This article was updated on the 21st of February 2023 to correct a mistake in the 2nd paragraph. This was a factual error that originally stated “200 years prior” when the game is actually set 100 years prior.
More than 20 years ago, when I read the first Harry Potter book, I would not have been able to imagine a world where Hogwarts Legacy was a reality. Yet, on the 10th of February 2023, it became one – at least for anyone who owns a Playstation 5, Xbox Series or PC.
Legacy made a really smart decision in concept. This entire adventure is set 100 years prior to the one that takes place in Rowling’s novels or the films based upon her books, creating as blank a canvas as possible for the writers to put together their own story within this world. Certain “iconic” elements remain, such as the titular school and some familiar surnames, but this is about as original as we could expect.
Your story as a witch or wizard begins in your fifth year. In order to help you catch up to your peers, a Professor named Fig is tasked with bringing you up to speed. One eventful trip to school later, your protagonist’s rare ability to see ancient magical traces has put you square in the crosshairs of a goblin who is trying to start a rebellion against wizard kind.
Ranrok and the members of his revolt are the game’s primary antagonists, and while the paths from Hogwarts are many and winding, most lead back to some form of evil committed by Ranrok or his cronies. This fortunately means that the game doesn’t have to try and sensationalise a schoolyard brawl into a plot to save the world. It also provides compelling story reasons to explore areas of the map that are not Hogwarts itself.
This loosely divides the game into two paths. The first is your normal “student” life, where you catch up on four years of spellwork, and help the students deal with their “school” problems. This is almost one, long continuous tutorial for the other half of the plot. This sees you investigate what Ancient Magic is, and why Ranrok seems to possess artifacts laced with it.
I found both sides of this to be compelling in their own way. The studies and lessons at school pulled strongly at the 10-year-old me who read The Philosopher’s Stone and dreamed of getting my own letter to Hogwarts. The tale of Ancient Magic appealed to the adult who sees the great responsibility those with the power to alter the very fabric of the world must face.
These tales zig-zag across each other. You learn new spells and gameplay mechanics like potion crafting by working at school. These are then used to help you survive outside of it. Your adventures outside of school subsequently make you more popular within and cause more students to request your aid, populating the side quests of this world.
There are a wide range of characters throughout this story and each of them has been designed to bring something different to the table. When it comes to good examples, the excitable Professor Ronen shows off the range of vocal talent on display in this game. The vast majority of these characters do have common accents that you’d expect for a game set in Britain, as someone who also lives there, I’d say there was a good mix, even if everyone’s English is a little too clean. There’s not the slang in these dialects that you’d get were this a real school containing this diverse a cast.
The characters that are the most developed tend to be the adults such as Fig and Matilda Weasley – these are also some of the better performances too. The students tend to be a bit of a let down by comparison, with few exceptions. One exception would be Sebastian. He’s a Slytherin boy who does embody a lot of the traits you’d expect of his House. He breaks the rules and is a bit of a hothead, but he was one of the only characters that I genuinely believed was a struggling teenager. His side quests presented the tale of a boy determined to go to any length to save his sister all the while teetering on the edge of emotional stability. Even if you don’t want the spells his questline provides, this is a compelling subplot that offers consequence for both action and inaction.
The game is a mostly open-world affair, with loading screens between entering dungeons or fast travelling between areas. You move around and explore the Hogwarts Castle and grounds solving puzzles and uncovering hidden secrets. This will be a massive part of the appeal of the game, as you can literally explore the whole school. I don’t know a better way to describe it than if you ever wanted a virtual tour of Hogwarts, this is the best way to do it, as your favourite location is likely to be realised here.
That also includes the village of Hogsmeade, which features this game’s shops and stores.
In both areas, you’ll find that you can go to these places early on, but they are lacking in function. This is an open world filled with all the completionist activities and map markers you want, but the first 6 to ten hours of the game is best spent hitting the main quest. Unlocking key features such as flight and the Room of Requirement make this game a lot more enjoyable and give you better control of your own progression.
You’ll need everything you’ve learned in those early hours to go out into the world too, as dotted around the highlands near the castle are monstrous wolves or spiders, as well as dark wizards and poachers. This is where the combat comes in.
