Hogwarts Legacy Review by a Part-Time Wizard

Basic Game Info

Hogwarts Legacy is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. 

The game is part of the Wizarding World franchise, taking place a century before the events chronicled in the Harry Potter novels. Within two weeks of launch, the game sold more than 12 million copies and generated $850 million in global sales revenue. As of 5 May 2023, it grossed $1 billion, and 15 million copies were sold globally.

Hogwarts Legacy Review: My Thoughts

Character Customization

Before we start talking about the story and everything else we gotta talk about character customization. 

Customization is on the okay side, could have had a few more options but it is what it is. I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out how to put a beard on my character till someone had to point out they are teenagers and probably aren’t capable of that level of awesomeness. 

Storyline

Anyways, we start as a fifth-year student who has yet to go to Hogwarts. On our way to Hogwarts with Profesor Fig, we find out we can see rare traces of ancient magic and we get attacked by a dragon. Talk about a big start, that was wild. 

Not long after, we end up in Hogwarts where our journey starts. You get to pick your house, I ended in Slytherin, very fitting, green is definitely my color. 

The main mission of the whole game revolves around the above-mentioned ancient magic. They don’t ever say or explain how or why someone gets ancient magic but they do mention it manifests around the age when it’s time to join as 5th-year students. 

That’s not the pressing issue though: we have a main bad guy. A goblin named Ranrok, whose goal is to find a powerful “source” of magic that was hidden by a group of wizards who also could see traces of ancient whose names were Keepers. But nooooo, Keepers don’t tell us that from the get-go. I’M TRYING TO SAVE THE WIZARDING WORLD, DAMMIT. They have to test us first to see if we are worthy of the secret, which in the end doesn’t even matter. 

Side Missions

Besides that, Hogwarts Legacy offers a variety of side missions. Some of them are “must” and some of them are just for “fun”. 

By the “must” I mean the missions that you kinda need to do in order to proceed with the main stories, like getting different kinds of spells. Also, you’ll need to do some of the other side missions because some of the main missions are level-locked. 

Which kinda leaves you with no choice but to do them. Hogwarts Legacy open-world also offers different kinds of puzzles, challenges, and trials. Some are Merlin’s Trials, collecting aka saving animals, “stargazing” and many others. 

The Ending

Now let us talk about the ending. 

The infamous magical source was under Hogwarts all along (SHOCKER), and we have a big fight against Ranrok who absorbed the source and now is a big scary dragon. We fight, blah blah blah, we defeat him, we contain the source of magic and Professor Fig dies ( >.<). 

For a such powerful source of magic, I sure did have an easy time containing it. Not the ending I was expecting.

Graphics and Audio

When it comes to graphics and audio, I gotta give credit where credit is due. It was absolutely stunning. 

Getting on your broom and flying around the castle, lake, mountains, and other parts of the wizarding world, for a lack of a better word, is so relaxing and to some degree so nostalgic. If you ever read the books or watched the movies as a kid, all you ever wanted was to be part of that world. And now you have that chance. 

Hogwart Legacy is definitely the type of game that is meant to be played multiple times. I definitely see myself playing again and taking a darker path and goofing around.

What Can Be Better or Improved

Now don’t go and get offended immediately, nothing personal, it’s just things I would love to see in the future or what I wished happened.

Firstly, Professor’s Fig death was unnecessary. Either don’t make it happen at all or make it happen before the “last fight”. He could have died earlier and that could have been our “motivation” for fighting and trying to seal back the magic. WE DO IT FOR PROFESSOR FIG. That would be much better, right? 

Now with that out of my mind let’s focus on things we can do. 

The first thing is to make online mode. How would I make it? Well, I would make it a “seasonal” thing. With each season being a couple of months. Make it the way each house has 100 players (or whatever number they think is best) and they all have to work together to help their house win. 

Also, it would be great to have an option for players to compete solo against each other in different scenarios. Leaderboard to see who is the best duelist and who is the best (fastest) flyer. 

And also open Quidditch and have teams who can compete and see which team is the best. Also mass PVP, how cool would it be to see something like 10vs10 wizards fight or be part of them? I mean opportunities are endless, I’m just naming a few. 

I enjoyed playing Hogwarts Legacy and considering their success and massive earnings, I do hope they continue to work on it and improve upon it and add some of the stuff I mentioned.

Until next time, stay safe. For more game reviews, check out this page.