Hogwarts Legacy Review — A Powerful Wizard, Not Much of a Student

Hogwarts Legacy is very good at making me feel like a powerful wizard. It is less good at making me feel like a Hogwarts student, which is a little awkward given the name on the box.

I played it on PC, on and off for about a month. I finished the main quest, but I did not complete the side content. I was sorted into Ravenclaw and, by the end, I had learned Avada Kedavra, which probably says something about the kind of student I turned out to be.

I am a Harry Potter fan, but not a die-hard one. Going in, I expected to live the life of a Hogwarts student. What I got was mostly an action RPG where I travel a lot, fight a lot, and occasionally walk through a beautiful castle on the way to the next fight. I enjoyed a good chunk of it, which is why this lands at 6/10, but repetition held it back.

What kind of game is it?

Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world action RPG developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games. It came out on PC on 10 February 2023 and is set in the 1890s, roughly a century before the Harry Potter books. You play a new fifth-year student who can see and use a forgotten form of ancient magic.

The structure is a familiar open-world loop. Classes and story quests unlock new spells and features such as broom flight. A talent tree upgrades your spells and abilities. Around that sit Hogsmeade, the Forbidden Forest, the Scottish Highlands, gear chests, puzzles, companion quests, beasts to rescue, and the Room of Requirement, which you can furnish and use for potions, plants and creatures.

Since the game has been out for a while now, I will be discussing the story with spoilers further down.

Combat is the best part

The combat is where Hogwarts Legacy won me over. Chaining spells together is genuinely fun: lift an enemy, pull them in, blast them away, and swap to another set when the first one is on cooldown. Once I had enough spells unlocked, fights stopped feeling like a wand duel and started feeling like a combo system.

Trolls are some of the best fights in the game. I just wish I met more of them.

Parrying is the other half of it, and it is what I would point to if someone asked why the combat works. Blocking at the right moment and turning it straight into a counter is satisfying every time. If you like games where reading an attack and parrying it is the core skill, this is the part of Hogwarts Legacy that will hook you.

It also leans hard into the power fantasy. Most fights are you against a whole group, and you come out on top by juggling everyone with spells. It is not subtle, but it makes the main character look like a very powerful wizard. Picking up the Unforgivable Curses only pushes that further.

Same enemies, big world

The problem is what you spend all that combat on. Almost every fight is against goblins, human dark wizards and poachers, or spiders. Trolls show up rarely, and they are some of the most fun fights in the game, which makes it more noticeable that the roster is otherwise so narrow.

That repetition is amplified by the size of the world. There is a lot of travelling in Hogwarts Legacy, by broom, by mount, and through Floo fast travel, and a lot of what you find at the end of that travel is another camp of the same enemies. Combat is enjoyable, but it is the same kind of enjoyable for a very long time.

The Highlands look lovely. There is just a lot of ground between the interesting parts.

The amount of content also surprised me. I did not expect the game to last as long as it did, and that cuts both ways. There is plenty to do if you like the loop, but I can see a lot of players drifting away before the credits, the way I drifted away from the side content after the main quest.

Gear, outfits and never quite looking like a student

Gear was another source of friction. Your inventory has a limited number of gear slots, so I spent a lot of time managing what I picked up instead of just enjoying the loot.

Customisation bothered me more. The clothes you find do not make your character look like a Hogwarts student. There is an appearance option that lets you change how gear looks, but I could not lock in the kind of student look I wanted, and from what I found, that takes a mod. In a game that is supposed to be about life at Hogwarts, I would have liked to look the part without one.

The grind behind the Room of Requirement

The Room of Requirement is a great idea, a personal space to decorate, brew potions, grow plants and keep beasts. In practice, getting the most out of it means a lot of gathering and upkeep. If you do not enjoy grinding for materials, this is the part of the game that will feel like a chore, and it is the main reason I would warn some people off.

A bug in Poppy's quest

I did not run into any performance problems on PC. What I did hit was what I believe was a bug in one of Poppy's side quests: I could not cast Glacius to trigger a puzzle, which left me stuck at that point. It was only one quest, but it was frustrating, especially in a part of the game that is supposed to build up a companion.

Story, atmosphere, and presentation

Spoilers for the main story and Sebastian's questline follow.

The castle is beautiful. I just did not spend much time there as a student.

The character I found most interesting in the main story was Isidora, the former Hogwarts professor you learn about through the Keepers' memories. Her story, using ancient magic to draw pain out of others, starting with her own suffering father, has more weight than anything Ranrok or Rookwood do. They are the actual villains, but they barely feel present in the plot. By the time I fought them, I cared more about a woman who was already dead than about either of them.

Professor Fig is the anchor through all of it, and the main quest does give him a real ending. Even so, the story feels like it belongs to the past more than to the present.

Of the companions, only Sebastian's story really held my attention. His questline is basically Isidora's story playing out in the present. He is trying to save his cursed sister Anne and keeps reaching for darker magic to do it. It is the one part of the game where the theme of the main story, how far you go with dangerous magic to help someone you love, actually happens in front of you instead of in a memory. It is also where I learned Avada Kedavra, and it is the strongest writing I saw.

The other companions did not leave much of an impression on me, and Poppy's quest is remembered more for the Glacius bug than for the story.

My most memorable moment, though, was not part of the main story at all. It was the fight with a clown haunting my shop in Hogsmeade. It was strange, a little creepy, and different from the usual camp of goblins or dark wizards, which is exactly why it stuck with me.

Final thoughts

Hogwarts Legacy is a good combat game wearing a Hogwarts uniform that does not quite fit. Spell combos and parrying are fun, and being one wizard against everyone made me feel powerful. That is what carried me through a month of on-and-off play to the end of the main quest.

What holds it back is everything around that combat. The same goblins, humans and spiders cover a huge world with a lot of travelling. Gear limits and outfits work against looking like a student. The Room of Requirement asks for a lot of grinding. Ranrok and Rookwood are overshadowed by Isidora, a character from the past, and only Sebastian's story really matches her.

I would recommend it to Harry Potter fans first, and to anyone who likes parry-focused combat. If you do not like grinding, especially the kind the Room of Requirement asks for, or if you were hoping to actually feel like a Hogwarts student, I would be more careful.

For me, 6/10 fits a game where I enjoyed almost every fight but kept wishing those fights were against something new.