Hogwarts Legacy - After The Hype

Hogwarts Legacy released this month and having never watched a Harry Potter movie I was excited to jump straight in I should start this video by saying I was never exposed to anything about this game leading up to its release and I have no prior knowledge of any lore I also never at any points watched or read any game reviews and truthfully this is the way I prefer to experience games in the first place leaving me in a state of more or less complete neutrality amidst the storm of hype surrounding this title trailers are often breeding grounds for unrealistic expectations are formed especially in Beloved properties in honeymoon periods amplify the issue leading to disingenuous perspectives as blindsided giddiness softening clouds simple judgment for me the less you know the better and the more you play the better you can evaluate with that said let's jump straight in if Hogwarts Legacy was a food it would be a cake with 15 layers of frosting inside of it the game itself is open world where the player only required to follow a series of story missions Until the End while doing so they can explore the game's various RPG slash wizard Sim Elements which is layer number one the wizard student Sim experience has a lot of elements to it and the question is do they add or do they interfere with the game's pressing narrative and more importantly are they good so to start off you make your character and you choose a house inside the giant castle of Hogwarts you then go to class and learn how to make potions magical spells herbology and such afterwards you report to your instructors for special quests to get even more illustrious spells and tasks you have your own sleeping quarters and a gear upgrading station you brew potions grow plants and care for beasts inside magical window rooms you have a suite of spells that let you conjure your objects furniture and decor to furnish your quarters there's a common room for your house you must learn how to fly on a broom other students know Mosey about the castle chatting to themselves while you gobble up Collectibles and interact with various animated objects like floating brooms and books that often hide Secrets like seriously get ready to cast revelio on everything and say ooh and ah and every little magical detail of the castle the lore and pop-up boxes that pervade your collect-a-thon tell you about the history of Hogwarts and the like this Castle is your hub for the entire story but beyond it the game does keep the student Sim Vibe going pretty heavy even when you're out in hogsmead everyone knows you're a students and they send you on errands like delivering potions you buy supplies for your schooling at the various markets other stores around town house the items and Scrolls you'll need to keep your underground meth and animal hustling business going back at your secret lair the world has many quests to find but they always seem to bring you back to the castle for your main briefings this is all supplemented by an animal care and catching system wherein you can kidnap animals from their parents and lock them away in your personal dream rooms so you can force breed them to your heart's contents all of it feels very much like a jolly old wizard role-playing simulation in honestly this is a lot to cram into the title but are they fleshed out enough these systems first the entire crafting element to the game is not expansive enough nor is it integrated too well in terms of its progression the potion system has seven potions for example five if you account for battle specific Buffs this is a very small number if you compare it to the Alchemy system in The Witcher 3 which has a total of 8 000 potions you can craft the extensive list shows an impressive commitment to the subject material but you might want to ask yourself if such a number is necessary when the average attention span of a human being is about 4 seconds the game could have easily trimmed some of the fats as a lot of the tonics were extremely situational such as the bare pheromones potion that allowed you to harvest double the amount of bear from a bear corpse if you activated the potion prior to the bear dying combine that with the 900 types of food and drink you can consume to give you health regen and other great properties like having your screen turned into a migraine inducing mess it was obvious that scaling the system back would only have done more good than harm Hogwarts on the other hand gives you a meager 6 potions which in itself is the complete opposite problem of The Witcher 3. there's just simply not enough potions the six potions is about three times under the bare minimum if you ask me mostly considering that there are only a few potions you'll be using through normal play potions that for most of the game are just too expensive to find that consistent use the focus potion for example is great but you're going to be needing to take out a second on your mortgage to afford it eteris is a good option fairly strong and fairly economical invisibility is nice to have as you can re-enter stealth for those free stealth kills but it is more catered to the end game due to of course cost foreign [Music] goes for the Thunder Brew potion Felix on the other hand gives no combat benefits and is only used for exploration leaving Maxima as the final best and most cost efficient potion offering increased spell damage for a reasonable fee of one leech juice and one spider Fang if you're going to put a potion system in a game and dedicate an entire button to it you probably need to offer a few more options in this though especially when you analyze the probability most players will be using the potions which is not only fairly rare but mostly in a late game or boss style situation normal combat is fairly easy in Hogwarts and the use of potions isn't exactly necessary in fact it would be to your detriment to use them in some ways as you'll be needing the money for Scrolls and broom upgrades so you really don't need to make them those playing the game straight up won't be speedrunning to every eye chest so it's likely most players won't even bother with the potion system for the majority of their playthrough