Lemme set this straight before I get in into big whining. I’m writing this post as a huge Potterhead and I was hyping this game up right after they've announced it and continued hyping this game up when I first started playing. And as a big Harry Potter fan, I am immensely dissapointed by how Avalanche treated that super ambitious and important for all the fans project.

Turns out Hogwarts Legacy is no different from any Ubisoft game you have played in the last 15 years. The game is boggled with meaningless side quests, the story is lackluster and the mini games are a joke. My guess as to why this happened is because they tried to fit open world aspect in what should solely be a story-driven game, but we will get to that part later.

Being a huge Harry Potter fan, what were my hopes and expectation about this game? Well, I wanted to feel like I am a student in that castle I've been knowing since childhood. I wanted to immerse myself in studies, classes, learning spells, atmosphere, ability to interact with that castle, interact with students, make friends, discover secrets, be a bad or a good wizard of witch. I wanted to feel that my choices in this game affect the world somehow, hell, if not the world, I wanted to feel how my choices affect ME. And what did I get? Absolute barebones. The main draw of the game, Hogwarts, is both a blessing and a curse. The architecture is mindblowing. The animations of the stairs building, ghosts popping in and out, and the joyful music playing are probably the best parts of the game. That's all there is to it however, It just looks good. You cannot interact with any of the students. You attend classes but the classes themselves are a cutscene with a simple childish QTE puzzle and that's it. Brewing potions are also QTE but after you attend first potions class, you just click one button in order to brew it, no immersion whatsoever. You can't sit on any of the benches in school, you can't sit in the grand hall, you can't even sleep in your House's dormitory. You learn Unforgivable Curses, the inglorious spells from the original books. And they don't mean sh-it. They do not affect you in any way, you can AK all the poachers and remain a good, kind wizard.

My point is, they should've focused on the actual school part and making us feel like we are legit Hogwarts students. What we have now is an amusement park attraction. The only option is to walk around, observe, and eat an apple. The only other game I played set in an environment like this was Bully, and that game offered way more freedom than the developers here have allowed. It's hard to immerse yourself when you're pretty much watching a movie about your character, rather than actually playing as them. And Bully feels like you are actually in a boarding school.

Why this have happened you might ask? Here we go to the point I've mentioned earlier, the open world aspect. We have that HUGE area that's around Hogwarts. For what reason, I want to ask them? Just so you can fill this world with Ubisoft-type missions? That area still feels absolutely lifeless and dead, nothing you do have any meaning besides filling your Field Guide and achieving that 100% completion.

Before starting working on this game, they had to choose the path they wanted to take. If they wanted to go down the path of an open world game, they should've focus on exploration bit, filling this world with interesting content, making moral choices in the game that would affect the state of this world, the state of the characters. There should be side quests that have actual story rather than braindead "bring me this or that" ones. Not just filling huge open space voids with meaningless content.

And if they wanted to appease the Harry Potter fanbase, they shouldn't have made an open world in the game at all. It should've been a linear, story and atmopshere driven game, with heavy lean to the actual school part, part of being a student, studying, activities around the castle etc etc. And the open world had to be cut in half or even three times, leaving only Hogwarts and outskirts, Hogsmeade and Forbidden Forest. A much crammier space but with A LOT more attention to details and quality. It needs to be Bully but in Wizarding World. And they tried to fit everything at once and did not succeed in anything.

Hogwarts Legacy brings nothing new to the table. The graphics and the architecture of Hogwarts are the best part of the game, everything else is a either a weird gameplay decision, or a mechanic jacked from another game, yet done far worse. I would say this game is alright if you have no idea about Harry Potter, you might find it as yet another average open world game with more or less decent storyline. And for all the huge HP fans, this game is way overpriced for what it offers, and you may get bored easily once the initial honeymoon phase wears off around a few hours.