Combat feels like a third-person shooter, but with more utility and smarter targetting. You can use spells to maintain control of the battlefield and then aim at your enemies to deal damage. To begin with you’ll be throwing little more than a basic flick of your wand, but after some study you’ll be able to disarm your enemies and set them on fire. You can even learn the Unforgivable Curses.
Combat is undeniably fun, and there are plenty of spells to learn and utilise. The general flow of battle is using the basic cast to chain between abilities on your hotbar, and then using Protego to block and counter your enemies’ attacks. While the strength of your spells are affected by gear and this game’s RPG elements, including character level. Combat doesn’t really devolve into hitting ever skill on your action bar and then waiting for the cooldown. Some enemies are specifically designed to rebuke that approach. Clever use of potions and plants allows some additional versatility, and you’ll likely need to use these aspects at certain points to succeed on harder difficulties.
Other activities include puzzles in the form of Merlin Trials, Astronomy points and clearing out poacher camps. It says a lot about the game that a large part of this map feels like an overwhelming dump of markers, but took longer than a game usually would to devolve into completionist box-ticking. Early on at least, you’ll be heading to a location to perform an action and are distracted by something new and interesting on the way.
Progression uses a levelling system, but a better tale of your progress is the Field Guide, which you are given early on in your adventure. This tracks what the game calls challenges, and there’s a series of these for pretty much every thing you can do in game. These grant EXP and cosmetic rewards for hitting certain milestones and contribute in a big way to your character level. This level affects your overall health and what gear you can equip, with shops in Hogsmeade, chests and fallen foes being a good source of gear. These all have a rarity value, following the standard formula of Green, Blue, Purple and Orange. Each piece also has a cosmetic property too. These aren’t just stat stick. Not all of these are good, and some are completely ridiculous, so the game does have a free transmogrification system where you can change the appearance of any piece of gear to any other piece of gear you have already owned.
Progression can also be measured in terms of spells unlocked, as well as talents, which are gained upon levelling up after level 5. These can be put into any category to assist with different types of gameplay, and these do have a meaningful impact on your playstyle. Progression can also be measured within the Room of Requirement. This is sort of your own little hideout, where you can harvest herbs, brew potions and look after magical beasts. These all contribute to your character, allowing you to keep stocked up on consumables, while the beasts drop crafting materials for traits. These are like gems that are dropped into certain pieces of gear that give you minor to major stat buffs. Combining a talent and a trait that buff the same spell can make it incredibly potent.
Beasts can be captured at their dens under the guise of “rescuing” them and brought back to your magical vivarium, where you can feed and brush them in a minigame of sorts.
There is a lot to do in every aspect, this is just a game that’s great to explore, it has plenty of systems to help you push your power up, and if you’re more into aesthetics, you can customise the Room of Requirement with tables, chairs and decorations as you like. It’s not quite Animal Crossing, but it’s pretty close.
These features work with the world design to create a great looking game. It’s one you can really appreciate when you hop on a broom and fly over the lake. If you have the power to push Ray Tracing to the maximum you can see light effects during spell casting and in reflections.
Weather detail such as raindrops appearing on coats is a nice touch too.
A lot of work clearly went into the design of character models for the teachers and main cast. The lip syncing isn’t great at times, but the overall aesthetic is very, very strong. Some of the students’ models fall short of this quality, and it really is a bit hit and miss as to who looks amazing, and who looks a little goofy.
In terms of performance this ran fine on a high end GPU and a mid-range CPU, with two exceptions. The first was whenever I crossed the courtyard near the Transfiguration Class, and the second was the middle floor of the Defence Against the Dark Arts Tower. The problem seemed to be less a framerate drop and more a really high render latency of over 100m/s in these areas. Even turning the detail and resolution down from 4k didn’t have as large of an effect on this as I expected, and at no point did either my CPU or GPU utilisation exceed 70% in either area. This feels very fixable, so I’m not overly worried.
There’s so much more I could say about Hogwarts Legacy, but I’m also scared of spoiling this for you. I’m of the opinion that this game deserves a place alongside the The Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild on the pantheon of great Open World games, as while it does fall into some generic traits, the overall experience rises well above most others. You do really have to be a fan of the source material to be able to appreciate all of this to its fullest, but that’s unlikely to be a hurdle that prevents WB from making their money back. I’m more than willing to live with a few performance issues and some chasing map markers if I can do it all with this level of magical freedom.
Fatelighter 