making it somewhat of an afterthought several missed opportunities for potion include a slow or freeze time potion potions to shrink yourself to avoid certain attacks charm effects or a rewind potion in the vein of Echoes ultimate from League of Legends this is an effect I can definitely see realized in a magical game like this where you can rewind time a few seconds by drinking the potion hell it could be a spell for all I care you can imagine this being used to save yourself from Fatal damage or to set up elaborate spell combinations with use of ancient magic throw you could even have a potion that creates a void field that would pull enemies into its Center nullifying their ability to move or cast this would help greatly as the combat in this title can get fairly overwhelming especially in the Arenas regardless the point is the possibilities are endless and it's really a shame the potion system isn't fleshed out anywhere near where it should be and the same could be said for the plant system which is even worse the game has a whopping total of three plans for you to use and frankly they're all pretty useless and boring again tied to a system of buying or building crafting stations which ends up draining the player's Bank an extremely easy system to imagine instead of plants that aren't remotely exciting to use is a beast companion system by selecting your beast in combat they will magically appear out of your knabsack and join you in battle for a time let's say 45 seconds while fighting they'd have simple attack animations as to not put too much work on the side of the development team and One support spell each such as a crowd control function controlling this Beast could be optional whatever works best when testing this will not only promote a sense of attachment to your beasts but it would also cut down on some of the unwanted busy work of juggling six enemies in combat much like the potion ideas I just mentioned more importantly a beast system would mold in perfectly to the existing framework of the game because Hogwarts already has a beast capturing system by way of the knapsack currently you can catch beasts and bring them back to your private Chambers but there isn't much Beyond this basic maintenance you brush them you feed them and you rocket toys at their faces until they give you what you want beyond the simple satisfaction of just staring at something you have made there isn't much gameplay to to be had here again pointing back to that simulation angle previously mentioned the ideas are there but the expansion of those items is what's missing and the beast battle system is just the tip of the iceberg imagine expanding on the system in just the most Baseline of ways perhaps some beasts are hostile and some beasts lead you on the Hunts to find them you can use a knapsack on some others require perhaps critical thinking like luring them into the lights with a limo spell currently you just cast levioso on a helpless Critter and kidnap them in your bag automatically I don't get much satisfaction from instantaneous gameplay Loops but my ideas don't have to stop there imagine in combat your beasts level up and get stronger unlocking a new ability here and there you can name it take it back to your room and play with it all you want perhaps even write it as a mount is this not inside the realm of possibility in this day and age there's a lot of great ideas in Hogwarts that are good but they could be great and that's the point they just need to be fleshed out more this is one potions are another in addition to loom upgrades spell combinations and summoning plants and personally I'd rather have fewer yet d deeper systems for beasts I'd rather have one or two animals that I could summon in combats and have them progress in power as I got stronger than have a window into a small slice of Animal Crossing it's nice to be able to grow some of the components in your room and the bubbly animations of the potions or the creepy looking plants you can Harvest out a lot to the magicalness of the world the entire game is full of this animated Wonder this is one of the game's biggest strengths but the entire system could have been elaborated on much more more plants more recipes more style in the combat system interesting looking attacks and animations when you bust them out and when creating one perhaps in both the traditional animated approach but also a more functional one an optional menu-based system for bypassing the small manual workload isn't something I would use but it would have been a quality of life feature many would have appreciated including a few others like being able to sell in bulk or set a permanent outfit for transmog these are missing and nice to haves the UI for crafting itself would have promoted more use of the planning potion system overall which is a benefit especially if a vendor was placed inside the room of requirements another quality of life thing missing currently you have to harvest ingredients or buy them in hogsmead which isn't a big hassle and I don't mind warping to town to get some stuff but would it hurt to show the crafting recipes while you're shopping with a slow speed of the menu flip-flopping between Pages adds up to a considerable portion of time during the course of entire playthrough again it's not a big deal these are easy fixes for a patch or a DLC as they are they add a great deal for the sake of immersion which rightfully has its place in a game with this much terrific World building still when you're building a feature in a game you want to make sure players will actively engage with it right whether it's making it less of a hassle or better yet making it deep enough to exploit the Curiosity of your players Hogwarts doesn't seem to take some of its good ideas far enough and this goes for some other elements too such as the game's General lack of fundamental choices and a dearth of interesting Dynamic open world events both of which I basically never saw foreign I'd use to describe the world but I don't have an interest in solving 729 Merlin challenges when inventory space could have been inflated from the get-go again good idea not tuned correctly perhaps and if we're being nitpicky