Hogwarts Legacy Review

Story

The story is pretty good, to sum it up without too many spoilers: you are joining Hogwarts late as a 5th-year student. You have the ultra-rare ability to see Ancient Magic and you learn from the past users of Ancient Magic known as the Keepers. As they prepare you to confront the growing presence of a Goblin Rebellion that wants the Ancient Magic for themselves, all while you're taking classes at Hogwarts, helping students and teachers.

It's worth noting there are two endings... Well, sort of. No choices you make throughout the game change the ending, but one dialogue choice at the end, where you decide the fate of Ancient Magic, changes the near-ending cutscene. I say near-ending cutscene because regardless of this, you still get the same House Cup ending cutscene. I definitely would have preferred a morality system, so decisions impacted more.

The highlight of the story was learning about the Keepers, all of them are interesting, but there are two in particular that stand out for different reasons (not spoiling). There are also companions, with each of them having their own stories, they're hit or miss, with Sebastion's being by far the best companion storyline.

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Gameplay

Even before it was released, I knew from watching the showcase that it was going to be something special, and it didn't disappoint. You have light attacks that you can combo and extend with your main spell attacks, each one has an individual cooldown.

At the start, you can set up to four spell slots, which you can get up to four sets of, which gets pretty wild. To defend yourself, you can dodge, block and counterattack with the classic Protego shield spell. You also have various plants and potions that you can brew, that do a wide range of things.

Then there's your Ancient Magic finisher attack, fill its bar and release a strong attack that'll one-hit normal enemies and damage stronger enemies. You also have a throw move where you can throw various things or even counter-throw things thrown at you by enemies. Tie all that together and it has very good combat, making it far better than any previous Harry Potter game to date and a real Game of the Year contender.

I have three nitpicks (negatives) worth mentioning. For one, the game gets too easy toward the end, especially with gear. Stack the same traits on all your gear and you're unstoppable. For example, put the Unforgiveable 3 (increased cursed damage) trait on each of your six gear slots, and you're overpowered. Even without the Lvl 3 versions of this trait, it still felt too strong with stacking. This is the case with other traits stacked as well.

The second nitpick I have is the healing system. Like an outfit with stacked traits, it gets out of hand later in the game. Early game you have a smaller health bar, fewer health potions on you, and a worse defensive stat on outfits. The problem arrives later when you get more health, better gear, and the full amount of health potions. The healing potion limit of 25 is just way too many for a game like this that has great defensive options.

The third and final nitpick I have is some of the open-world content is lackluster. To name a few: You have the Merlin Trials, which leave much to be desired. They feel like copy and pasted puzzles and there's an overabundance of them.

There are Battle Arenas, which I liked, but there were only two in the base game, with a third locked behind a paywall. Even with three, the game could have used at least five. All they are is a challenging wave-type mode where you survive five waves of different sets of enemies, while also having the option of doing challenges. So I'm not sure why there were only 2 in the base game.

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Presentation

This is the best-looking Harry Potter game by far. The Forbidden Forest looks great, Hogsmeade looks great, and more importantly, Hogwarts castle looks amazing. The game features a time-of-day system, and you can explore these during the day and night, which can completely change the feel of these areas. The immersion you get in Hogwarts Legacy really makes exploring and finding collectibles fun to do versus most other games that make it feel like a chore. I will say the NPCs and their facial animations are not the best, but not enough to hurt the experience.

Sound

The soundtrack is great, with some tracks putting a new twist on the classic Harry Potter tunes of the past.

Performance

Hogwarts Legacy performs well on my PC with FSR 2 set to Quality. My hardware includes a Ryzen 5 5600 processor with a Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card. I was easily able to run everything at high settings, at a locked 60 FPS. But despite the game compiling shaders when launching, it still has random stuttering.

Value

Although your decisions and responses do not alter the story, except for the one near-ending cutscene, they can still greatly affect your experience enough to warrant a second playthrough. If you want to be nice to everyone and not learn any dark magic at all, you can. If you want to be a jerk to everyone, learn dark magic, and even ask for money for your deeds, you can.

With the traits and skill tree options available on Hogwarts Legacy, there are multiple builds you can go for. For example, an overpowered plants build, overpowered potions build, or an overpowered cursed build comes to mind.

According to my original save, it took me roughly 48 hours to do nearly all of the side content and beat the game. So yeah, it has a very nice amount of content to lose yourself in.

Conclusion

Hogwarts Legacy is a great game that I hope eventually continues as a series of games and it earns an 8.5 out of 10. The combat is great, and the different builds and responses add to its replayability. I can't wait to try out the other responses and builds that I missed out on in my first playthrough. Hogwarts Legacy is currently my Game of the Year.