We are going on week two of reviewing Hogwarts Legacy here at Digitalchumps. It has been quite an adventure. Portkey Games has been one of the few developers out there that have fully understood what the possibilities could be with this franchise. Instead of presenting some half-baked Wii game that goes along with the Harry Potter films, the good folks at Portkey Games decided that maybe they should go bigger, less narrow/linear in scope, and allow the user to create an adventure of their own. And let me tell you, good readers, they pulled it off.
With a good dose of familiar Harry Potter lore, a heavy dose of Skyrim structure, and a fun backend system that mostly works, Hogwarts Legacy is a solid way to continue the winning streak of good games in the industry this year. While not all of it works, and some of the technical issues of getting it going can be a bit off-putting, there is more positive than negative in this title.
With that said, let’s get right into it.
Pre-pre-prequel
Hogwarts Legacy is set in the 1800s when your character discovers that they’re connected with ancient magic. This magic’s old power is set to protect the world from a great tragedy of some sort that could shake the very foundation of the wizarding world. Going up against goblins with powerful armor and magic, you’re tasked with taking down the bad guys or else watch the wizarding world burn to the ground.
No pressure at all.
The story of Hogwarts Legacy is better than most of the Fantastic Beasts movies released by WB. While I know that sets the bar low, the game was probably more equipped to become a good movie in both structure and execution than more recent attempts at keeping the HP world alive. It treats the lore known to many HP fans with the utmost respect and creates a unique experience at the same time, as it wants and does tell its own tale. I was impressed with the three-act narrative that played out in this story. The characters felt real, the urgency of the situation felt big, and the growth through discovery and mystery really paid off. It was a good journey that led the way and didn’t feel like a throwaway. It was bold of Portkey to create their own tale without the support of major Harry Potter characters. They seem to really lay it out there and completed what they tasked themselves to do.
Anyway, the story is quite good and worth the journey.
The other part
One of the major problems I have had with every Elder Scrolls and Fallout title is that I never complete them. I think the closest I ever came to a complete game from Bethesda Softworks was Skyrim. I played the absolute hell out of that and eventually painted myself into a corner with having to finish the game because, well, that was all that was left to do.
Now, the main reason why I have never finished those games is that I always fall into the side quests and never come back to the main story. It’s a wonderful trap that I’m glad to fall into. And guess what? Hogwarts Legacy is driven by side quests, discovery, and a bevy of mini-games to take up a massive amount of time during gameplay. Add in that all those wonderful things are put into a gigantic world to explore, one filled full of surprises and secrets, and you will be in Skyrim-like heaven.
Side Quests
This is straight out of a Bethesda handbook. The team at Portkey must have been in the creative room for a long time trying to come up with small quests that equal fun experiences. There are many side quests that lead you around the Hogwarts Legacy world. For example, you might run into a student that has cast a spell that made library books in a restricted area fly around. You might be asked to capture the books and retrieve this student’s diary which has personal passages about fellow students. Or you might find a student that needs you to retrieve a treasure left by Merpeople because the student can’t swim. Or even better, you may find teachers needing you to do a certain number of tasks in order to understand and learn more spells that help you with your adventure. Regardless of the side quest, there are a lot. This is one of the bigger components of the game and one that isn’t just a set of simple throwaway tasks. They’re fun and engaging quests that keep you pushing forward in the game beyond its main story.
Branching Narratives
While some quests have their straightforwardness about them, there are other quests that present you with branching narrative dialogue that shapes who you might be as you progress through the game. For example, going back to the previously mentioned Merpeople quest, I completed the quest and retrieved the treasure the Merpeople left for the above student. When the student asked for the treasure, I had the option to give it to her or keep it myself. Because this is just a game, I decided to be the absolute a-hole and keep it myself. That conversation didn’t end well, but I did end up keeping the treasure which made it worth my while. The fact that this was a choice motivated me to keep taking on tasks and hoping to keep up my evil side.
