Hogwarts Legacy? More like Ubisoft Legacy

[ZXQuincy]

Let me 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 Great Hall, you can't even sleep in your House's dormitory. You learn Unforgivable Curses, the inglorious spells from the original books. And they do not mean sh-it. They do not affect you in any way, no one reacts to it, you can AK all the poachers and remain a good, kind wizard off screen.

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.

[Nonomori]

Originally posted by vaanomega:

Originally posted by Nonomori:

Bet you like blue cheese as well.

Wine and Beer are expired food, if you like those, it's basically the same as loving blue cheese

What do you mean? Aged wine isn't the same as blue cheese lol

[SotiCoto]

The game would be better if it wasn't for the crappy setting.

[vaanomega]

Originally posted by Nonomori:

Originally posted by vaanomega:

Wine and Beer are expired food, if you like those, it's basically the same as loving blue cheese

What do you mean? Aged wine isn't the same as blue cheese lol

I hate Alcohol, so i considere every things that are fermented to be expired since the apparition of mold or the process of fermentation is due to a bacterial agent, therefore Wince is nothing but expired grape juice, champagne is only expired grape juice with bubbles

PS: It's basically the same for all cheeses, but since i like Cheses (aside from Roquefort or Blue), i never say that to cheese, it's a double standart, i know

[dulany67]

Originally posted by margalus:

Originally posted by dulany67:

The problem is that the game you wanted would have sold 500,000 copies.

You have a few extra zeros on there. Did you mean 500?

Well the trans activists still would have done their thing and spurred sales in response.

[Nonomori]

Originally posted by vaanomega:

Originally posted by Nonomori:

What do you mean? Aged wine isn't the same as blue cheese lol

I hate Alcohol, so i considere every things that are fermented to be expired since the apparition of mold or the process of fermentation is due to a bacterial agent, therefore Wince is nothing but expired grape juice, champagne is only expired grape juice with bubbles

PS: It's basically the same for all cheeses, but since i like Cheses (aside from Roquefort or Blue), i never say that to cheese, it's a double standart, i know

I don't drink alcohol as well so that makes us even.

[MacMaukka]

Originally posted by ZXQuincy:

Let me 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 Great Hall, you can't even sleep in your House's dormitory. You learn Unforgivable Curses, the inglorious spells from the original books. And they do not mean sh-it. They do not affect you in any way, no one reacts to it, you can AK all the poachers and remain a good, kind wizard off screen.

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.

I agree on pretty much every point. The world they created is beautiful but kind of wasted in the end, as there is nothing interesting to do in it and the balance between school/adventure is way off in favor of tedious quests. Slow walking segments, dull dialogue and other such things that plague modern games really sapped my enthusiasm to continue playing.

[Bob Gnarly]

Yes I got Assassins Creed vibes when completing useless activities out in the world, it got extremely repetitive towards the end.

[PaulGR]

This is just Assassins Creed: Hogwarts Odyssey.

- Zero role-playing elements.
- Choices hardly matter.
- Your House choice just changes the Common Area and a few dialogues, nothing major. There is no point doing a second play-through with a different House choice.
- No classes to attend, no schedule (other than the 1-2 at intro which feel more like private tutoring).
- No proper night-day cycle.
- No relationship building with students and faculty.
- No interaction with NPCs. They are just invisible husks.
- No House rivalries.
- No Quidditch.
- No choices to decorate your Dorm. Contrary to what they made it look like at pre-release trailers. Your Dorm area/bed is just useless.
- You can't even sleep at your Dorm. Can't sit or do other simple actions.
- Students and faculty disappear from existence at night. Students are not even at their Dorms. Hogwarts is just empty dead.
- No curfew at night. You can enter the Restricted Section of the Library and nobody is there to stop you. It's just an abandoned castle.

It feels like you join 5th year as transfer student just to ditch at the end of the questline. No attachment to the place at all.

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by PaulGR:

This is just Assassins Creed: Hogwarts Odyssey.

- Zero role-playing elements.
- Choices hardly matter.
- Your House choice just changes the Common Area and a few dialogues, nothing major.
- No classes to attend, no schedule (other than the 1-2 at intro).
- No proper night-day cycle.
- No relationship building with students and faculty.
- No interaction with NPCs. They are just invisible husks.
- No House rivalries.
- No Quidditch.
- You can't even sleep at your Dorm. Can't sit or do other simple actions.
- Students and faculty disappear from existence at night. Students are not even at their Dorms. Hogwarts is just empty dead.
- No curfew at night. You can enter the Restricted Section of the Library and nobody is there to stop you. It's just an abandoned castle.

It feels like you join 5th year as transfer student just to ditch at the end of the questline. No attachment to the place at all.

you attend a class for almost every spell in the game. instantly invalidated your list by stating something factually incorrect right off the bat.

not to mention flying class, beast class astronomy class etc.

