Now that the hype has passed: how do you truly review this game?

[Exú Marabô]

SO, it's been a few weeks now that the game has been launched and the whole hype and trolling was downplayed. What did you think of this game? Was it worth it? Does it deliver something new or it's more about the fact it is a HP game (which is cool too)?

[Falaris]

Levioso/depulso near ledges.
10/10.

Seriously, though..
Graphics, design, characters, all of that is really well done.
Expectation is a big thing here. If you expect a HP RPG with a morality system and branching storylines, you'll be disappointed. But the devs openly state that is not what it is. Do you judge it for what it's presented as and how well it lives up to that, or compared to the dream game you wish it was? If the latter, you'll of course be disappointed. The game more than lives up to the promise, though, and judged on its merits is really good. I'd say 8.5-9/10.

[halfmonkey]

Publicado originalmente por lynn.sabin:

Publicado originalmente por Moon Rabbit:

I like that they didn't go full Harry Potter and make the potions teacher a jerk to the lead. Sharp being a really down to earth professor.

Professor Sharp is a potentially complex individual. With reference to his limp, he's clearly cautionary that Wiggenweld Potion does not heal all maladies. I'm guessing that his somewhat dour disposition can be attributed to persistent pain. Nonetheless, he does appreciate our protagonist's efforts.

Sharp has additional dialogue after you revelio his auror's badge that explains his attitude and limp. Most of the professors and teachers have this type of extra dialogue, but the game does nothing to clue you in that it exists.

There are also many scenes that play out amongst NPCs, but only if you follow them before they magically despawn out of sight. Example: Headmaster Weasley has an entire scene that plays out in front of a fountain with a random NPC losing their pet. You'll only see this if you ignore the on-screen quest prompts and walked with her all the way to this area. It shows that player pets/familiars were once meant to be included, which is probably why it's not forced onto the player like other cut scenes...

[peter4i4ik]

Well, lets not gid in details first and say everything else is very good here 9/10, EXEPT FIGHTING SYSTEM.
fighting gains 5/10 by me but it is still sort of playable.
for HP world, they really done innovative work to implement the spells like that, however major flaws is non-symmetrical fight, ancient magic bs and difficulty is very was even on hard, so you must take hard mode mods. There is no such thing as basic cast, and abilities of enemies must be equal to your own, without this strange system of colorful shields it is out of HP lore entirely.
If you dig into mods, you will see that they got lots of unused spells, important ones like Patronus, apparition, so its strange that they have not implement it even in this battle system. there can be battles with spell shooting in a flight or during mount, spell cast while moving and dodging, etc.

[valium]

The first 15 hours is 10/10, with all the exploration of the castle/hogsmeade/surrounding areas. It then goes down to a 7.5/8 at the end when you are then just going through the story and open world elements.

Still great overall and I hope they use this as a base to improve further.

[Logoski]

7, decent time sink that let me revisit some of the feel I got from the movies as a kid. Likely won't touch it again after I finish this initial playthrough but I do plan to finish it.

[Latham]

I'd give it a 7 / 10. The combat is very fluid, fast-paced and fun. The world is beautiful and vast, I got to see so much more than I thought I ever would. Story was slightly above average. Nothing mindblowing, but given that the franchise is based on a book series for children, I expected it to be a whole lot more childish. Pleasantly surprised that they made it a fair bit darker than I expected.
Your 3 friends (Natty, Sebastian and Poppy) really steal the show when it comes to the narrative. Sadly, that just shows how basic, stiff and NPC-like the other schoolchildren are (even the ones that give you quests). They're just overshadowed to put it simply.
I liked the professors and classes and wish we'd get some more interacting with them.

The problems I have are with the Ubisoft-like diarhea of points of interest on the map (95 merlin trials? seriously?) that ultimately serve no purpose but to pad out the otherwise pretty empty world.
Another problem I had was with the pacing - We were still unlocking things up until the 4th keeper. I would've liked to unlock everything up to the 50% point of the story, and then just focused on having fun with everything unlocked.
Also, I never found a good time to pause the main story progress to really explore the outside world, because of the promises of unlocking more vivariums, more spells more core mechanics and more animals for farming mats, which left me with like 80% of the open world unexplored with just the final ~2 quests to do. I then spent 5 IRL days doing all the completionist quests...
Revelio spam was getting tedious to do as well, lol. Thankfully while on the broom the range increases exponentially. Alohamora got old, real fast. The minigame on Tier 2/3 should've been skipped entirely.
Never saw the point of using the animal flying mounts when the brooms did the job just as well if not better.

