Hogwarts Legacy Critique - Great Game, TERRIBLE RPG

In this video, I’m doing a deep dive critique of Hogwarts Legacy - focusing on what the game does well, but also going hard against some of the stuff I think it does poorly.

You’ve seen the title so you all know where I’m going with this. Hogwarts Legacy is a great open world action game, but it fails as a roleplaying game. Many of the most important aspects of RPGs like story and dialogue choices, builds, etc are either one-dimensional or practically non-existent.

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0:00 Introduction
1:30 What Hogwarts Legacy Does Well
3:22 RPG Without Choices
6:07 Character Customization
7:07 Narrative Choices and Consequences
13:44 Dialogue Choices
18:03 No Combat Build Variety
20:03 Character Progression
22:56 Conclusion

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[Gamer]

This is actually the first non-biased review of this game that I seen so far. Prior people either love it because it's HP or hate it because JK Rowling

[caftdynner]

Another immersion breaking thing I don't think you mentioned - If you do learn the Unforgivable Curses you can cast them right in front of Fig and your other allies and nobody gives a shit - the Poachers/Dark Wizards comment on it though.

[jvnola]

I definitively agree with your comment on the lack of "build variety". They really missed the chance to create some unique classes. The best thing about the books and of Hogwarts, in general, are the different "branches" of magic that students learn. You don't even need to rely on the typical classes you find in so many other games. The fact that you start as a fifth year student provided them with the perfect opportunity to give the player options to "specialize" in a particular area of magic. After all, it is expected of fifth year students to start thinking seriously about potential career paths and the results of their OWLs determine what classes they will be taking during their sixth year. They could have given the player the option to focus on lets say 2 or 3 classes (which are associated to a specific career) as a way of preparing better for your OWLs. That way people had the option to pick lets say Charms and defense the dark arts, and that would allow you to unlock additional spells only available to you, if you decide to specialize in that area. That alone would make people want to do several playthroughs. I was particularly disappointed with the transfiguration spell ("transform"). While it is fun to turn enemies into a barrel (or explosive) there is so much more they could have done. Imagine a build where you focus only on transfiguration.

[FratBoyFitness]

Almost all modern games are losing RPG elements.

[Dark_Voice]

Don't forget that sometimes your actual gameplay isn't reflected by the dialogue or dialogue only makes sense when you pick one choice.

For example - when you talk to Prof. Weasley as a 100% Field guide completed player, she will still talk about how a lot is yet to be completed regardless or if you talk to Samantha in a very humble manner she will say you are too humble but if you pick the arrogant and self-sure options, she tells you that you are too humble anyways etc.

I personally think its a 6/10 game.

I think the gameplay is just trash. A lot of the spells are completely redundant:
- Reparo, Beast feeding and grooming, Nab sack, Lumos, all room of requirement spells should have been essential, not waste your spellwheel
- a lot of spells feel useless after unlocking different ones - why use Wingadium Leviosa when you can use accio and it does what WL does and more? Why use incendio or bombarda when Confringo has both things combined in one (especially after the upgrade)
- some spells seem useless like flippendo or depulso or highly situational - no reason to use those when you got your accio which is the first spell you learn as well SO those 2 are used only in puzzles pretty much
- some spells are opened way too late - the killing curese might not even exist because its opened for you to use in just the final mission pretty much (also I think there should be way more consequences to using it), on my dark wizard attempt playthrough I was wondering why Poppy is even a friend of someone who is like "Lets find the snidgets" Poacher: No you wont, Me: Crucio, dash incendio, Imperio, Confringo BURN IN HELL, AVADA KEDAVRA - and Poppy is like "You are a good guy and a friend" in the next cinematic even when I was blasting with Confringo and Bombarda the Kneeyles in front of the cave with the Snidgets and she was like " I dont see that ok" I was using diffingo and incendio on Mooncalves while doing quests for Poppy and she didnt mind)
- gamescaling is totally broken because you totally cannot reach lvl 40 to fight the final boss as equal, also, the game is very easy on hard and the only way I get hurt is if the game doesnt do what I was doing (like I press Q for protego but it didnt go off and I get hit by a Troll boulder with the slowest travel time possible) OR when the enemy is rubberbanding hits (I dodge too early, troll smashes nothing but ground BUT I randomly take damage from the troll smashing ground 10 meters next to me or even I dash completely far away and mid dash I get interrupted with damage I would totally avoid that way), random gear is just bs and most of it looks trash anyways (spent my entire time with the student outfit and never switched out of it during first playthrough because everything else seems inferior, want handles are trash because usually they are made from ceramic or metal meanwhile the wand is from wood and those things look terrible together imo, spells arent learned based on what you want and when you want (I wanted to be an icemage like in Dragon age Origins, 2 or Inquisition BUT Glacius is taught so late in the story, I took the fire path instead, Alohomora takes so long to access that you really wanna just rush through the main story until you hit flying lesson and then explore (you still wont be able to capture beasts but you will have most of the functionalities), also 3rd final gear upgrade only available JUST BEFORE FINAL MISSION? What is that?
- too few lessons in a SCHOOL OF MAGIC, let me live the student's life Ive always dreamed of, also, no punishments for being out during the entire night, you can get out of Hogwarts for a month and nobody even sends you an owl like where the hell are you when you fly around doing merlin trials for no reason
- field guide feels like a total stupidity especially with the challenges because how is defeating 100 dark Wizards supposed to help you catch up with your class mates?? (Imagine if I sent you immediately to highschool, for no explained reason I might add, skipping the elementary school and to catch up to your peers I would give you a list of needed tasks, you would look at them and wonder WTF is this when the tasks that will help you catch up are essentially this - destroy 50 T-72 Russian tanks in Donbas region in Ukraine, Destroy 50 T-62 tanks in Donbas, liberate 10 cities held by forces of Russian federation, kill 500 soldiers in Bakhmut, kill 500 soldiers of Russian federation, kill 500 soldiers belonging to the Wagner group, assassinate 10 major figures from Vladimir Putin's inner circle (I mean did the ministry of magic seriousy want a 5th grader who just started schooling system to hunt down 100 dark wizards?)

