Anyone who grew up reading Harry Potter books for a while probably wanted to get swept up in the magical world of Hogwarts at some point. Even though I knew that my Hogwarts letter would never come because I was a little older at that time, I had always dreamed of running from class to class at Hogwarts at the computer since the Harry Potter games that came out at that time. Hogwarts Legacy finally gave me what I was looking for, albeit with a delay of 20-odd years. When I took my robe and staff and got long, I found myself again immersed in the wizarding world after a long time…
Of course, when you say “Hogwarts experience”, many of you will think of the Hogwarts express. If you think that you will go to Hogwarts by taking the train from platform 9 ¾ and watching the beautiful Scotland view, you are wrong. Hogwarts Legacy gives you a crash lesson on the Wizarding World from the start. When you think about it, because our character does not enter Hogwarts from the first grade, but directly from the fifth grade in an unprecedented way. As a matter of fact, we completely remove the childlike naivety of those first books in terms of tone, and enter the dark, mature atmosphere of the next books from the very beginning.
Since I don’t want to spoil the shock effect of the opening, I won’t tell you scene by scene, but after creating your character on the character creation screen with relatively satisfying options and going through the “bad”, we are at Hogwarts with Professor Eleazar Fig. Professor Fig is a character who will often accompany us on our adventures inside and outside of Hogwarts; kind of like our “mentor”. As a Hogwarts classic, we choose which building we will settle in after he has barely brought us to the Selection ceremony. Well, if you’re a fan of the series, you already know which building you’d like to be selected for. Although the effects of this choice on the course of the game are minimal, I must emphasize that you cannot change it afterwards; So if you change your mind, you have to create a new character. (Fortunately, the game gives you 4 different character slots directly. You can create a character from each building). The only difference with this pick is which Common Room you’re going to hang out in, and a not-so-complicated questline. Oh, of course, you get to spend a little more time with the characters in your own building and get to know them a little better, but it doesn’t have a direct effect on the story.
Oh, I think I know this name!
In the meantime, it is possible that some of the names in the game may sound familiar. Harry Potter began his studies at Hogwarts in 1991; our story takes place 100 years before that. The names familiar to the school we started in 1890 are not the characters whose stories we know directly, but their ancestors. For example, the headmaster of Hogwarts, Phineas Nigellus Black, is Sirius’ great-great-grandfather. During a school year, you experience plenty of the reasons behind Sirius’ saying “the most unpopular headmaster Hogwarts has ever seen” when talking about himself in the fifth book. (After all, if you hadn’t banned Quidditch, man!). Similarly, Transfiguration professor Matilda Weasley is obviously an ancestor of Ron. However, every character does not necessarily connect to someone at some point and turn it into “Come on, find the connection!” Fortunately. However, there are plenty of good connections for those of you who are careful to point and establish, like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has become an internet meme.
Hogwarts in the game is exactly the successful mix of the books and the movies. There is a huge magical castle full of details, mystery and secrets waiting to be discovered before us. He really studied the Avalanche lesson very well on this subject. They added every detail you would expect to find, from the secret passage to Honeymuck in Hogsmeade, which is entered from behind the One-Eyed Witch Statue, to the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets. The last time I looked, folks were trying to calculate the scene of the character’s fall from the Astronomy balcony in the certain scene at the end of the sixth book, through Hogswarts in the game, let’s say that.
If you do lessons or something, they are quite enjoyable. We take classes in Herbal Science, Talisman, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Flight, Divination, Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, History of Magic, and each has its own simple mini-game. (It was especially funny trying to stay awake in The History of Magic.) Since we start school directly in the fifth grade, all the professors give us some special additional assignments to catch up. It is not mandatory to complete these assignments, but if you do, you have the chance to learn spells that are incredibly useful for both exploration and combat much earlier. (If you don’t do these, you still learn the spells that may be necessary in your adventures, albeit later.) So in the beginning, everything is really rosy. “Hogwarts and game has been my dream for years!” I played it with great pleasure. But unfortunately this magical weather
It dissipates a little after a while, because the focus of the story starts to shift out of Hogwarts after a while before you can get enough of school.
When you say outside of Hogwarts, of course, you’re all assuming it’s Hogsmeade; You are partially right. You will have the opportunity to spend a lot of time in Hogsmeade, which is just a short walk from the school. After seeing the size of the actual map, he would probably say, “Wow, if they modeled Scotland completely?!” you will scream. They’ve never really spared their hand when it comes to the open world. Moreover, instead of suffocating you with “the amount of exclamation per centimeter”, they went a little more fair and balanced. (Although the Merlin Trials didn’t need to be 90-odd.) Even without Quidditch, broomsticks and mounts, teleporting using the Edge Net makes exploring the huge map more bearable.
