3/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Hogwarts Legacy.

Hogwarts Legacy is a tiring game to talk about, and that's honestly a shame. I'm sure everyone by now is tired of hearing about the boycott and the many controversies surrounding this game, so I will simply be judging the game on it's own merit. If you want a thought provoking take on the ethics of indirectly supporting a terrible person financially (JK Rowling), this is not the review for that. I am not here to be some sort of moral authority, I'm a secluded nerd with mental health issues and a lot of free time, I am the last person you should listen to when it comes to serious thought provoking discussions. Instead I will be talking about a pretty decent open world fantasy action game I played known as Hogwarts Legacy. I was not prepared with how packed this game is with content. I'm so used to Triple A games launching with false promises and lies that when a studio actually delivers on a game this filled to the brim with things to do it's kind of overwhelming. There's so many little systems in this to mess around with that I ended up sinking a lot more time into than I thought I would. There's a base building system, you can breed animals, there's time trials for your broom, you can attend classes that give you new spells, the attention to detail and the way this game makes you feel like this world is alive is really incredible. On top of that, this game is gorgeous, I don't think there's really been many games you can label as truly "next gen", but my god this definitely fits that criteria. Between the level of detail in the world, the incredible particle system, the way the environment around you changes as the seasons progress, this game is truly gorgeous. I never expected a Harry Potter game to have combat this good. If this game should be noted for anything, it's making a purely ranged based wizard combat system engaging. I've played so many other fantasy games with spells and powers, but outside of a few examples, they never really scratch that nerdy itch for me. Luckily, combat in this game feels really good. it's incredibly fun to lift someone off the ground and toss them across the room as they ragdoll. For the first maybe 30 hours of this game, I was absolutely loving the combat, but unfortunately after a certain point you realize the biggest flaw with it's system, there's hardly any enemy variety. You fight other wizards, goblins, giant spiders and a few other things, but outside of that, there's almost nothing new to encounter for the rest of the game. You'd think during the boss fights they'd want to spice things up, but I kid you not, you fight the same boss three times. Sure, there are a few unique bosses and enemies sprinkled throughout, but those are far and few between. Now I should preface this next part by saying that I'd imagine most of this will be fixed in due time, but throughout the past week and the 74 hours I put into this, I found the game to be terribly optimized for PC. I have a pretty beefy PC all things considered, I'm usually able to play every new game that releases on max settings at 1080p with typically little to no hurdles on my end. Hogwarts Legacy will run fine for a good chunk of time and then randomly turn choppy, to the point where it's unplayable at points for upwards of a minute and then go right back to normal. I've been in combat situations where I've had major stutters and died as a result. So far they've released one major patch that hasn't proven to really have done a whole lot. Even though I'd imagine this will be fixed relatively soon, the poor optimization really hindered my enjoyment a lot of the time. This might sound more like a nitpick, but the sound design in this game is really off. It's not necessarily bad, but something about how the audio was mixed into the game just doesn't work sometimes. Sometimes it'll sound compressed, sometimes it'll sound echo-y and other times it'll be completely fine. At first I thought it was my speakers, but I tried it on my pair of headphones I have that I use for everything and I was still experiencing these problems. It doesn't help that the lead performance for the male voice type gives one of the most monotone deliveries I've heard in a while. Someone could have just died in front of them and they'll give out the most monotone "oh no" I've ever heard and completely ruin the scene because I can't help but laugh. Luckily none of the audio issues were a real game changer for me, it's just something I thought I'd mention. I really enjoyed my time with this game all things considered, While it can get kind of repetitive the more you play it, I still had a lot of fun. I recommend checking this game out if you want, even if you're not a fan of Harry Potter as it's still a great fantasy action game on its own.