Storywise, its pretty good BUT there isnt any choice to speak of. I would really wanna bring one comment from the game to criticize it, Niamh Fitzgerald "But there is no light without shadow as there is no shadow without light. Simply because you can eliminate darkness doesnt always mean that you should." Your good deeds seem pointless in absence of evil ones, good decisions your character makes seem pointless without choices that will punish you, a good and kind person will seem blant when there is not a dark and sadistical person to show his goodness. Just because you can get rid of the dark arts, selfish and sadistical choices doesnt not always mean that you should.

However, I LOVED being in the world and its a good base for operations, if they will slowly but surely fill the world with more things to do and make it a massive long term project, I would even pay yearly like WoW to brush the game to be a masterpiece. The worldbuilding and actual accuracy is astonishing, I love playing it. Its the game where I say the choices are trash, the gameplay is bad and my overall character seems limited BUT I cant stop playing it, it feels like home.

[MeepsGO]

The impression I got after my play through is that they likely had clever ideas and more stuff they wanted to pull off but they decided to play it 100% safe.

Its a neat little game though, but really has no replay value since every character will end up the same more or less. The gameplay is fun but going through it on Hard already its hard to find a reason to really play other characters past the unique house mission.

[andrews.]

TBH nowaday every game with ANY leveling systems is considered "RPG"..
That's why i don't take the "RPG" label too seriously these days..
which is bad in and of itself because when i want a PROPER RPG or CHOICE BASED game.. things get messy

But doing voice acted, high production, franchise spanning RPG with branching narratives is really, REALLY difficult and expensive.
Bioware is one of the few that does it and has been a while since they actually did the genre justice..

Frankly i was not expecting an RPG. Therefore i was not even bothered by the lack of choice.
When i game sells itself as "choice matters" and than the choices are meaningless.. that's a problem.

[jdl]

They missed a lot on wand properties as the lore itself opens a tremendous amount of build and playstyle variety.

[neilprice]

Technically Hogwarts Legacy isn't an RPG.
It's a linear story driven Adventure game with some minor RPG elements.
Which I'm perfectly fine with. You are right about the potion crafting system, it's complete dogsh!t

[ukmaxi]

Considering this is Avalanche's first game in this genre, it is impressive they managed to make it at least fun. Hopefully they can build from here and bring in proper RPG systems and narrative experience similar to DA or ME.

[Jvargier]

They probably spent most of their time in development making that shop in hogsmeade that has three entrances with different interiors

[caftdynner]

I feel like they're playing it safe because they'll probably have two more games after this. Hogwarts has Seven Grades, you just completed Grade 5

[sorban]

