance on the Steam Deck.
We begin the game as a young student who is starting Hogwarts in their fifth year due to the fact that we are able to see glimpses of ancient magic. The Harry Potter fan in me originally thought this was a bit strange - starting Hogwarts in fifth year? With no prior magical education? Ridiculous. However the game washes this away by making it clear the main character has been training with a Hogwarts professor for a good couple of weeks before term starts. The game has a good opening with decent tutorials and plays very well. However, if you’re like me and cannot wait to get to Hogwarts to be sorted into your house - it can feel like a bit of a drag.
Eventually you do get to Hogwarts, albeit late to the sorting ceremony. I believe there was an option to link your Pottermore account to the game and it would sort you into the House you were sorted into on the website, or you can just take the sorting hat quiz in the game and it will sort you. If you do not like which house you are placed in, you can choose which house you go into. Naturally, I was sorted into Gryffindor. Do note that there are slightly different ways parts of the game play out depending on which house you are sorted into. There is also one sidequest that is exclusive to Hufflepuff which I think many people would like to play - however I don’t wish to spoil what the quest is during this review.
Hogwarts in this game is an actual dream. It’s everything I wanted and more. There are a lot of mysterious things lying around and doors surrounded by runes which you are unable to open at first. Figuring out the secrets of Hogwarts was one of my favourite things about this game. I spent hours upon hours just running around the castle and exploring. The game does a very good job of opening different parts of the castle up to you as you progress through your lessons and the storyline. The fact that I was still exploring parts of the castle at 25 hours into my playthrough was just wild to me.
The atmosphere around Hogwarts is just as magical as I hoped it would be. Often while just running around the castle I was highly entertained by suits of armor humming and singing, or even beating each other up! Portraits would talk to you, some students were being harassed by howlers - it was just brilliant. I was also very happy to see that Peeves the poltergeist was in the game. He was omitted from the movies and to have him back was amazing.
There are a lot of side-quests in the game, in addition to the main storyline - some of these are really well written stories, such as Sebastian Sallow’s arc. Others are not as deep. I did find that after about 20 hours into the game, I got bored of side quests - they just became a bit too repetitive for me, and ultimately I just ended up doing the three main relationship quests for Natsai, Poppy and Sebastian, which was my favourite quest.
The combat flows very well in this game. I was interested to see how they would make combat work as it is not your traditional kind of combat. You learn many different defensive spells throughout your playthrough and you use these to hit enemies, following up with basic casts which will grant you higher damage points. One thing I did find frustrating about the combat is when casting spells, for some reason your character steps forward after each cast - meaning that if you’re fighting on a clifftop or close to a ledge, you have to be very careful to ensure that you don’t fall off!
A couple of hours into the main story you will gain access to brooms and flying. The controls for flying were a bit difficult to get used to, especially on mouse and keyboard. In general I think this game definitely lends itself better to gamepad controls rather than mouse and keyboard. The flying controls I found to be so clunky that I struggled with the main flying side-quests which are needed for you to be able to upgrade your broom. Luckily, as I am a filthy casual I was playing the game on story mode I was given the opportunity to skip these flying sections after 2 failed attempts, so all was good there.
Flying is a lovely way to explore the vast overworld the game offers up. I admit that it took me a long time to realise that you can actually cast the ‘Revelio’ spell while flying which highlights all nearby points of interest - this was really helpful for identifying caves, magical beast areas and much more.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the game, there were some issues and things I didn’t like about it.
When flying around on your mount or broom, quite often you would hit areas you wouldn’t be able to fly through - namely around the Hogsmeade area and the Coastal Cavern. This was annoying to me and really broke the immersion.
In the early days of the game, you would activate ‘floo’ flames which act as fast travel points. It was a clever idea as the map is so huge it would take a long time to get anywhere, so floo travel was a way to get around the map quicker. Unfortunately, all of the floo flames were accompanied by busts of Ignatia Wildsmith, who continually reminded us of how inconvenient travel was before she invented floo powder. Every time you walked past a floo flame, the bust would basically shout lines at you, catching you off guard and scaring the hell out of you.
‘You can’t IMAGINE how inconvenient travel was before I invented floo powder’
‘Off on another adventure, are we?’
‘How nice to see you, my young friend!’
‘What are you up to now?’
If I had a dollar for everytime that this floo powder lady jumpscared the hell out of me, I’d certainly be rich by now. I am happy to say that after a week or two, the dev’s put out a patch which nuked how often she talked and I think it also decreased the volume of her speech!
One of the biggest complaints about the game I have noticed, which also greatly affected me as well, was the fact that you were unable to pause cutscenes. This was really inconvenient and I cannot understand why the devs did not implement a pause option? Some cutscenes, especially near the beginning of the game were quite long and it was annoying to not be able to pause them.
In conclusion - this game was everything I hoped it would be and more - it was the Harry Potter game I didn’t know I needed, and didn’t realise I had been waiting for my whole life. If you’re a fan of open world games, I recommend that you definitely give this a try!
Pros:
Beautiful Overworld & Graphics
Gigantic Hogwarts to explore
Dev team actively working to address any issues
Some great storylines
Cons:
No function available to pause cutscenes
Limitations on flying break immersion
Flying controls quite clunky
Can get a little repetitive after 30-40 hours