Topic: Hogwarts Legacy

@Engineblow I did play Okami, and it was a really great game, especially the art design and painted aesthetic, so I can see what you mean there with the section feeling reminiscent of Okami

Regarding Hogwarts, I do agree that the game excels with side content and collectibles. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose a few hours flying around and messing around with extraneous activities. The story is pretty decent. Not the highest tier, but it’s good enough to feel satisfying in the end.

I may be wrong, but to me this feels like a potential franchise where they put in tons of work getting the graphics, mechanics, characters and ip just right in the first game and then create something really mind blowing story wise in the sequel. Rowling gave them this incredibly fleshed out world to work with and they did more than give it justice bringing that world to life. Even if they can’t come up with a great story for the sequel, I’d still be happy to spend another 80 hours exploring the parts of this world that weren’t featured in this first game.

@Engineblow I won’t spoil anything specific for you, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy the ending if you’ve liked the storyline up to this point. You’re absolutely right about the developers nailing Rowling’s vision of this world and setting and the absolutely stellar attention to detail and consist call-backs to the HP Universe and it’s lore. Interestingly, outside of the inclusion of several prominent wizarding family characters like Black, Weasley, Gaut, etc. there is no specific tether to the storyline of the Harry Potter books, per se. I’m sure I missed some of the Easter Eggs, but many of the most important parts of the Harry Potter story are left alone and they use the extra parts of the Rowling universe to create a story which stands independently. They took liberties as well with adding pieces of lore like the “ancient magic” which is the central crux of the whole narrative. The end result is an absolute joy to play, and gives fans of the franchise such a rush to see in action. But the story itself if taken on its own merits is pretty typical video game stuff and if it existed on its own it would probably be an average story imho. Not bad, but not The Last of Us or BioShock. Which is slightly disappointing since each of the Rowling book weaves a very deft tale that I still consider to be excellent storytelling. The game doesn’t achieve her level of dropping so many perfect “Aha!” moments into her stories with twists and reveals that you’d never see coming. But in defense of Avalanche studios, I don’t know that even the best video game stories quite reach that level of storytelling.

That’s probably an over-analysis, but it’s just such a great game and I kind of miss it now that I’ve moved on. Let me know how you like the ending when you get there!

Well, I finally beat Hogwarts Legacy today. I liked the way the story ended (I got the “good”ending) but I did feel like the final mission was a little short and too straightforward. I mean, you just fight a few group of goblins, watch a few cutscenes and then you’re on to the final boss. I’m colorblind so I hate anything in a game that requires you to match colors. So obviously the final boss fight was a little bit challenging for me because you had to match the colors of the magical bubbles to the spell that would destroy them. However, playing on the normal difficulty level, I never felt like the combat was overly challenging. So my difficulty with the final boss fight was welcomed. Even though I found most the fights to be easy that doesn’t mean I didn’t love the fighting mechanics. The dodge/block/counterattack reminded me a lot of the Batman Arkham games and all the different spells and the way you sort of make different combos with them were excellent! Overall the game is a triumph in my opinion, especially considering it the first one in what I’m certain will be a long running series. A few things I’d like to see in the sequel. Hogwarts Legacy gave you a lot of world to explore but any sequel would need to be even bigger. I’d like see more companion storylines and have those relationships affect the main struggle of the game. And my one complaint with the game that will hopefully be addressed in the sequel was the lack of enemy variety. There was really only six types of enemies in the game. Each enemy type had subsets to try and make it feel like they were different but at the end of the day you were fighting humans, goblins, spiders, mongrels, dugbogs or trolls. But I’m confident they’ll be more variety in future games!

Oh, I meant to add that I decided not to go for the platinum, mainly because I have so many other games I’ve been waiting to play. Next up is Gotham Knights. I know people have been disappointed in it but I’m not missing anything that has to do with Batman!

I have to say, overall, this game for me didn't live up to the hype and buying the delux version at around £70+ was a bit of a waster of money. Once the story line is done, that's really it and the side missions didn't really interest me that much.

In terms of it being 'open world' - I was expecting it to be like RDR2 - something it clearly isn't. There is an element of open world, no denying that, but not to the same level or detail.

As for the game itself, once you've finished the story line, that's pretty much it isn't it? Is there plans to shift it to an online format? updates? I've not really been following it and switched back to playing other games.

@KillNotConfirmed It’s unfortunate the game didn’t quite live up to expectations for you. I think if taken on it’s own accord that the open world set up is fairly standard and akin to what you might see in a Horizon or Assassin’s Creed — in other words, a lot of collectible side activities, small various puzzles, bandit-type encampments with some extra treasures, etc, etc. RDR2 is on another level of anything I’ve seen with it’s open world, as far as it’s interactivity and attention to detail.

I spent a lot of time outside the main story clearing most of the map and it’s quite huge, and there’s some fun to be had. The activities can get a bit ‘samey’ eventually, so it all depends on your specific interest in the setting and the HP lore. Quite a few extra little Easter Eggs exist, especially in the actual Hogwarts map and Hogsmeade.

The side quests are of varying quality, but some are pretty good. I enjoyed the PlayStation exclusive side quest about the Haunted Shop the most. It was quite different from the rest of the game and reminded me a little bit of the Ashtray maze in Control, if you’ve played that. The relationship side quests were good too, like Poppy’s and Sebastian’s (Natsai’s was more ‘meh’) but your mileage may vary.

As much as I enjoyed monkeying around in the open world, I also eventually moved on too, even though I was still incomplete on some of the Merlin Trials, Balloon popping, page collections, etc. But I did over 90% of the collections.

As far as I know there’s no plans for an online component or any updates/ DLC. It would be pretty fun to have some online multiplayer co-op or PvP but that’s probably something for Hogwarts Legacy 2. The developers have their hands full with porting the game to Switch for now.

FPS drops on PS5

I play Hogwarts Legacy in performance mode with the fps locked and I noticed that when I run around, or when I move the camera while running, it gives some small stutters, especially in the Hogwarts castle region and in Hogsmead, sometimes and in some In specific places it seems that the fps drops from 53 to 55 and stays there for about 3 seconds, all of this makes it seem like the game is not fluid. Can anyone tell me if this is normal? What if it could be the performance of my PS5?

Got the platinum on this one. Really really enjoyed it.

Are they done updating the game, or is it one they still go back to add things, anyone know how Avalanche are for postgame support?

The lack of a photomode is making me quite sad 😭😅 even just pushing l3r3 to quickly remove the hud would be okay as a QoL fix.