3.5/5 ★ – likevin96's review of Hogwarts Legacy.

I wanted this game to be more Bully than Assassin's Creed, but it unfortunately doesn't deliver on this front. Hogwarts Legacy offers a lovingly recreated glimpse into the Wizarding World, with an explorable Hogwarts and Hogsmeade that most fans could only dream of. However, ultimately the level of interaction with this world is simply not where you want it to be. This game has the Open World DNA running through it - it's far too vast for the amount of content it offers. There's no sense of exploration, you simply follow the icons around and complete the next inane task. The combat also gets old quick, there's very few enemy types and you end up treating the vast majority of them the same way. There's way too much loot bloat, with none of it really making any noticeable difference from a gameplay perspective. In short - a typical open world game with all the typical downsides. The real standout issue is the story. The game does an awful job of making you care about anything that's happening or anyone that's involved and the plot is mind-numbingly boring, with a generic villain and moments that border (and probably cross) on being offensive. There's a single side-quest chain worth doing (shoutout to my boy Sebastian) and there are so, so many side-quests. This is definitely the type of situation where they made a game first and then had to figure out how to cram a narrative into it. With all this being said, Hogwarts Legacy is fairly competent. In runs (mostly) well, looks good, has interesting combat (that way, way, way overstays its welcome), and offers something unique for the millions of Harry Potter lovers. If this game took out 30% of its overworld (the extremely samey non-Hogwarts and Hogsmeade areas) and cut down the runtime by 5-10 hours, we'd have something pretty solid. There is fun to be had in this game, especially for fans of the IP, and I'm definitely interested in what Avalanche might be able to bring to the table in the inevitable follow-up - they just need to tighten things up here.