Is that all the magic? Hogwarts Legacy arrived after years of waiting for a real game in the world of Harry Potter, and after dozens of hours of play, we have a lot to say about it.
For the most part, games based on popular brands like movies are cheap attempts to extract a lot of money from fans. But the new game in the magical world of Harry Potter, developed by Avalanche, is not such a story. Its first leak occurred almost six years ago, which means it was in development for a long time and taken seriously.
But on the other hand, it faces the most loyal fan base in the world, which means it needs to meet impossible expectations. Does it succeed? It’s a bit more complicated than we expected, so we waited for the launch noises to subside to try and explain what we felt.
To feel like a student at Hogwarts Hogwarts Legacy is the first game to try to give us the real experience of being a student at the most famous school in the world (okay, maybe Landy Bernard from “The Office” has something to say about it), and indeed, from the first moments, Hogwarts feels very dynamic, and you will encounter a real wow effect.
Lots of things around you will move all the time, starting from flying objects, NPCs who talk to each other, and up to a pretty exaggerated amount of pictures and moving characters that will also react to situations in the game and to you.
After researching the map and discovering the small Easter Eggs, playing in the wizarding world is exciting. However, the main story of the game fails to generate genuine interest. It begins with a poorly established story, continues with a central threat that never really amounts to anything significant, and ends with a climax that doesn’t quite hit the mark emotionally.
Nevertheless, there’s no other way to say it – the fact that you are wandering around Hogwarts, using spells you know from the book and movie series is incredibly exciting. When you cast “Lumos” and hear the familiar sound from the movies, it will give you chills.
When you fly on a broomstick in the familiar Quidditch pitch (which is “closed” for plot reasons, but in reality, there was no time to develop quality Quidditch gameplay), when staircases move, rooms change, and you arrive in rooms and areas familiar from the books and movies, when you hear the familiar soundtrack of the movie series in the background, and when the main story transitions through familiar areas like Gringotts, you will definitely be excited. Despite everything, Avalanche manages to create a world that immerses you in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, relying on your nostalgic feelings that have been thirsting for something new in this universe.
You can play Hogwarts Legacy in various graphics modes, each of which requires you to sacrifice a specific element – resolution or refresh rate. In all modes, including the Performance mode, I found that the graphics don’t necessarily feel Next-Gen, but they are certainly rich enough. Many great open-world games have presented graphics that are more mediocre, and ultimately the game looks good on the new generation of consoles, especially in cinematic parts. There is a lot of attention to detail here that makes this world believable and realistic, as much as one can call such a fictional world.
However, loading screens are still with us here, and you may find yourself waiting for long seconds for a door to open (and even a loading icon will appear). Unfortunately, the game still doesn’t meet the standard that the new consoles are trying to ensure, and this is apparently due to the developers’ desire to make it accessible to the previous generation of consoles, and now that we are more than two years into this console generation, maybe it’s time to move on.
A must for fans. Others can pass.
Hogwarts Legacy is ultimately an open-world game, and that’s something you’ll need to consider when deciding whether to play it. Whether you love the genre or not, it’s reasonable to assume that if you’re a Harry Potter fan, you won’t really be able to give it up. If you’re not a fan of the series, I doubt you’ll forgive its shortcomings and find yourself connecting to this world. Avalanche has succeeded in creating a game that does justice to the franchise.
