I am only level 3 and just returned from my first trip into Hogsmeade and there’s still plenty I have yet to unlock or discover. I’m barely even through the game’s tutorial, but I thought, why not give my honest early impressions.
Sprinkled throughout here you’ll find some of my screenshots and videos of my brief time with Hogwarts Legacy so far. For future Hogwarts Legacy updates follow my twitter.
Love it, or hate it, Harry Potter is one of the most iconic books and movies of all time. Hated by various groups for various reasons, including religious groups who find the book demonic, or LGBT who hate JK Rowling for some unsavory political comments she made. Despite all the drama and backlash, Harry Potter endures for many a beloved classic.
For years – even before this game was announced, I often talked about how awesome it would be to have a Harry Potter MMORPG – well this isn’t an MMO – but, It is an RPG. And it tickles much of that itch for me that I’ve been wanting to live my own life at the school for wizards.
I’ve not yet traveled to Universal Studios – Never not even when I was a child. I do plan to visit in 2025 when Orlando opens their Nintendo land and I’ll probably also check out the Hogwarts there. But for those who can’t afford a trip to Hogwarts in real life, this video game offers a taste of that experience for just about $65 in the comfort of your own living room.
The game starts with having you link if you so desire, your potterville profile so you will automatically go to your correct house based on your personality quiz. I took it years ago and I am proud to say I am Hufflepuff. I feel it suits me quite well. It’s my favorite house. And no, I didn’t cheat at the quiz. I’m just a natural Hufflepuff.
It also allows you to import your magic wand. I forget all of my details, I know it’s pine, very flexible, and has dragon(something) core.
When the game opens you are a 5th year student (I don’t know what this means because it’s a UK thing) Wikipedia tells me that most 5th year students are 16-17 so I assume it’s similar to a Sophomore or possibly a Senior in the US.
As you are on your way to Hogwarts for the first time, a dragon attacks and suddenly you discover you have some secret powers that no one else has. You can see things others cannot.
So next you go to the sorting ceremony that you are late to arrive at. If you imported your Potterville data you’ll go to the house you matched in the personality quiz. If you don’t import data, the game will ask you a few questions and recommend a house for you but you can always choose a different house if you’d like (just like Harry should have been Slytherin but went Gryffindor).
You meet a few of your classmates and professors and get used to the new school. It’s huge and easy to get lost initially. Unlocking floo flames enables fast travel which helps some but even then, it can be difficult to track quests because of winding spiraling staircases and multiple floors and doors leading seemingly everywhere.
Eventually you must travel to Hogsmeade, your first time outside the walls of Hogwarts, to replace the supplies lost in the dragon attack. You can select one of the NPC students to accompany you. Here in Hogsmeade there’s tons to do and explore and you get a better sense for just how large the world really is.
I’m playing on the 2nd to easiest difficulty, and it’s still pretty difficult (for me, your mileage may vary) I used a lot of health potions in the first real boss fight in this area. And it took me a long time.
One of the reasons I think is – I dunno if it’s “poor” controls, but not very intuitive (to me at least) controls that make it hard to battle. Perhaps I will get used to it later.
The game feels cumbersome overall in a lot of ways. The controls, the ease of getting lost, the inability to jump down from higher places like even a small staircase when you jump its like an invisible wall, how freaking painfully SLOWWWW the characters walk (like 70% of the time), the fact that you have to go in to claim quest rewards and they dont just give them to you after you complete the quest. Lots of little WTF moments if you ask me, that really even though each one is a minor annoyance, when you add minor annoyance on top of minor annoyance X 10-20 times, eventually you have a huge annoyance.
The graphics also are hit or miss for me… somethings in the environment look magical and STUNNING and fabulous. BUT the light/shadow is weird… sometimes its hard to see… and your own playable character looks HIDEOUS in shadows, looks like I’m 65 years old, haven’t slept in 8,000 days and dry and shriveled up with eyebags even worse than my own 41 year old eyebags on my face in real life.
You can customize your character… to SOME degree… before the game starts… by choosing preselected hair styles, and faces, and skin color, and scars and complexions, etc.
I didn’t like this method of character customization – It is ages behind modern character customization that allows you to make TRULY unique characters using sliders to angle the eyes, nose, cheeks, chin, etc – HOGWARTS DOES NOT DO THIS. I repeat this is NOT possible in Hogwarts Legacy.
It’s okay… I found something that SORT of KIND of resembled me, but again in shadows I’m a hideous monster.