there are more elements like an unnecessarily convoluted perk system driven by never-ending collectible hunting and a total lack of options to be evil or good Hogwarts is tremendously fun but it often suffers under the weight of its own ideas ideas that are fundamentally solid yet just are not fleshed out enough another area to the game that I think could have done with a little bit of tune-up was the juxtaposition of the game's narrative frankly the idea of being an active student in a progressive action game experience feels a little bit at odds with the game's story in the game's proper narrative you team up with Professor fig to rid the world of the evil bad guy nothing terribly original but a perfectly good starting place the Oddity is that you're not really treated like the student that you are you are the chosen one with almighty powers often taking things into your own hands like a seasoned Mage after the game's introduction there begins some creeping sense of dissonance which means during story missions you'll be blowing up a thousand evil wizards and defeat the evil bad guy but back in the castle you'll sit through spell classes like a lowly student the mix comes across as peculiar if not odd as you have this peaceful downtime of exploring and learning sandwiched by a story where you're fighting back the dark magic wielding Goblin from taking over Hogwarts simulation versus action story all held together by an open world dotted with hamlets with small vendors and side missions non randomized enemy encampments you can clear fluids and a variety of collectible style map icons it is a very interesting combination to say the least when you combine all of the games of Hogwarts under the same umbrella student Sim Pokemon Beast kidnapping Sim Animal Crossing Sim and open world action game where you're also the most powerful person in the world you get a very set of gameplay experiences but it does feel stretched too thin in some departments because as the story moves forward less and less of the Sim aspect matters specifically the student Sim sign as you realize the game is being pulled towards the story more and more you have a giant castle to live out the dream of being a student but that dream isn't really the reality it could have been you may have wanted to compete for a house cup you don't the houses of this game do not function in the way that you would expect you may have wanted to go to class and actually sit there and learn Alchemy by way of some menu based or puzzle hexagon based UI in the vein of Opus Magnum you don't it happens automatically and most of the time the pretense isn't necessary you know you're going to get this spell so long as you show up you may have wanted a choice in who your friends or enemies were you don't everyone is typically friendly and there was not much of any interaction between houses conversation choices are either good or bad you may hear a slight jab later on about keeping those poor gobstones but it doesn't affect anything at all you may have wanted unique house companions you don't you may have wanted a student ranking system where you'd start at year one and work your way up you don't you may have wanted to be evil you can't every rude choice you make has an era of giddiness to it and nothing inside the game will recognize you that way regardless The simulatory Experience takes a backseat to the story period most notably by the following no major choices to speak of beyond your travels with Sebastian and ominous to which I may add are the absolute highlights character and story wise nothing really going on in the Great Hall no deep relationship or teacher system a simple conversation Choice system houses that don't have any unique gameplay requests class lessons that are easy and sometimes your class time is only a cut scene nothing really changes as a result of what you do what results is more toppings but less taste for those looking for a bite of everything like myself I found this mix just fine substance might be missing from the game's various systems but the structure of the game is very well paced for an open world these types of games can get so overly bloated and unnecessarily lethargic to get through here you get handfuls of quests that send you out to interact with the game's main story or its open world typically it's three or four side quests with one marked main mission it's a digestible amount for any player the game will then send you back to Hogwarts when you're done to which you can go to class and learn new spells and such this isn't terribly exciting stuff but it happens quick and you get to meet some new faces despite the interactions feeling fairly basic for this Grand world in the middle of all that you can play the traditional open world way if you want to or just stick to the main story either way you have a variety of gameplay elements that almost always keeps things fresh what results is great pacing and a system where the tasks of the players are constantly being switched up beyond the confines of the narrative one main quest and a few sides then learn a new spell introduce the villain have the player head back to Hogwarts to discuss the matter send the player out into the world on errands wherein they'll be tempted to complete some knick-knack collecting things fly around help a friend make some plants Brew some potions and carry on with matters at hand despite some of the systems in this game being a little bit Bare Bones there's no denying that there is a lot of variety to a normal play session in Hogwarts and that's not a bad combination considering the game could have easily gone too heavy on the Sim side or easily too heavy on the story side it lands somewhere in the sweet Middle Ground wherein you sample many different albeit not terribly fleshed Out treats as the main entree moves forward criticism could be leveled at the design of the entire system if you're playing as a wizard student you do want to feel like you're playing as a student if you play Ghost of tsushima you want to feel like a samurai badass all of the time just like if you were to play The Witcher 3 you want the game to treat you as geralt The Witcher all of the time and