TL;DR: this game was good. Basically everything but the story is at least A tier.
Synopsis: you arrive to hogwarts, and find that a faction of goblins are launching a rebellion and have to stop it.
I have an acquaintance who helped program this game, and when the topic of his work came up, I gave him my frank thoughts on the game. I told him that I though the world was beautiful, the combat was surprisingly good, but the story lacked edge and flavour. He agreed without hesitation, and noted that a lot of decisions that the player should be able to make, like side with the Goblins, cannot be done.
When I probed him on the developing process for the game, he admitted that JK Rowling had no creative involvement with the story, but that her lawyers did. Apparently, every single detail of the game had to be compatible with the source content of the book, down to the position of doors (yes, I’m serious, a girl on his team had to read the books and identify a particular fragment which described the positions of some doors to put them in the game).
In terms of details, the graphics are incredible.
On Windows, the game runs well. On linux, it doesn’t. I changed my PC build recently to an extremely powerful computer (64+ GB RAM, 24+ core processor, 5+ GHz CPU) that has a mediocre video card (8 GB VRAM), because I don’t really care for graphics or playing games that much. I changed my distro to linux mint, and I must say that running this game is a headache. You have to set the maximum map count to a higher value to even run the game, and the game will still crash because of VRAM leakage on low settings.
I previously mentioned that the combat was surprisingly good. I have very high standards for combat in games, and I will outright refuse to play many action if the combat is not as good as what you would find in your average multiplayer game. Nevertheless, I found it to be of acceptable quality.
The combat has a degree of skill to it. Attacks can be dodged by blocking or dodging, but some attacks can only be dodged, so your multiple reaction time has to be trained well enough to do the proper thing consistently. Only using dodge is a workable style, though this interferes with momentum and is not optimal, because blocking also gives you a free stun. Enemies can block too, so the correct spell has to be cast to properly bypass this, making spamming ineffective at high difficulties and in later stages of the game.
There are also fun little dynamics to casting spells. Sometimes you can get away with not blocking or dodging by casting certain types of attacks or spells, but if these windows are improperly identified, then you will either get struck by enemies or miss opporitunities to deal free damage.
There are 34 spells in the game, of those, about 20 can be used in combat, theoretically, this allows for 116,280 combinations of spell inventories, but practically speaking, there are only so many fighting strategies, which I identify as:
Bombing: using heavy hitting spells to blow stuff up (e.g. bombarda, confringo, expelliarmus).
Manipulation: move people to kill them, using the pull spell and the lift spell.
Freeze and destroy: self-explanatory.
Stealth: use invisibility cloak/spell and turn people into stone. The spell is about as effective as mid-game sneak in Skyrim, for reference.
Like Skyrim, I think that the combat suffers from dronemaxxing, where trying hard enough to win will inevitably lead to results regardless of skill level, like overusing potions and exploiting OP spells. The problem in the game is not as bad, not just because Hogwarts Legacy is harder to game than Skyrim is, but that using these potions and spells feels more legitimate when you are supposed to be a wizard. Funny enough, professional reviewers are criticizing Hogwarts Legacy for being too hard to dronemax by attending classes and brewing potions — what a bunch of losers.
The story is about as generic as the average ZOGflick or ZOGware that comes from modern publishing companies. You arrive at Hogwarts, you are attacked, it turns out that you are attacked because you’re special, there is some goblin revolt, and you have to stop it with your special powers. Snore. I tried out some of the side quests and they were not much better.
The blame for this is could be cast on the need for the lawyers and total canon consistency, which constrains the limits of what can be done with the story. It’s worth mentioning that most modern games and movies have stories just as bad as this one’s, but with none of these constraints, so it’s unlikely that this was the sole contributing factor.
I recommend listening to a podcast while playing this game. The production value and combat is enough to make the game worthwhile on its own; the story is a snorefest and your attention is much better spent on some schizocast like Carribean Rythms.
Scoring:
Design (20/20):
Atmosphere: (5/5) - not a potterhead, but the dark academia/magic/victorian English combination works extremely well.
Graphics: (5/5)
UI: (2/2)
Bugs: (2/2) - 2/2 on windows, -5/2 on linux
Sound: (2/2)
OST: (2/2)
Character designs: (2/2)
Script (12/25):
Character Investment: (2/5) - Sebastian is cool, others are lame
Character Realism: (2/2)
Character Complexity: (1/3)
Writing: (4/10) - terrible
Ending: (3/5) - haven’t gotten there yet, but doubt it’s good
Gameplay (25/30):
Skill expression: (8/10) - optimal blocking/dodging/spell use is not easy
RNG: (5/5)
Satisfaction: (8/10)
Optionality: (3/3)
Novelty: (1/2)
Value (12/15):
Skill: (5/5)
Originality: (5/5) - the Harry Potter universe is unique enough to carve out its own niche, even when the game is essentially a Skyrim clone to carve out its own niche. Oh, and if I recall correctly, my source within the development team said that Skyrim had a strong influence on Hogwarts Legacy.
Thematic elements: (2/5) - … What themes?
Enjoyment (7/10):
Did I like it: (7/10) - solid experience.