Same here. I have no issue being in Slytherin as it’s the house of the greatest wizard in English history. Merlin!
The wait-and-see on this is probably going to be a longer wait-and-see than you’d normally wade through, because this game is the Implicit Bias Game of the Decade, I’d imagine.
Even without Rowling’s idiot, buffoonish cruelty, you’d have Potter superfans over-scoring the game, while non-fan reviewers too eager to be “objective” (god I hate that word in reviews) might be dialing it down.
But then add in the IP creator, and you’ve got a whole bunch of new ingredients to stir into the mix. I mean, imagine the task for reviewers on this game – give it a good review and you’re going to get attacked from one group. Give it a bad review, and here comes a different outraged faction. I can imagine a reviewer bias to giving the game a 6.7 rating just to try to plant a score in the low-middle zone and then hoping to deflect any uproar.
So yeah. I think we’re gonna be waiting on reviews (which, the embargo lifts in the morning), and then reviews of the reviews, and then backlash against that, and then counter backlash from that.
It just drives home what any reviewer or critic worth their salt has always said: don’t read the score, read the review. The arguments for why the game is good or bad are more significant than any rating per se. I do agree though that there will be some tea-leaf reading to be endured.
There are some leaked videos floating around from people who got early physical copies. Looks pretty darn good at first glance.
It looks good as long as you don’t expect a roleplaying game in the strong sense. Not a BioWare or Obsidian style RPG. And not a life sim game about a school and a schedule, like Bully or Persona. The game looks like Bully which is why I was let down watching the gameplay.
It’s an action-RPG in the sense you upgrade a lot of combat skills and craft better stuff for combat. It looks like you can spec more into stealth but I think you still end up fighting the enemies.
I’m going wait for the inevitable VR mod so I can just wander around the beautiful locations and explore.
Why would you make a Hogwarts game and not make it a life sim? I can see needing to play with the format a bit to make it more engaging but it should be doable…
Oh wait, action RPGs have more appeal and make more money, and setting in in Hogwarts (rather than the action RPG being “Order of the Phoenix : Resistance”) again boosts the appeal.
I don’t blame Avalanche, anything more RPG like would be outside their dev experience. Legacy looks good, I just wish they ALSO gave the rights to other types of studios.
It seems it is well liked.
Nice - I’ve bought the full edition - I am a sucker for what this seems to be, and am really looking forward to it releasing. Unfortunately I am not home tomorrow night when it releases though!
Ya I’m in. Going to grab the deluxe edition if I still can. I want to play tomorrow darn it. Collecting crap is what I wanted the most and their background in Infinity games makes it a perfect fit.
Seems the PS5 has some performance issues, but eh they can patch it. I can’t wait until the end of the week let alone a patch. And I’m not even a huge Potter fan.
Regarding the PC port…
By far the biggest issue in Hogwarts Legacy at the time of this review is performance on the PC build. We’ve seen several games recently with deeply flawed PC builds, and it appears, sadly, that Hogwarts Legacy is one of them. Walking into certain areas will see trees violently shaking themselves like a malfunctioning Whomping Willow, obscuring vision as the framerate drops into the single digits. Walking into Hogsmeade’s town square early in the game every NPC in the square started to shimmer in and out of existence, flickering wildly as the trees slowly grew and shook until basically nothing could be seen. This was one of the worst moments that we saw in terms of performance, but bugs of that calibre were common during the 20 hours we spent with the game. Many sections had poor framerates, making tough jumping puzzles and combat difficult with unpredictable stuttering.
I was going to ask about the PC port, so thanks for providing that snippet. Seems like I should wait until they do a couple of patches on the PC.
I was concerned about that. Thanks for sharing the news although I had hoped it would be better.
Firing this up on stream in a couple minutes, fingers crossed it’s decent.
Already?? I thought it wasnt out until tomorrow? Or is the console release a day early? Or… ARE YOU SPECIAL, HARK???
On consoles, I think it releases to play at midnight on the 7th. And it is already past midnight on the 7th in some parts of the world. So if you’ve got a VPN…
ah - of course :-)
no VPN needed, just change xbox to think you are in New Zealand.
Even easier!
PCGamer reviewer really likes it despite personal hangups with JK Rowling and with the various PC version issues: Hogwarts Legacy review-in-progress | PC Gamer