Hogwarts Legacy

7.5/10
It's a fun game and brings the true spirit of the world J.K. Rowling created. The open world is beautifully crafted and is just perfectly magical. The senes, the story, gameplay do not disappoint at all.
Music and GFX deserve an applause too. The fights were a bit easier than they should be. But maybe that's because I had completed almost 90% of the side quests and challenges by then.
The game isn't too lengthy and doesn't feel too repetitive either. The factions - wizards, beasts, goblins provide a good combination. The trials, rescuing pets, side quests, friend requests, none of that felt boring.
Exploring Hogwarts castle itself was probably one of the best parts of the game. Every hallway, secret passage, and hidden room felt rewarding to discover. Flying on a broom never got old either. The spell combinations were also quite satisfying. Chaining different spells together made combat enjoyable even if it wasn't particularly difficult.
On the downsides, the game is too demanding. I have an RTX 3080 and it would sometimes struggle to remain at 60fps. That's something devs should focus on.
Moreover, I do not appreciate the woke references nobody asks for. That reason is keeping me from giving it a 9/10.
One thing I wish the game had done better was making your choices matter. The dialogue options rarely had any real consequences on the story or the world. Another one was Merlin trials. They are a bit too much than I'd have loved to find -- just like loot, which is definitely overwhelming and is mostly sold right after they're found.
Overall, this game is recommended. It's a single-player game for fun, not to hone your FPS skills btw.

I’m 2 hours in and I probably could have waited a bit longer to see if it went to Gamepass or PS+. It’s not bad. It looks like it will be fun. But it’s also a bit more of a kids game than I thought. Maybe. Too soon to tell but I think it’s going to be quite simple. I was expecting a Ubisoft open world style game but this looks like it might be a bit more about just walking around seeing the different hogwarts places and all that. The gameplay feels like it’s going to be light. But again, I’m still really in the tutorial I think so I could be way off. But it has taken me a few sessions now and I’m still not out of the “tutorial” part of the game. So it’s obviously feeling slow to me.

The graphics feel like they are funky. I try to test out fidelity ray tracing and it looks bad to me and performance is so choppy. So I go back to performance mode, which also doesn’t look as good as I thought it would but at least it’s smooth. 

I’m not sure how far I’m in because I’ve mostly been playing semi short sessions, but I only just unlocked the skill tree. So I’m clearly still very early on. It’s picking up though. It has a slow start but I’m thinking the “good part” is right around the corner. Once all the systems are introduced and it’s more natural open world exploration I wonder how I’ll feel about it.

I am finally finding this game pick up some momentum. My save file says 8 hours but I know I’ve left it running a lot so I’m probably closer to 6 or 7 but still that’s a really slow start. Many RPGs and big open world game are guilty of this, But I found this one particularly slow and kind of boring to start. I hope that I start to enjoy it more now that I’m exploring the world more.

Much more fun once I have a dozen spells and I am flying around the cool world on a broom. Early thoughts are I actually like the cosmetics so far. And the word is detailed and pretty great. The gameplay is so-so but getting better. The graphics for people and animals kind of stink but the world and environment look pretty good.  It does seem to be made with care and I found it funny they added a trans character as a fuck you to JK. 

15ish hours in. Im liking it. It’s a low B+ currently. I don’t anticipate it climbs too much higher, probably a bit but it feels like a low ish B+ kind of game for me. It’s fun to explore the world, which seems to have a lot of love and care put into it, but the game mechanics and progression are just so-so. They are serviceable.

Took like a two month break as I wasn’t feeling it. Now I’ve jumped back in and I’m around 20 hrs ish. I do like this game. It took awhile to get going. And also its peak isn’t that high. But it is fun when I am in the right mood. It’s mostly a vibes game so I’m not always feeling it.

I’m not done yet but I’m fairly confident I can provide my final review thoughts. The game does a good job capturing the spirit of the world. The cosmetics and vibes are well done. The game does a bad job at having character progression and upgrades. The gameplay is so-so. It’s a fine game overall and I’m not shocked it would be a huge hit for kids, but it’s a low B+.

Beat it. I’m ashamed to say I lowered the difficulty to easy on the last mission. I was over it. I didn’t find the combat to be that fun and I was ready to be done but I wanted to see the end because I was so close.

Final Score: B+