Recent reviews by Mr. Bobchinsky

This game is glorious, even in early access.

Aside from technichal issues on launch, the experience was greatly satisfying.

The new mercenary class plays fresh and super engaging. Juggling around with ammo types, doing combos, rolling between the monsters while setting everything aflame, pure badass gamplay.

Graphics are outstanding, this is AAA type of visuals right there. The enemy design, the attention to details, animations, all this stuff - top notch.
The campaign is challenging enough, even though I've not completed it yet. There are tonns of bosses I've met so far, and I've just entered act II with a fair share of deaths.

As a big POE fan, I say this game is amazing. When the techincal issues resolve, we will have a true masterpiece of ARPGS.

*Sorry for my English, guys, I'm not the native speaker, but I will try to do my best*

- The visuals of Hogwarts. They are amazing, the castle looks and feels big. The design, the attention to details, the ability to visit places we've seen in the movies - all of that is great.
- One of the greatest points I would point out is the accessibility of the game and the quality of the tutorials. My wife, who has never even touched a gamepad, felt quite comfortable with navigating the world, fighting and doing other stuff after an hour or so. The tutorial teaches the basics of controls and game mechanics in a feasible fashion, giving the crucial understanding of the game step-by-step to not overwhelm new players. The seasoned gamers, on the other hand, can easily figure out the controls and other stuff as they are pretty much universal. So big props for that.
- The abundance of cute and silly stuff. My wife adored all these sweet creatures, mostly for their looks and I myself enjoyed the silly outfits you could rock.
- The music. Nothing actually to say here, it's good overall.
- The ability to skip cutscenes and dialogues. This is a positive things mostly to me, since I've usually played the game myself after watching my wife doing quests, so I didn't have to listen to the same stuff twice.
- The combat. It's a controversial one, I will elaborate further. My wife enjoyed it, as she could battle the foes with ease on the "Easy" difficulty and felt pretty confident about the encounters. It wasn't frustrating to her, nor was it very difficult, so overall she enjoyed it. I, on the other hand, would consider the combat system as lackluster.