They have a incredible map but there is some flaws :
-Limited interaction of the world, (I can play with atlas and foods but I can't sit or interact with people/friends)
-Commun House useless (It only serve for one quest and it's for a badass robe and nothing)
-Single use minigame (I can duel and play with classmate but except the broom race, I can't replay until I wait for the next quest, I would like to befriends with some with games, and the broom race could be a Mario carts, with spells who can slow the "visibles" opponents and only tree of them)
-No foods (Expect for interactive immersions, food are useless, I would like food to be cheap heal or buff and potions to be the more expensive "hard to make premium" solution to heal/buff)
-Caves (90% of quest are in all look alike caves, witches are not Neanderthals come one !)
-No compagnons (I would like some friends who aid me in personal quest, to have some company, just like what FRIENDS do)
-Goblins good or bad (I know goblins are the ennemie but in the story it tell goblins are mistreated by wizards and still make them the evil enemies without clearing and explore the gray area of the situations must I feel good or bad for killing a goblin ?)
-2min Teaching Class (I would like a real 1h quest class to teach my spells and wizard history like a real school class.
-No curfew (I would like some chanledge that the only way to go outside it's by sneaking znd use hogwarts famous secreat passenger for night time quest/aventure)
No House point (do I really need why ? Make some mini quest in class room to make compete with other houses it's really really shame)
-No Quidditch (I do understand the director is a jeark and the histoic reason is a smart one but they mist the oportunity for a clandestine quidditch match it would be cool)

SPOILER :

-Teacher dead ? So what ? (The teacher is representing like a father for us player but we have so little personal interaction for appreciate him, it would be good some social quest to know more about the people of this word companoins/teachers/NPC)

[johnwick]

I'm not disappointed mainly because the amount of money and time it took to make this game is insane. Now that they have the main world built any games or DLC going forward I hope to see a lot of things added. But for a first outing for this game I like it a lot.

[ianp]

Couldn’t agree more. My first playthrough, I was a “good guy” and I’m just about to finish my second playthrough as an arsehole. While it’s fun to keep people’s pets after you rescue them and stuff like that, there’s very little difference. I’m dressed as a Death Eater, complete with mask, murdering countless people and nobody bats an eye. Even as a good guy, your character is a huge sociopath!

[CxerRy]

In Sebastians questline, the game creators simply didn't have the balls to do the obvious thing...there should have been multiple areas where the questline was interrupted and you lost the ability to learn the curses or got into serious trouble...here's a simple example

1) Ominis should have been super mad that you and Sebastian meddled with Imperio and then you would be forced to Curse him with it or he reports you to the school board, in which case Sebastian gets expelled and "sides" with the Dark Wizards in some way to continue his journey, and you eventually meet him again or even fight him...and the questline breaks here for you so no Avada Kedavra, and maybe even the game punishes you by restrcting which enemies you can use curses on

2) If you cursed Ominis in the previous decision choice, in the final quest where you go to find Sebastian raising the dead, there should have been a branching choice between which of the two you want to side with - Ominis or Sebastian...if you side with Sebastian then Ominis becomes a boss fight as he simply can not get over what Sebastian is doing, and Sebastian has to use Avada Kedavra (like he did to his uncle), ultimately killing a good friend...at this point you should have the choice to either turn him in or lie about what happened, with either choice leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth

Alternatively, if you sided with Ominis, Sebastian becomes the boss fight and when you defeat him, you either get to kill him yourself or break his wand and turn him in...

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is, if you want to learn "unforgivable curses", then there should be no way in hell the questline has a net-positive outcome for all or most characters...it should be "you meddled with the dark arts and you paid the price, you will be reminded of your choices every time you cast the spell"

See, I wrote this in like 5 minutes, it's really not that complicated and consider how much of a narrative impact these characters had outside of their questline, it wouldn't break the game at all

Ultimately, the developers ended up playing it way too safe

[Riddlerint]

I felt they had a huge missed opportunity with your characters friends just the fact that natty is hunting dark wizards and sebastian is practicing dark magic this could turn into interesting conflict and with all the friends being in different houses the room of requirement could have been a great friend meeting place like I find it crazy that poppy loves animals and is trying to fight poachers and the aim character has a place where he has put animals he has rescued from poachers and at no point is that brought up or is she taken their. The room of requirement could have been similar to the ship in mass effect each friend could have their own area that you can regular find them in and you can check up on them from time to time and maybe some extra character events occurs like poppy hanging out with natty or a fight breaking out

[McNstyFilth]

I don't see how HL is an RPG at all.

[KANDEN]

I got the feeling they will get it right on the sequel. Gameplay wise they nailed it just the RPG elements, character development and story choices need A LOT of work. Too much potential

[lupercal]

Played Baldurs Gate 3 and then bought Hogwarts Legacy when it was on sale on Steam. Would not recommend playing HL after BG3, it definitely ruined the HL experience for me. The story, build variety, companion system, the impact you have on the world, and the variety of results of your choices in BG3 makes the "story" and "RPG" elements of HL seem laughable