Play Your Heart Out: “Hogwarts Legacy”

“Hogwarts Legacy” is an action role-playing game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games under its Portkey Games label. It was released on Feb. 10, 2023, and is currently available to play on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, but will also be available to play on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in the near future.

“Hogwarts Legacy” is a game set in the Wizarding World universe, taking place in the late 1800s, a century before the events of the Harry Potter novels. You play as a new student to Hogwarts who is entering as a fifth-year, and discovers an ancient secret that has long been sought out. Added on top of that, a group of evil, rogue goblins, witches, and wizards have started a rebellion, which is threatening the stability of the muggle (wizard term for humans) and wizard worlds.

In the game, you learn multiple different spells, which you can use in a wide variety of ways from attacking to customizing furniture. Your main weapon is your wand, but you can also obtain potions and other sorts of items to use against your opponents. The game teaches you spell combos that you can use in your duels, but any spell is at your disposal to use however you want once you learn it.

The combat is actually very fun as I would actively seek out enemies to fight rather than avoiding danger entirely. I play the game on the easiest difficulty since I want to enjoy the story without much interference, but the enemies can still be problematic if you don’t know what you’re doing. My personal favorite combo to use on an enemy is to simply use Accio to pull your opponent toward you and Incendio to light them on fire – there are many more spells I would use in the average duel, but I usually forget to use them when the time comes.

The gameplay is very fun as I easily lost track of time playing this game for several hours a day in order to get the 10 hours of playtime I wanted to write this review. There are a lot of cutscenes throughout, but they’re worth it to get to see your character interact casually with everyone else, whilst dressed in whatever possibly humorous ensemble you’ve concocted this time. The game has story quests for you to go on that are required, but also allows you to partake in activities and side quests at your leisure, which I enjoy doing first as they make you more powerful when you finally get back to the main story.

Attending the Hogwarts classes in the game was much like attending real classes on campus…if college classes were actually fun, enjoyable, and relaxing. This game is great and I was very excited to get to write this article, because it gave me an excuse to finally play this game with the lack of time I usually have due to classes, homework, and e-sports playtime commitments. According to what I have read online, this game takes about 26 hours to beat the main story and 64 hours to obtain 100% completion, but I am looking forward to putting that time in and as a Harry Potter lover, enjoy living out my dreams in the game that I cannot do in real life.

I give the game a rating of 9.3/10.