honestly those games deliver on that promise Hogwarts doesn't really commit to any one idea 100 and as a result the game ends up feeling more like a mixtape rather than a best hits album however this is definitely a matter of subjectivity and as someone who typically plays games for just stories and characters and gameplay I enjoyed the structure of the game quite a bit even though its numerous elements do come across as somewhat underbaked what I did really enjoy however was the game's World building music visuals and most importantly the combat the spell casting in Hogwarts is very fun and it's exactly what I was looking for and forespoken I wish there was a little bit more object manipulation and more combos but overall it's exciting and it stays fresh despite its issues the player has access to a huge book of spells and the goal is to combine these spells into four slot spell kits it's necessary to have access to each element of magic in order to break different colored enemy Shields which is one of the game's core pillars you flip through these spell kits by holding down R2 and hitting a direction on your d-pad this is similar hand position to cycling through your active inventory in a Souls game in a sense that you have to take your left hand off the movement stick this makes you momentarily immobile and from a position of mechanics it's a little bit uncomfortable imagine a racing game where in order to look behind your car you had to take your hand off the gas to reach the button much of the game's difficulty comes in the form of adding more enemies to fights as the game goes on and it becomes very chaotic as you flip through your kits to find the Spells you need as a result there were times I wish the game had a very simple slow motion effect when cycling different spell books this would have given you a little bit of breathing room or instead of having to hit the d-pad you can flick directions on your joystick while holding R2 this would have caused a small problem with your character's Direction but would result in far less time standing immobile with the current system something to combat this and a very nice touch however was the omnidirectional Parry using Stupify anytime you see a yellow attack indicator flash on the screen will execute a Parry regardless of if you're facing the enemy or not so it doesn't matter if your screen is in the right position you just need to nail that timing in most games you have to face the enemy to get parries off and this is very helpful in Hogwarts because you can't always keep enemies in your view frame you also get a very generous window of time and to help you do this and if you can get a perfect protecto it will destroy all the shields of the attackers so it's very helpful when things get hairy and the system set up this way is actually very functional for the player thankfully the game lets you swap spellbooks while casting other spells or levitating objects and this is one of those subtle mechanics that encourages player experimentation and UPS the skill ceiling slightly the cynic in me thinks this is a feature to curb the frustration of its fumbly spell kit switching but perhaps we'll believe in the goodness of man on this one another example of how the devs try to make the somewhat chaotic combat manageable is how you can use interactables to avoid taking damage as your entirely Invincible during the entire animation despite it looking pretty dumb when it happens with so many things to juggle in combat I think this was a necessary evil and if these two mechanics were missing I think the entire combat system would be far too unmanageable addressing the actual mechanics I really enjoyed how flashy and weighty the Spells felt and there was a pretty good margin for advancing your proficiencies as the game went on spells are dullied out over the course of the game so you're only overwhelmed with how many spells you can cycle through pretty much at the beginning there's always another spill you're about to learn and that steady stream of progression keeps things pretty fresh and manageable for the player the interplay of the Spells could use a little bit more expansion honestly but it is pretty solid as it is right now some spells can be used in combination such as freezing and fire but there's no denying that more interesting interactions among the Spells could have been imagined it's also really interesting how wand attacks work because wand attacks slightly push back enemies and this results in some forced strategic-ness to the player because range is a big issue for example when you cast something like incendio and if the player pushes the enemy too far back with wand attacks before casting it it just may not connect with their target foreign thus some consideration is required the flow of the combat in Hogwarts though takes some time to get used to because at first it just feels way too hectic enemies come in groups of three to five but it's not uncommon to fight like eight enemies at the same time all with different colored Shields and ranges Hogwarts is a very handsy game and juggling between spells while dodging every three seconds seemed a little bit extreme at first for me but when you learn to use your spells effectively it becomes a lot more manageable the Breakthrough moment for me was when I set up my spell kits correctly and started swapping between them during the animations of other spells you can set up some pretty elaborate kill streaks in this game and every single spell packs a punch ripping a group of enemies towards you then freezing them and then casting incendio and smashing their shattered fiery bodies to the floor with descendo was my favorite combination now throw in a fully functional stealth system a meaty Perry mechanic extended Dodge rolling with dark magic and interactable objects to launch around the Arenas and you have one hell of a fun combat system once you get the hang of it not to mention the ability to seamlessly mount on your broom and combat for six setup kills and yeah I didn't know the combat and the gameplay would be so good in this game the other element to the game that was really well done in my opinion was the General sense of immersion