Hogwarts Legacy

While exploring the confines of the iconic castle, Hogwarts Legacy is a marvel. Outside of it, things are a little less straightforward. While there is some excellent world-building and combat here, Hogwarts Legacy is let down by a questionable narrative and some unnecessary open world baggage.

Hogwarts Legacy is a sometimes unremarkable open world game that's severely uplifted by its dedication to the best parts of the source material.

The sights and sounds alone make Hogwarts Legacy the dream Harry Potter game fans have been longing for. There’s an intriguing mystery to unravel, though you’re bound to spend most of your time exploring a wealth of side content, visiting virtual landmarks and roleplaying as a Hogwarts student. That said, it’s more successful in being a sandbox teeming with nostalgia rather than a stand-out action RPG in its own right, let down by gameplay foibles and spellcasting combat that quickly slides into repetition.

Hogwarts Legacy offers a beautiful Hogwarts Castle and a fun wizarding system which together lay down solid foundations for the future. The present, however, is dragged back by a silly story, bad optimization, and filler content.

Hogwarts Legacy is a solid first attempt. If Avalanche can be accused of anything, it's that the studio has tried to do too much all at once. Something was always going to give – between the massive open world, the messy RPG economy, exciting action combat, and adventure story that wants to cast you as a hero with homework due on Monday. But you can see a world in which a sequel sands down some of the rougher edges, and settles into a finer balance between the demands of an interactive experience and the lore of the wizarding world.

Hogwarts Legacy may not have enough magic to ensnare all gamers, but fans of the series will find more than enough enjoyment in Avalanche Software's open-world adventure.

Time is something Hogwarts Legacy and its repetitive quests, dull open world, and monotonous combat often do not respect, from its slow opening to its insistence on introducing new systems to juggle just for the sake of it. It's a bit of a shame that these parts couldn't coalesce in the same way that its presentation and respect for its universe does, because Hogwarts Castle persists as a delightful puzzle box to explore from the moment you step foot in its doors to the last day of term. There's equally delightful moments during some of the main quests, specifically those that balance puzzle-solving and combat in ways that challenge your understanding of the spells you have in engaging ways. But these moments are so spread out between much less interesting filler content that it will likely take some of the most dedicated Harry Potter fans to justify seeing the entire journey through.

While Hogwarts Legacy makes what seems a genuine effort of inclusion, much of it is muddled.

Hogwarts Legacy is full of Harry Potter fanservice, but as a game, it’s only serviceable. A fun but forgettable journey that isn’t worth the amount of controversy surrounding it.

Hogwarts Legacy starts to feel like countless open-world games of the past decade once you’ve been playing it for more than 15 hours. However, you get to ride a Hippogriff. It’s those magical moments and the setting that rescue it from mediocrity, but only if the Wizarding World still has you under its spell.