Hogwarts Legacy Review
Feb. 6, 2023Hogwarts Legacy Review
The magical school of witchcraft and wizardry is finally opening its doors in Hogwarts Legacy. We go over gameplay, immersion, overall experience and more in our spoiler free review for the open world RPG.
In thisHogwarts Legacyreview, I’m going to be talking about my review impressions of the game. I’ve played for about 30 hours or so so far. I am not even close to being done with this game just want to disclaim that here but I am far enough that I did feel like I could give my Impressions on the game what I like about it so far what I don’t like about it, so strap in for that.
Before I get in my Impressions though, I want to quickly note that we’ve tried to keep this video as spoiler free as possible. I know this is a game that you go in blind and just want to experience the game for yourself. So the footage that we’re showing is kept to like the first hour or two of the game. Probably gameplay footage you’ve already seen if you’ve seen pre-release you know videos so it’s not going to be anything crazy. I don’t want to spoil anything for you guys I am not that person so feel free to watch the video with very mild spoilers from the very beginning of the game. Nothing story-related will be included but just gameplay (in the video). If you don’t want any spoilers at all, you can just listen to the video while you read on, and not watch the footage shown.
So, the first thing I want to talk about in this game is the immersion. This is something we’ve been talking about for the weeks leading up to the launch of the game. It’s the thing that’s drawn me to the game, it’s the thing that’s drawn a lot of people to this game, non-gamers included because they wanted to experience the world of Hogwarts or Harry Potter or The Wizarding World for themselves in a way they haven’t been able to yet before because this is really the first game that’s tackled this on such a scale.
And let me tell you they absolutely nailed this aspect. From the way that your dorm feels inHogwarts Castleto yourcommon room, to the corridors bustling with students and details and puzzles everywhere, to the moving staircases and everything that you will find in Hogwarts Castle when you first begin this game – it’s absolutely mind-blowing. You will never see Hogwarts Castle realized in a way quite like it’s been in this game and it gives me goosebumps just even talking about it right now. I think players are just going to be absolutely mesmerized by it and it’s one of those things where you don’t want to rush through it you just want to take your time and play it and experience it and take it all in like you’re watching a good movie that you don’t want to end.
Beyond that, this continues to extend intoHogsmeadewhich has this cozy feeling to it. It reminds you of the movies and the books and you’re gonna love it. Like you’ll absolutely love it if you’re a Harry Potter fan. You’ll love the way they’ve done this but the thing that really got me is not something that I expected, which was that this sense of feeling extends throughout the entire game that I’ve played so far. it’s not just Hogwarts Castle and Hogsmeade dropped in a big open world and they’ve used that to lure you in to play an open world game and those are the parts that you like if you’re Harry Potter and you don’t like anything else.
Literally, everything about the game World feels like it belongs in The Wizarding World. From the way thepuzzlesare designed, to thelandscape, to the way you castspells, to the way you interact with yourteachersand other students in the game. It all feels like it belongs. Considering that this is the first game from Portkey Studios, it’s absolutely impressive. I cannot think of a stronger word it’s so impressive what they have managed to accomplish. it actually is an inspiration to the gaming industry of what a studio can do if they really put their mind to it.
This brings me to my next point which is the size of this game. This game is really interesting because when you start playing and you’re exploring Hogwarts Castle and you’re exploring Hogsmeade, you sort of get a sense of thesize of the game. Like you get a sense we’re like oh okay I feel like it’s going to be you know this size of a game and then once you like really get out into the world and they start exploring and you get your broom and you can fly around on the landscape. You start to realize that the game is much much much larger than you expected.
Elden Ringblew me away for its game size. I had no way of knowing it was going to be that large and this game is not as large as that by any means however it is a very very substantial game. Just based on like my percentage completion from where I’m at about 30 hours into the game I’d say you could get anywhere from 70 to 100 hours out of this game if you try to do everything in the game that’s a rough estimate. It depends on what difficulty you’re playing on and how fast you go whether you just take time and wander around but I think it’s probably in that ballpark and that’s insane. I did not expect that from this game.
The other thing is the quality of that 70 to 100 hours so far has been very good. I’ve really enjoyed doing the activities that they’ve placed in the game. There is a lot of the same activity over and over, I’m not going to say they didn’t do that because this is a huge open-world game and that’s pretty common in those types of games. But I have enjoyed doing it so far. That said, I do wonder over the course of you know 70 or 100 hours like double the time I’m in the game now if I will still feel that way. A lot of the activities felt very similar, and copy-pasted a lot.
I think what’s kept them interesting is the feel of the world and mycharacterand how I’ve approached playing the game. It’s more casual and stuff like that. But if you’re like the completionist and you’re trying to get everything I think at some point there’s probably a good chance it’ll start to feel a little bit repetitive. Like not super but you might be like oh I just want to get through this so I can get done with all these.
And I think one of the reasons for that in my opinion and this is kind of maybe my biggest negative with Hogwarts Legacy is that the itemization of the game is extremely poor. The gear you find is almost completely irrelevant. There are almost nostatsfor your character in this game and by the time you like can get some of the cooler customizations for your character, you’ve done a lot of the activities in the game. It just doesn’t feel like the reward that you get from doing the activities justifies you going to do all the activities.
Like at some point, I don’t know how far into the game maybe 15 to 20 hours into the game I stopped looking at everything I was picking up. When I first started I was like oh what did I get in this chest or that chest whatever in this room or that room? But about 20 hours in, I stopped looking. I don’t care anymore if it’s not a legendary item, I just keep moving on. Even then, it’s like I’ll equip it when I get around to it because it just doesn’t really matter and I feel like that’s unfortunate because good itemization drives exploration and you know staves off that tedium that doing the same sort of activity over and over can bring about. And I feel like if they had had a better itemization system in this game then the exploration would be some of the best I’ve seen. but because the itemization is so poor it kind of takes it down just a little bit.