- The story. We are the Mary Sue of the Wizarding World. The student of the fifth year with no prior knowledge about the magic, but the force to be reckoned with. We easily kill trolls, Dark Wizards, Giant Spiders, we operate the Ancient Magic and almost single-handedly deal with the greatest Villain Of All Times™.
- The Villain. While Ranrok seemed interesting and mysterious at the first glance, the motivation behind his evil deeds looks bland. I might be wrong, but the side-quest from Poppy and her uncle basically describes Ranrok's villain arc as something so stupid I couldn't even believe it was true.
- Lack of immersion. While the School of Magic looks great, it feels empty. Those students wandering the halls are basically NPCs you never get to know. Hell, even the "classes" you attend don't feel like classes. Like, after the set of tasks from a professor, you get the objective to "attend the class", you go there and see the cutscene of students doing some things, and that's it, now feel free to play this mini-game of learning a spell. It's bland to put it nicely. The world and how its denizens treat you is also weird. People in other reviews felt the same, it seems. Hogwarts Legacy's citizens task you with something you wouldn't expect to be asked of a 15-years old kid. Many more great points about the lack of immersion were made in other reviews, so I will not repeat those.
- The world. It's empty and shallow. It's big, but it lacks substance to its size. There are Points of Interest with nothing interesting about them. Vendors seem to sell random stuff completely undependant on the zone they're located in. More to it, these Points™ are repetitive and boring, they feel like a chore to do after you tried them all at least once.
- The repetitiveness. The dungeons, the caves, the camps, the enemies are copy-pasted. The amount of enemies you encounter is very limited and you see the same ole' goblins and poachers every single time. The mini-games are mind-boggling, even those that lead to learning new spells. Why not just straight up unlock them at some point? Those "learning" games are impossible to fail and all they do is waste your time. It's actually the reason my wife decided to have a break with the game. She didn't feel excited to do anything anymore, as she knew it would be another "fetch" quest, another goblin camp, another Arc-puzzle etc.
- The combat. Now this is my personal gripe with this game. I value a good combat experience in any game that has it up its sleeve. In Hogwarts Legacy, however, the combat feels good in the first couple of hours, but then you start seeing the flaws. I liked the interaction between certain spells, but in the end it boiled down to a very simplistic approach: see yellow/purple/red shield? - cast yellow/purple/red. After that you can spam the Basic attack, and the enemies eventually die. The game lets us be creative with how we fight, but the combat lacks depth in general. Dodging and shielding in this regard are also boring. See red over your head? - Roll. See yellow? - Protego or even screw protego you can roll as well. So the entire sequence can be dumbed down to: break shield, cast basic spells, roll if needed. And that is on the "Hard" difficulty. After you master this easy concept, every fight plays out exactly the same. Of course, you can use tricks, like levitating the frog-enemy when it's getting ready to punch you with its tongue, but you might as well defeat it without it, so why bother? It would be great, if they implemented more mechanics like with Infernals, when they don't take damage unless lit on fire, so you have to be cautious of enemy's weaknesses and utilize everything in your kit to overcome the challenge, but the game lacks things like those.
- Gear. Completely useless, at some point it felt like its only use was to be traded for gold to buy quest items. I didn't feel like I was growing stronger with every gear piece I've equipped. Those stats are meaningless and never affected the way I fought, so why bother? Might as well be naked and still kill the bosses. Also the size of the "backpack" if there is even one is questionable. You're either forced to go back to vendors every 15 minutes to clean up the bags or straight up ignore the loot which is so abundant you fill what little space you have in a single "dungeon".
- Quests. Side quests are generally boring. My biggest gripe is the "buy this stuff and try it out to learn new spells" quests. This is HORRIBLE. It forces you to teleport here and there watching loading screens instead of playing the game. Oh what's the matter? Lack money? Well, no progression in the game for you then. What also made me mad is the fact that you HAVE to do these "side-activities" to progress the main story. I'm sorry, but I don't care about any herbalism stuff whatsoever, why should I learn to use these plant-items to reveal the secrets of ancient magic?
- Consumables. None of them felt impactful nor necessary. I'm gonna be honest, this game can be easily completed without even knowing that there are potions and plants on the Hard difficulty. I only used them to progress the "tasks", other than that - complete garbage. Would be cool, if devs FORCED players to use them, made them necessary to overcome some encounters, but no.
- Waiting. EXCUSE ME WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? The fact that you need to WAIT in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME for the item to be CRAFTED is infuriating. Who in the hell thought this was a good idea? I mean, I can understand such restrictions in MMOs where there's some sort of economy and trading between players, but IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME? Wanna have a pot? Wait. Wanna grow a herb? Wait even longer. Wanna get your pets to breed? You guessed it.

This didn't touch the strings of my soul. I understand that the game is not fresh, however upon launching it you can see how outdated it is.
I didn't make it past the 1st mission because:
- Obnoxious controls, they're clunky, they're unintuitive, simply bad. I don't know why, but you can actually fall off the edge of the map while dumping the body into the water. Styx basically makes a step forward to drop the body and you fall.
- Tedious climbing. I've seen all them games with climbing and this one didn't make it any better or fun, however it basically shoves climbing down your throat vigorously. Also, sometimes Styx doesn't grip on the climbing surface (i.e. a ledge, or a rock) making him jump upwards and then fall and die. Like why would you even want your players to die from "failed" climbing? It's not challenging, it's straight up boring and ridiculous.
- Combat - meh, muffed kill is almost a QTE sequence.
- Skills are boring, I don't think it would get any better during the course of the game.
- Styx is edgy as hell, his voicelines put me to the brim of throwing up of cringe.

Meh/10

[EDIT]

Game bad, don't buy