Hogwarts Legacy was published on PC on 10 February 2023. And despite my skepticism towards preorders, which usually end in buggy releases I did purchase it. But were there bugs? Did the game lived up to the hype? Did it brought back happy memories from childhood? Is it even good? In this short review I will try to answer those questions by breaking the game into pieces and rating each one in scale 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest score) with short commentary.

Now surprisingly I experienced no bugs. But the weirdest thing about Hogwarts Legacy were my mood swings in regards to gaming experiences. At first I was enchanted for about a week or two, than unfortunately I got bored. So bored in fact that I completely forgot that I was mid playthrough. I came back to Hogwarts Legacy last month after finishing BG3. I craved an effortless entertainment. And Hogwarts Legacy made me content and happy.

Before I started the game, the graphics was one of my biggest worries. When viewing promotion materials it seemed bland. The colors never had any saturation, level of details seemed insufficient. And there was no fidelity. Or at least that how I thought. However when diving into the game I changed my opinion. The graphics are beautifully detailed when it comes to environments, especially the landscapes. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are perfect in terms of design.

Everything is faithful to the books, to the movies and to readers imagination. The saturation of colors is not “flashy” but it really works well in the game as it creates a specific ambience. The only thing that I felt they could do better is character animations. Face, and hand movements are not perfect and the creators could learn something from games like Horizon.

To my surprise the wand fight mechanics felt great. It was flashy and dynamic and felt exactly like wand fight, “Harry Potter” style should be like. All the spells and combination variety made it super interesting every time I kicked poachers arses. Crafting new gear, expanding on Room of Requirements and catching magical creatures felt great too. But the BEST thing in the game was flying. The broom mechanics was spot on. And gods it felt so relaxing. I do not even know why. But there were times when I was exploring the map for hours just to have fun flaying over forests and rivers.

Now the weakest part of the game was unfortunately the story. Not only it felt almost like designed for children (which maybe it was?), but it felt boring and bland at times. The main quest was very linear, the NPC’s were bland. With exception of Sebastian storyline I was mostly bored throughout the game. And since the story is, for me, the most important part of the game I cannot give Hogwarts a great note. Even though flying was awesome… Therefore final score from HOW is 7/10. Its definitely worth to play Hogwarts Legacy, but given than chance now I would probably not pay the full price for it. I’d wait for Steam sale.