Now, itemization is not the only driving factor. A lot of people aren’t going to be playing this game for the loot. I like loot. It’s not like that’s the only reason I’m playing I’m a huge Harry Potter fan as well and I think there are enough other things to propel you forward in this game including the story and the sense of wonder you get from exploring, but it would have been nice just to have a little bit more you know, itemization in there to kind of complete the whole package.
Talking a bit about the performance of the game, I played on PS5 in Performance mode, which is 60 FPS. I had like I want to say three frame drops in 30 hours so far the rest of the time it was buttery smooth, which is really great. I tried playing on Fidelity mode this is about 30 FPS. The game obviously looks better from a visual perspective, but it’s not as smooth and it does drop below 30 FPS at some points. So I don’t think too many people playing on consoles are going to use Fidelity mode. It’s nice for screenshots if you want to get like a really good screenshot but other than that, I don’t think you’d want to play consistently at that dropping below 30 here and there. I think that would really pull you out of the immersion of the game.
And honestly, even though the graphics are not the best that I’ve seen in an open-world game, games likeThe Witcherare better or you knowCyberpunkhas better graphics stuff like that, they’re still pretty good, and they’re good enough to convey the sense of the world. And also the Wizarding World is kind of whimsical by nature so it doesn’t have to have a truly realistic feel I feel like the art style that they chose for this game is very fitting anyway.
The load times on the game are just a couple of seconds on PS5 which is fantastic. I don’t know if you know this but there are hardly any load times in this game. You load when you fast travel and there are maybe a couple of specific locations that you load into. But other than that, like when you’re exploring Hogwarts Castle and stuff there are no load screens. Sometimes when you go to open a doorit’ll like swirlwhile it’s like loading what’s behind it, but you don’t actually have a load screen. So there are not too many load screens in this game it’s like pretty seamless which I think is fantastic.
I did have a few bugs on PlayStation 5 mostly like getting stuck in the landscape which happens in open-world games and a couple were like I was doing a quest and like something was supposed to happen in the quest and it didn’t and I couldn’t progress. I’d just reload the game as it auto-saves every two seconds or so. It seemed to fix itself each time. I never got stuck for more than a second or two so there are some mild bugs but nothing really major I mean we’re talking about maybe four or five bugs in 30 hours of that quality. No crashes nothing like that so it plays really really well on PS5.
Now, I don’t know how the game plays on PC I’m definitely going to be looking around at reviews for people who played this on PC or from users talking about their PC experience. This is something I’m concerned about I haven’t seen too much PC gameplay or really any PC gameplay. I don’t know if the Denuvo is going to affect PC performance or not, or how it’s going to play on PC. If you’re looking for PC performance you’ll have to look around and see what you can find I just frankly don’t know how it runs.
The last thing I want to bring to your attention before I get to my final thoughts on this game is the in-game store. this is something we had absolutely no visibility to during the pre-release period. It’s just not live. I don’t know if it was intentionally not live or if they’re still working on setting it up but I don’t know what’s in the in-game store I don’t know how many microtransactions there are what you can buy what you can spend your money on or how much it costs. so if you’re someone who doesn’t like microtransactions and that’s a big deal for you you might have to wait to see when the game is out to see how that is.
I would imagine if it’s bad you know the game’s gonna get knocked for that but I don’t know how bad it is or how good it is so I have no way of knowing. but I will say that having played through the game so far the 30 hours I played I never felt like I once needed to buy anything from any in-game store. It very much feels like a game that doesn’t need a store at all so don’t think that you’re gonna have to buy things from the store.
So this kind of brings me to my final thoughts on the game Fex and I both played this game over the pre-release period. She is not a Harry Potter fan at all. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and we both really enjoyed this game. I don’t think you have to be a Harry Potter fan to enjoy this game. Fex is a very skeptical person in general, and the fact that she went into this very skeptical and thought that you know the Harry Potter aspect was gonna be what compelled people to buy it. The fact that she’s enjoying the game and she’s not a Harry Potter fan is amazing and she really enjoys it. She feels like they did a really fantastic job and I myself, a Harry Potter fan or a Hogwarts fan whatever you want to call it at this point – I’m blown away.
If you are a Harry Potter fan this game is a slam dunk. It is the closest thing that I think you will ever see to a perfect Harry Potter game. I mean not Harry Potter but in the Wizarding World it’s the closest thing I think you will ever see. I’m not sure they could do a better job except maybe slightly on the itemization and customization of your character. That’s it. Like I have almost no other complaints. I can’t think of anything at this point other than maybe better graphics which is a very very tiny complaint that I have about this game. they absolutely hit it out of the park and if you’re not a Harry Potter fan or a Hogwarts fan and you’re looking for a good open-world game I think this game will scratch the itch.
It’s not as hardcore as something like The Witcher orElden Ringor Skyrim or something like that, so don’t go in there thinking that. But if you’re just looking for like a lot of light-hearted fun and exploration and a good time I think this game would fit the bill even for you.
But I want to hear from you guys that are playing Early Access or have started playing the game in the 72-hour early period on you know PlayStation or PC or whatever let me know what you think I want to know what you guys think so far what do you think from watching the game are you excited even more excited to play this let me know in the comments below.
Embarking on your magical journey as Hogwarts student? Why not fly over to our Hogwarts Legacy wiki which covers Houses, Wands, Potions, and more. Misplaced your Maurader’s Map? Check out our interactiveHogwarts Legacy Map.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