The game does a solid job of parsing out branching narrative choices and making them impactful. Sometimes you gain, sometimes you lose, but you’re always guaranteed to be entertained by the end results. And this isn’t just limited to side quests either, as some aspects of the main quest provide you with the opportunity to choose how you speak to someone. It’s quite impressive and it works within the context of the world built in the game.
The World
One of the reasons why the side quests and narratives work so well in this game is because of the size of the world. While we have only seen segments of the grounds around Hogwarts in the movies and books, the full scale and scope presented in Hogwarts Legacy are breathtaking. While I wouldn’t say that it’s completely Skyrim big, it’s big enough for fans of the series to be happy. You get to explore Hogsmeade, which is filled full of shops that you can explore, while also getting to traverse places like the ever-dangerous Forbidden Forest which is filled full of baddies. Portkey did a great job of creating this amazing world that fans of HP will appreciate. They really give you a reason to explore every nook and cranny with puzzles and secret places hidden everywhere. I didn’t expect much from this portion of the game, but they did a bang-up job of keeping the world interesting. It’s one of the better world builds I have seen in the last few years.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Hogwarts Legacy comes in many pieces. The big and dominant one is fighting. A good chunk of tasks you’re asked to complete will involve taking out enemies. This could be hunting down spiders, taking out camps of goblins, and/or hunting down poachers. Regardless of enemy flavor, you’ll go into the belly of the beast and take up your wand in order to complete whatever you’re tasked with in the game. The fighting system that Portkey put together is actually quite smart. It reminds me of the Arkhamd games and Shadows of Mordor, where the fighting feels seamless in effort, but powerful in style, visuals, and execution.
of course, none of this works without fluid controls. The controls during fighting have you choosing spells that have to replenish after each usage. The spells come in a group of four and you hold down R2 to activate the choice of a spell, then you choose and execute the spell by pressing the button that represents it. It’s all quite simple which helps when juggling the spells you need to use.
Yes, you must juggle those during the fighting, and the design gives you a good reason.
Some of the enemies have shields when you battle them. The shields are color-coded, which matches the color of the spells. Having the ability to quickly go back and forth between spells to knock out shields, while also protecting yourself and being the aggressor is just masterful in this game. It’s easy to juggle the multiple responsibilities of fighting, defense, and choosing the right spells. That comes down to well-made controls, which Portkey provides in this game.
More than fighting
When you aren’t fighting in the game, you’re more than likely solving puzzles. This is another solid piece of the gameplay design. You will find items in Hogwarts, such as blank paintings that need revealing or guide pages that need retrieving, and all sorts of different puzzles that offer up a different type of gameplay. While not all the puzzles are engaging or mysterious, there are a few that are confounding as they are rewarding. For example, you’ll notice from the moment you start exploring the castle that there are weird doorways and contraptions with The Witness-type of puzzle design (if you have never played that game, you need to – it’s quite engaging as it is frustrating). You are given no hints and no direction but encouraged to find solutions through exploration and self-discovery. While Hogwarts Legacy might be lopsided with fighting v puzzles, it still has enough in the latter to keep you balanced when you need to get away from just fighting.
Rewards for your efforts
Now, all that fighting and puzzle-solving isn’t for nothing in the game. The title gives you a steady arc for upgrading your character. The more you do, the more you get in return, and, more importantly, the more you unlock. With every puzzle solved or fight won, you get XP that pushed you towards leveling your character up and pushes you towards future features to unlock to help make the gameplay experience even bigger. When you hit around levels 15-20, you’ll find yourself unlocking attributes that extend to bigger, better, and sometimes bad-der things. The latter is in reference to the ability to learn and become someone mastering the dark arts. The game has a few spots during your exploration that allow you to get a taste of how that feels and let me just say that it feels amazing. Opening new attributes with leveling help to motivate the player to keep going if you didn’t need motivation already.
An added bonus attribute to the entire experience is upgrading clothes and such that help you gain abilities (defense, offense, etc.). You can find items around Hogwarts and its surrounding land that improve your appearance while upgrading your character. The more you level up, the more access you have to these items. It’s a balanced leveling/progression system that doesn’t seem to falter in its intentions. It certainly makes constant customization in this game far more exciting. It’s comparable to the customization in the most recent God of War.