in World building the entire game looks absolutely beautiful not that overly saturated blown out video gameness color palette of forespoken but a realistic color range and gorgeous Vistas Hogwarts drips with magical Wonder in the places inside of it are exactly what she wants integrated so well without it feeling like you're in actual video game levels and that is the biggest thing for me that popped out the Forbidden Forest is a great example of this this area has a dark and gloomy look to it with fun enemies to fight an interesting landlay but more importantly it's an actual Forest where you can fly up and down the canopy like it's a natural piece of land there's no loading screens the player isn't locked into a forest level there's no invisible walls it's just a terrific fully integrated environment the castle is also unbelievably detailed in fact it's probably the best designed City or Hub or town I've ever seen coming off playing games like forespoken and Destiny 2 by God do their cities feel so incredibly lifeless compared to Hogwarts Castle you could truly get lost in this place and it feels very Lively students are chatting and going about their business and there's this magicalness everywhere doors come alive brooms sweeping the floors by themselves the entire thing is One Enchanted little ecosystem of magical fun and frankly wandering through the hallways of Hogwarts is the equivalence of an entire city in most games yet somehow all of it feels still very logical to move through I think this is the most important thing from a playability perspective from the transitions from inside to outside being seamless to the structure of the castle levels and the stairwells to how you move around it it feels like an actual castle and not just a video game Castle it feels very real and very lived in it has a heartbeat to it but most impressively the scale if you stand outside the castle grounds or view it from afar or even from your map it's a complete one-to-one Recreation of what you can see on the outside to what you can explore on the inside and that's the best part just like the Forbidden Forest it's really impressive stuff in the veneer of it never Fades away due to how incredibly well done it is so you could say the immersion of the game is pretty strong and I had a lot of fun wandering around this entire world but I wouldn't say that the Wonder exactly lasts forever once the story got going and I got access to the open world I didn't see much of a need to unlock yet again another door for some loose change and a scarf and the same goes for the field manual assignments which award you random Cosmetics or gear for finding Collectibles and whatnot it's utterly optional and about halfway through the game I found it more enjoyment just doing the normal side stuff the truth is most things in life get boring after a while and this is no exception but there's no denying that all the treasure hunting and shiny things sprinkled around the world added a lot to the experience at least for about five to ten hours and that's because lastly the game just has a great vibe to it it puts a smile on your face your character is always smiling too and the world is so pleasant to look at it's got Whimsical music cute little doodads everywhere and it all fits in very well with the world they made sailing through the skies on high Wing is about as good as you're gonna get when it comes to flying in a video game and the Collectibles are pretty interesting sure they eventually get dull but hey that's Collectibles for you the story is strong and the gameplay is a very solid to wrap things up and frankly the 25 hour run time of the game was perfect for me making it feel exciting without it being just too overbearing Hogwarts Legacy is an extremely good example of an all-you-can-eat buffet potions plants housing animal capturing spells armor armor upgrades talents recipes flying flying races Arenas open world activities Collectibles so many systems living under a single roof each system could use a little bit of work and it does feel like the game was stretched to an absolute feature limit but honestly this is a really fun game and I hope that it's used as a groundworks for another game a more exciting story should come next I think with a focus on making meteor more substantial systems rather than adding two Next Step should be to refine what already works and which is the combats the World building and the Aesthetics and we should work on that self-identification if we're gonna make a Sim game then let's go wall out with the SIM stuff or at least merge it with a story a little bit better so it's less harsh in the transitions if you're gonna ask me to kill 10 Evil dark Wizards perhaps send me the class beforehand as it stands Hogwarts Legacy tries to fulfill his student fantasy while also presenting a very mature wizard Adventure sure it's not a huge deal but even the smallest Stone shouldn't go unturned and if we're going to make an open world RPG we're going to have to work on those RPG elements we got to make those talent trees bigger we need some choices in the story we need a good and evil system we need consequences better dialogue options better Companions and a much better potion armor plant upgrading system it's a lot better to have a strong identity for a game and make it the best you can rather than trying to do both just okay Hogwarts is one of the most animated and original worlds I've seen in a long time it's definitely a good game and if you push me a bit I'd probably even call it a great game it's fun it's whimsical and there's a lot to like but there's just as much to improve onto

Channel: Downward Thrust

Views: 90,821

Keywords: hogwarts legacy, hogwarts legacy review, hogwarts review, hogwarts legacy trans, hogwarts legacy boycott, hogwarts legacy transphobia, hogwarts legacy j.k. rowling, j.k. rowling, j.k. rowling hogwarts, downward thrust, hogwarts legacy dlc, quidditch, hogwarts legacy quidditch, hogwarts legacy quidditch dlc, hogwarts legacy controversy, hogwarts boycott, hogwarts legacy is amazing, hogwarts legacy secrets, hogwars legacy critique

Id: Y9ph-eqbZoY

Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023