Although you may not notice it at first, the time you spend in this open world starts to steal more than your time at Hogwarts after a while. If you are not very keen on the “magic school” part of the job, of course, this may not be a minus for you, on the other hand, it is certain that it is depressing for those who have expectations in that respect. I guess that’s exactly why the game is a little stingy in terms of the characters that accompany you. I settled in Gryffindor and the game introduced me mainly to Cressida, Garreth and Nellie. I unfortunately did not have a satisfactory interaction with all three of these characters, apart from a brief side quest. “Oh, is that Cressida?” I said but that was all.
Instead there are three quests and four characters that come in close contact with the main quest. (Look, I’m being generous and counting Sebastian and Ominis separately) They said, “Let’s make a student from Gryffindor, get one Hufflepuff and two Slytherins,” and nobody came out and said, “Are we not going to put anyone from Ravenclaw? ” he didn’t ask. (Or I hope they didn’t say “There’s Amit” if they asked, because… Amit’s role is so small that he’s not even mentioned next to the other four) Fortunately, these characters’ side quest series are very satisfying and well done. In particular, Sebastian and Ominis’ questline beautifully reflected how dangerous the Dark Arts are and how it can backfire. The story of those two became one of his favorite parts of the game.
Hah, by the way, while we’re talking about the Dark Arts, we shouldn’t miss it. Although Hogwarts Legacy takes place long before Voldemort and even Grindelwald, it has no shortage of dark magic and wizards. We manage to fall right into the heart of a goblin rebellion that has been rumored from the very beginning of the game. The goblin named Ranrok for some reason organizes both a group of dark wizards known as the Ashwinders and other goblins to go after “something”. What draws us into the orbit of this rebellion is that our character has a rare sense of “ancient magic”. Then, of course, we not only intuit but also start using this power more effectively. At this point, frankly, I was worried about how the fighting system of the game would be, since we had a lot of fights and duels before the game came out. Fortunately, I was worried unnecessarily, because they managed to set up a very enjoyable and interesting system. In fact, I hope that future Wizarding World games will always build on this system.
The system works like this: Every spell you cast has a category and color equivalent. The red coded ones represent direct damage, the yellow backgrounds represent control, and the purple ones represent the effect. In whichever of these three colors your enemies use the Protego shield, you must first break their shield with that type of spell. In other words, if it has a yellow shield, you first break the shield with Levioso and vent it at the same time, then you hit the ground with Descendo. You do your normal attacks by pressing R2 (in DualSense of course) quickly and rhythmically from time to time. Then another enemy comes with a red shield this time, for example, you throw an Expelliarmus at him; both his shield is broken and he loses his weapon… The general tempo of the fights works like this, but when you get used to it in the future, things start to turn into a show, especially after Talents are opened.
For example, after disarming the enemy, you catch that weapon in the air and throw it at his head. Or, with Transformation, you turn the enemy into an exploding barrel and send it on to other enemies. Ancient magic also comes into play, if you line up x10 combos one after the other, your Ancient Magic bar fills up, you start to make finishing moves that almost destroy even huge trolls in one hit… So how is the defense part? Do we open shields according to the spells cast by the enemies? Fortunately no. “Protego”, which is attached to the triangle button, automatically protects you for a short time without distinguishing colors. If a spell is coming that Protego can’t protect, see the red alert that normally appears in orange.
you already are. If you meet the attack at the last moment and hold down the triangle, your character will also throw a Stunning spell on it, by the way. In essence, a very enjoyable combat system has emerged. But my only criticism is that the Talent system is too linear and doesn’t give many different options, so towards the end of the game it gets a little more “Okay, let’s do Ancient Magic and let’s go” mode.
By the way, apart from the ones I mentioned, there are also spells that are mostly used in puzzles or fights. They are also of the light blue (Auxiliary Spells) and light green (Transfiguration) types. The light blue ones already consist of Lumos (lighting around), Reparo (fixing a broken object), Dreamcatcher (invisibility you know), and Wingardium Leviosa (venting objects). Of course, you can also use the dreamcatcher to sneak up on enemies and make Petrificus Totalus from behind, but we use the others mostly for puzzles and exploration. Transfiguration ones, on the other hand, are used only in the Room of Requirement, which I will talk about in a moment.
Even in the dark, art is art.