Overall a solid and satisfying game. Color me surprised.

[LokiFc]

6.

Skill tree? Non existing.
Puzzles, alohomoha etc? boring.
Combat? Even on hard it is way too easy, so whatever. You may just defeat everybody with autos.
Armor/equips? You don't have to kill any special boss, just loot random boxes on your max lvl.
Bosses? None.

it is mediocre.

[Fallen]

was worth it imo, but that does not mean the game is not without its issues.

main one being the lockpicking minigame, since it is literally everywhere, not challenging, and is a total waste of time, it should just not exist.

second and possibly tied for first, the mc and companions (when you have them) not shutting up during puzzles, Floo lady not shutting up, and Deek not shutting up. i lumped those all together since their issue is, they never shut up and keep repeating the same damn dialog over and over again.

third is, the mc not shutting up about being alone whenever you attack a camp... we get it, you do not have friends, shut up already.

- the curse spells and all vivariums not being fully available early on. once you get them unlocked fully there is pretty much no point to them. only reason this is not higher is because Crucio's poor back carries it.

- we cannot adventure with companions.

- there is not really hogwarts classes that we can just show up and attend when we want, and classes are tied to the story, as far as i know. i thought the classes would be set up like Bully.

- no one really cares if we use the unforgivable curses, even in front of the teachers. would be nice if there was something, anything to be honest.

I would add "no quiditch" to this, but tbh with the flying controls for this game, it is probably best if we do not have it.

[Jack Sparrow]

Publicado originalmente por Exú Marabô:

SO, it's been a few weeks now that the game has been launched and the whole hype and trolling was downplayed. What did you think of this game? Was it worth it? Does it deliver something new or it's more about the fact it is a HP game (which is cool too)?

the first 20 hours were 9/10

steep decline after that, the gear system is busted, theres nothing interesting to buy, you can tell they followed a diversity checklist for all the characters, probably why 90% of them have the personality of a piece of packing foam, their ethnicity and nationality IS their personality, this is the world we live in now.

the hundreds of caves scattered over the map with one chest in them with a green cape or blue hat.. cool.. how exciting, gear is boring and may aswell not even be in the game after level 30ish everything is basically vendor trash not even worth the time to upgrade. room of requirement was cool but its all pointless you dont need any of the upgrades, you dont need any of the potions or the plants, why would i waste time drinking a potion mid combat when i can just do a two spell combo and delete on enemy every 4 seconds?

i think flying is given to you way too early, and why is there two types of flying? and then a ground mount at the end of the game? as soon as you get your broom stick the open world just becomes fly from checkpoint to checkpoint, the sense of exploration is gone.

[lefty1117]

I'd have it in the mid 8's. It's a standard UBI game with the Harry Potter skin on it, which makes it a bit better. Combat better than expected. A lot of attention to detail but it's mostly on rails. STill, it was good fun. Best game I've played in the past year is actually Marvel Midnight Suns, for some reason that game really grabbed me. Different.

[mutantbeth]

7/10. A lot of love put into it but it doesnt feel like an rpg as it was advertised. Characters heavily underutilized, towards the end felt rushed. rookwoods confrontation was built up but then anti climactic. He ties into sebastians quest but nothing was done with that link etc..

[paladin765]

I still love it. taking a break from it for a bit so I don't burn out too soon. Truly hope we get more content for it in the future. But for now, I am glad I bought the game.

[retsam1]

To use OWLs grading system I felt it was an E (Exceeds Expectations).

I could go into so much detail on individual aspects of the game but overall that's my score even though I felt some parts were D (Dreadful)l with one part being T (Troll) (player story choices having any truly meaningful/impactful consequences).

[Qubert]

It's got good bones as some may say. Hopefully the take feedback serious and make the sequel what this game should of been.

[Exú Marabô]

Yeah it seems the game fails a lot on the RPG aspect, which is what I like most on this kind of game. Seems I'll have to wait for sales then.