You can’t control height or weight, or age or other things that are common these days in most games like this. Hogwarts Legacy really dropped the ball and missed an opportunity here.
Later on, once you unlock Hogsmeade and save up enough gold, you can change your appearance, but not your facial and bone structure – I guess even that’s too much for magic. So make sure you are OK with your face before you start the game. You’re gonna be stuck with it for a long, long, long time.
At Hogsmeade and presumably elsewhere you can buy new hairstyles, clothes, and accessories that further customize the look of your character.
At the start of the game, you can choose if you want to be a witch or a wizard (I assume that witches are female and wizards are male. I’ve never read the Harry Potter books and I dunno or don’t remember if it ever made that distinction in the movies.) But witches and wizards both wear the same items so it doesn’t matter which one you pick from a dressup perspective.
One of my favorite things to do is pet all the various different looking cats on the campus lol. My Playstation 5 Controller vibrates and PURRS!!! IT PURRS YOU GUYS!!!! OMG. So cute lol.
There is a sort of choice or consequence system allowing you to play how you want and giving the game an open world feeling – but yet it feels… limited or lackluster here too compared to modern games say Dragon Age or Witcher or Skyrim or a million Japanese games that focus on a choice and consequence branching plot setup.
You will meet many familiar and fresh new faces and characters. But not the ones you may think. No Harry or Hermione or Ron – but you do have Ron’s mother as one of your teachers. No snape, etc. I assume this is taking event either before or after any of those characters existed.
One last thing… not a fault of Hogwarts Legacy… I don’t think anyways… but I can only play for about 3 hours and then my PS5 controller is dead… I honestly only own like 4 PS5 games even though I’ve had it since launch… I don’t remember having this problem… but I haven’t really turned my PS5 on in over a year probably. But this makes an already large slow game that much slower. I turned it off right now to write this review, because of exactly this reason, my controller was completely dead just stopped working.
So here’s my early impressions score. This may change a month or two from not when I’m not just a n00b anymore.
Overall Score: 68 / 90 76% C “Good Game For Girls”
Geeky: 5/5 – Awesome lets you live out your own adventure in Hogwarts, importing the potterville stuff is a huge plus and big win for customization and immersion. I’ve always wanted a game letting me live out an original character, IE self insertion, into the world of Harry Potter.
Sweetie: 3/5 – For Potterhead girls this is a must play – for others – I dunno, it’s plagued by cumbersome controls and interfaces, and the lack of customization (there is some but as explained above it is SO limited) – It puts me off a bit – still a solid 3 here I think. Good game for girls, but not the best.
Gameplay: 6/10 – I want to love the gameplay, but I don’t. Maybe it’s better on PC, where I’m not forced to plug in a controller to a short 2 foot cord when my TV is like 12 feet away. Maybe the graphics and weird shadow things that make me look deformed aren’t a problem on PC either. Maybe the controls and overall slowness and cumbersome interfaces aren’t an issue on PC – but they ARE on issue on PS5 – and I can’t ignore that. YES, it’s BEYOND AWESOME to live out your own adventure in Hogwarts. But why do they walk soooo slow? Why do I have to keep opening the menu and then going into quest to claim completed quest rewards, why do I have to keep opening the menu to look at new gear or new items to remove the “!” icon? So many things done wrong here. — That aside, the game itself, the general concept is awesome, it just… had a poor execution.
Story – 10/10 – You create and live your own Hogwarts Legacy so of course 10/10 here.
Characters – 8/10 – Tons of NPCs from different houses, some new, some familiar, but none of the big names, no Harry, no Snape, no Hagrid, no Dumbledore. This game takes place at a different time. So that’s OK, but real fans probably wanted to see those characters included because they’re so famous in this franchise.
Graphics – 7/10 – There are some REALLY beautiful things – and then there’s my playable character who looks like the evil dead in shadows, and there’s clipping issues – and just some weird messed up things sometimes – but then there’s the tapestries and the stars and observatories, and the gardens, and stained glass windows – and I’m like damn that’s beautiful.
Music – 5/10 – I’ve heard a few bars of familiar Harry Potter tunes – but most the rest of the music is not memorable one way or another – is there even music? that’s a serious question not sarcasm, I just don’t notice it while I’m playing – but you know, sometimes that can be a good thing!
Voice Acting – 9/10 – I think the voice acting is quite good – yes it is all British but it fits the world of Harry Potter.
Character Customization – 5/10 – Again it exists but it’s super limited and outdated.
Replay Value – 10/10 – Play as a different house, choose different answers, create new legacies. The possibilities are endless.
