I’m very honest with you. Actually I would like this text here prefer not to write at all. Today it’s about Hogwarts Legacy. The game Harry Potter fans have been waiting for since the first book. So it’s no wonder it’s the game on Steam that’s on most people’s wish lists. On the consoles, the anticipation will probably look almost identical. When it was announced in 2020, I was one of those people too. I was extremely hyped and would have liked to snatch the game out of the hands of the developers immediately. But a little over two years have passed. Fast forward to January 2023 and the gameplay we’ve gotten so far, I find myself increasingly losing interest in Hogwarts Legacy. I want to explain why that is and you are welcome to write in the comments whether I’ve just become the grumbling grandfather here or whether I’m not the only one with this opinion.
But before that, a disclaimer: I don’t want to go into the controversy surrounding JKRowling at all. I could probably fill twelve pages of text with that. No, this is supposed to be solely about my concerns about Hogwarts Legacy (buy now €84.99 / €53.99 ) shoot yourself that grow with every bit of gameplay.
Hogwarts Legacy: Will it really be every Potterhead’s dream? (1)
Source: Warner Bros.
But don’t get me wrong. I still want to try the whole thing. After all, for the first time you can explore a really fully developed Hogwarts Castle, including the surrounding area and more. That alone is fantastic and you have to give the developers full respect here. There are so many nice little details packed into the gameplay you’ve seen so far. For example, the honey-colored nightstands in the Hufflepuff dormitory were never seen in the movies, nor are the descriptions in the books, but they are real Part of the extended Harry Potter lore. I’m into such small details and if you want to believe what the developers say, then they really followed the lore very closely. An approach that is not always self-evident when you look at the adaptations of other books from the recent past.
If you can also interact with enough things, then that’s a big plus for the atmosphere. I recently made a passionate plea about how important realistic and credible game worlds are for the atmosphere and I really wish for that in Hogwarts Legacy. But I actually have my first doubts here. Because after you saw in the gameplay how you can eat an apple from a fruit bowl, 5 minutes later there was a negative example of interaction.
The player just walks out of the Hufflepuff common room and suddenly an effect lights up indicating that you can do magic here. So far so good. But if you then interact with these items, you only get a dingy collectible. Sure, there’s a little more to the lore in it and that’s nice for fans, too, but at the same time it’s bare game mechanics that flash out here. It already bores me when most of the game world is filled with such collectible stuff.