But there is another type of magic that we should talk about first, because “Oh, there were Unforgivable Curses? Aren’t you going to tell them?” I can hear you say. Yes, you can learn and use all three Unforgivable Curses in the game. Moreover, this is such a petty “Come on, show your uncle Avada Kedavra!” They are not a subject that is passed over in style. I mentioned Sebastian and Ominis’ questline and how interesting it was, right? Did I mention that Ominis’ last name is “Gaunt”? Their questline revolves entirely around exploring Salazar Slytherin’s teachings and Unforgivable Curses. Unforgivable Curses themselves are also of the truly mind-boggling kind, as they have the ability to break the enemy’s shield no matter what color it is. On top of that, for example, when you control a troll in the environment with Imperio magic, you don’t have to worry too much about other enemies. Or that the Avada Kedavra spell was diluted and not weakened. When you throw it, it kills even the boss in front of you without looking at it, but you have to wait for a while to use it again.
So how do we get enough of four active spell slots when there are so many spells in the game? Actually, we are not enough. We can open 3 more sets that we can quickly change with Talents, but even this is not enough after a while. Because although the number of spells in the game is limited, you need all of those 4×4 magic slots since you need to use most of them actively. Unfortunately, a bad design choice has been made here, because there is no need for some “magic” to take up space as magic. In other words, just as our character does “Revelio” when we hold down the left arrow key, a function could be assigned to the idle up or down arrow keys. For example, would it be bad if Lumos when you hold up, and Dreambuster when you hold down? No, you have to appoint them as well. In fact, since there is no space left, you will open the goblin magic menu and edit. However, look how nice you added a secondary function to Accio. If you keep holding down after making Accio, your character will do Wingardium Leviosa automatically. Why didn’t you integrate it into other spells? But the worst offenders are definitely Transfiguration spells and the ones we use in the Room of Requirement. We can’t use these spells anywhere else anyway, we don’t use any other spells while in the Room of Requirement anyway, how did you really not think of making a spell set that only activates when we enter this room?
Room for rent from the owner…
The Room of Requirement was one of the parts I was worried about at first. Together with our house-elf named Deek, we meet our need to collect all kinds of potions, herbs, equipment and even some kind of mini pokémon from this room. The reason I was worried was that the potion stations we set up here had mechanics like “real-time standby”, which we often see in mobile games, but which I think has no place in AAA games. Fortunately, it’s not as serious as I was worried at first. It takes about half an hour to collect herbs, but the waiting period usually varies between 15 seconds and 1 and a half minutes in the potion part that you will apply more often. Since the preparations for the new one don’t start without buying the one that is already ready, things like “Let me leave the game open and collect the money in 3 hours” are out of question. But your mind is “What’s the deal with Pokémon?” part, don’t think I didn’t notice.
Inside the Room of Requirement, there is also a section called the Vivarium. As we fight a lot with poachers as well as the goblin rebellion and dark wizards of Ranrok, we capture the endangered magical beasts in our bag and then release them to Vivarium. At one point I turned and joked to Burcu, “Even if these animals have Shiny”, 15 minutes later I saw a “glow” icon next to one of their names while passing through the Kneazzle slot. It’s not for nothing that I call it Pokémon.
We don’t make the animals we take and release to Vivarium fight, instead we feed them, raise them, mate them and collect their hair and hair or something. When our animals are happy, we improve our equipment with hair and wool-like things we collect from them, and we add “Trait”s we collect from poachers and goblin camps to our equipment. We can also sell the surplus animals we have and make money, but we prefer not to talk about it as this treatment of animals we rescue from poachers creates a somewhat strange cycle—oo… well.
In the meantime, the equipment system seems to have been added by saying, “Now we have to establish a system for the equipment, otherwise it will not be understood that we are an RYO.” There is a level system that even my son Leon, who is now almost 2 years old, learned that the equipment goes as colorless, green, blue, purple, orange. But anything other than orange won’t work for you later in the game, because only oranges can get Trait level three. Moreover, the abilities on these equipments are of the kind that do not require you to worry a bit. Whichever gives more defense or offense, you wear it and pass. It’s really a system. Moreover, the constant filling of the inventory makes you needlessly tired for such a shallow system when you are trying to run them to the Room of Requirement and learn about their features there. But it’s nice to be able to customize their look and even have the option to lower/remove the hoodie on the robes. In that respect (apart from the fact that the facewears are mostly scary), I was satisfied, but it would have been better if he hadn’t tried to play Diablo.
It was like I went a little negative and complained in the last few days, but these are the things I pulled with tweezers. Otherwise, as I said at the beginning, there is no doubt that it is the best Harry Potter game to date. Especially the taste of the parts that took place at Hogwarts remained on my palate. The only thing they need to do to get on top of it the day after tomorrow is to increase the importance of the school parts a little more, increase the side characters and preferably give them the opportunity to spend more time. Because okay, it’s good to save the Wizarding World and take down the bad guys, but sometimes you still want to get in the Three Broomsticks and have a cream beer with your friends…