[PaulGR]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Originally posted by PaulGR:

This is just Assassins Creed: Hogwarts Odyssey.

- Zero role-playing elements.
- Choices hardly matter.
- Your House choice just changes the Common Area and a few dialogues, nothing major.
- No classes to attend, no schedule (other than the 1-2 at intro).
- No proper night-day cycle.
- No relationship building with students and faculty.
- No interaction with NPCs. They are just invisible husks.
- No House rivalries.
- No Quidditch.
- You can't even sleep at your Dorm. Can't sit or do other simple actions.
- Students and faculty disappear from existence at night. Students are not even at their Dorms. Hogwarts is just empty dead.
- No curfew at night. You can enter the Restricted Section of the Library and nobody is there to stop you. It's just an abandoned castle.

It feels like you join 5th year as transfer student just to ditch at the end of the questline. No attachment to the place at all.

you attend a class for almost every spell in the game. instantly invalidated your list by stating something factually incorrect right off the bat.

not to mention flying class, beast class astronomy class etc.

You attend a class once to learn the spells. There is no class schedule. You also obtain most through "private tutoring" which is weird.

Just move on.

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by PaulGR:

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

you attend a class for almost every spell in the game. instantly invalidated your list by stating something factually incorrect right off the bat.

not to mention flying class, beast class astronomy class etc.

You attend a class once to learn the spells. There is no class schedule. Move on.

okay??? imagine having to attend 7 classes every 3 minutes for the entirety of an open world rpg. you are literally describing real school. this is a video game. Harry potter only attends like 15 classes throughout the entirety of the series. this is an openworld action adventure not persona 5.

[PaulGR]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Originally posted by PaulGR:

You attend a class once to learn the spells. There is no class schedule. Move on.

okay??? imagine having to attend 7 classes every 3 minutes for the entirety of an open world rpg. you are literally describing real school. this is a video game. Harry potter only attends like 15 classes throughout the entirety of the series. this is an openworld action adventure not persona 5.

As I said, move on.

You don't have to have 7 classes per day. They can easily make it so that you can choose or have just one. All you are proving with these over-exaggerations is that the game is not an RPG.

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by PaulGR:

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

okay??? imagine having to attend 7 classes every 3 minutes for the entirety of an open world rpg. you are literally describing real school. this is a video game. Harry potter only attends like 15 classes throughout the entirety of the series. this is an openworld action adventure not persona 5.

As I said, move on.

You don't have to have 7 classes per day. They can easily make it so that you can choose or have just one. All you are proving with these over-exaggerations is that the game is not an RPG.

thats not an exxageration.

defense of the dark arts, astronomy, potions, herbology, transfiguration, wizard history, beasts etc. all classes hogwarts students attend regularly.

you cant argue you wanna attend classes like an immersive student and then say well actually I would just want to attend 1 or 2 here or there when i feel like it.

equally unrealistic.

plus that would also require the developers to animate and voice dozens of classes for an optional and functionally pointless thing. as well as code it into the game to be immersively accessible at the times they are available etc.

[PaulGR]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Originally posted by PaulGR:

As I said, move on.

You don't have to have 7 classes per day. They can easily make it so that you can choose or have just one. All you are proving with these over-exaggerations is that the game is not an RPG.

thats not an exxageration.

defense of the dark arts, astronomy, potions, herbology, transfiguration, wizard history, beasts etc. all classes hogwarts students attend regularly.

you cant argue you wanna attend classes like an immersive student and then say well actually I would just want to attend 1 or 2 here or there when i feel like it.

equally unrealistic.

plus that would also require the developers to animate and voice dozens of classes for an optional and functionally pointless thing. as well as code it into the game to be immersively accessible at the times they are available etc.

Again, as I said, move on.

You absolutely do not have to have all classes together at once. There have been more rigorous and demanding game designs out there. It's not rocket science simulating a simple class schedule. They can make it so that you just choose some classes and miss others, allowing you to pick them during another play-through. They can be spaced every 2 days, free weekends. They may be only 3/7 days of the week. You can get free passes to be outside at night or skip class as the story progresses. Etc. etc. I ain't gonna list every possible option.

There is nothing to animate/voice other than a few default actions that will rotate between classes. You don't need separate sitting animations for each class. Classes don't have to have actual written content. It may be mini-games. It may be a cut-scene.

As it stands now, it doesn't feel like you are part of Hogwarts.

Over-exaggerating like that only proves that this is not an RPG.

[StingingVelvet]

I am absolutely not a big fan of open world checklist games. When I complete one it usually has a lot going for it, like Witcher 3's writing or Horizon's cool world.

This game has a lot of charm and detail from the movies that for me makes up for the problems I have with the genre. If you don't have that love of the movies though, and you don't like open world checklist games, then I could see disliking it.