Crafting potions
Crafting is another component of this game and one that I didn’t particularly get interested in while playing. It’s no biggie, as you can access most potions through monetary means if this isn’t your gig. Otherwise, you can scrounge around the land and Hogwarts greenhouse for ingredients to craft potions. For those who enjoy that sort of craftiness, it’s there and present. I know, it sounds thrilling from that description. I’m just not into it.
Broom-ing around
First, you must earn the broom. Then you have to fight with the controls to enjoy the broom. Once you do those tasks, the world is your oyster and the land opens up. As someone who is pretty confident about their abilities to move a character around with thumbsticks, I can’t say that I fell in love with the brooming accuracy when flying. I’m not sure if it was meant to be loosey-goosey, but it comes off that way when turning or pointing oneself in a particular direction. It’s tricky, but it’s worth it as you can find many things around Hogwarts’ grounds because you’re flying around covering large amounts of ground.
Repetitiveness
If there is a big gameplay knock I have with this title, it would be that there are a lot of repetitive enemies in the game. There are a ton of poachers and dark arts wizards. The majority of your exploring will find you running into the same peeps over and over again. The fighting makes it feel fun to take down enemies repeatedly, but it can’t completely hide that the common enemies are still very…common. Now, the bosses and such are epic, but I would have liked a bit more variety with the lower levels. Just a little bit more.
Anyway, let’s wrap this section up.
I’m positive that I’m forgetting some other aspects of gameplay, but those are the main points of interest. For the most part, Portkey did an amazing job of gameplay design on this game. The fighting is easy to pull off, even during the chaos, while the balance of risk/reward/exploration is addictive. The devs pulled off the impossible and made the gameplay in an HP game entertaining as hell. This should be the future blueprint for any HP-related game.
Presentation
The presentation in Hogwarts Legacy is stunning. It’s top-tier Horizon Zero Dawn beautiful. The visuals are mesmerizing, the lighting is on point, the textures are so well done and rendered quickly, and the draw distance with the land is equally as impressive. The environments really suck you into the story and gameplay as they complement what Portkey was trying to do with the overall experience.
Equally as good is the audio. The musical score hits home in the most John Williams sort of manner. It’s movie-quality good.
And we’re here now
While the beautifully blooming roses are above, there are some welted pedals. This is the first game that actually turned my PlayStation 5 off for me. I repeat, this game randomly decided at points to shut off my PS5. And this isn’t some case where it said a secret spell and my PS5 politely shut off. Nope, this is a case where the game somehow freaked out my PS5 to the point where the system got hot quickly and decided to shut itself down before something terrible happened. That is some freakiness right there. The only way to get the system back on was to unplug it, wait a few seconds, plug it back into the outlet, and then turn it on. Whatever the game did to the PS5, the system didn’t want to stay plugged up during its reboot. Such a weird thing. After about 2-3 hours of being concerned for my PS5’s well-being, the solution I found to fix this was the following:
- Uninstall the game and reinstall it.
- Once reinstalled, delete your character.
- Once the character is deleted, create a new one.
- Boom, you’re in business with no shutdown issues.
While I’m not a programmer, I do have a bit of logic. Whatever the hell was freaking my PS5 out must have resided in the original install. Whatever was in that install, was attached to my character during saves. Doing a reinstall, and only that, doesn’t solve the problem. Everything must be wiped. It didn’t suck so bad for me because I had played maybe an hour of the game prior to this solution. It sucked worse for my wife, who had invested about 7-10 hours of struggle with the system. It almost ruined the entire experience. Thankfully, the solution above worked for both of us and we have had zero issues since. Had it not worked, well, this review would have gone south quickly. I cannot stand broken and unfinished games. Gamers deserve better.
The fact that I had to figure it out on my own was a bummer, but I’m glad I solved it.
Anyway, to the conclusion!
Conclusion
Hogwarts Legacy is mostly everything it promised it would be. The main story is quite good, the side quests seem endless, and the magical mystery that most know in this wizarding world from books and movies is ever present in this game.
