Exploration of the Wizarding World

Ah… Hogwarts Legacy… the first game I’ve ever platinumed.

Sounds a little crazy just because one of the requirements of getting a platinum trophy for Hogwarts Legacy is for players to reach a certain part of the game, perhaps 25% into the main story, as a student of every Hogwarts house, with a lot more other stuff to do and explore. This was slightly extensive, especially considering this was the first open-world RPG I’ve ever finished. With over 333 hours of play time, I have managed to play all the houses, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw to completion, and the other two just enough not to burn myself out at the risk of getting bored with the game.

Suffice it to say that I enjoyed playing Hogwarts Legacy that much. Even though playing the game multiple times has made me notice some of the game’s flaws, I suspect I got addicted because 1. as I’ve said, I am the newbie who has not played many open-world RPGs, this being the only one I’ve completed, and 2. I’ve loved the wizarding world since my family introduced Harry Potter to me when I was maybe 3.

My older sister is the original Harry Potter lover in the family, owning all the books as a teen and buying all the magazines she could find that had photos and articles of the cast, cutting them out and sticking them in her designated Harry Potter scrapbook.

So, the idea of being able to “feel” what it’s like to be a Hogwarts student was exciting, this time not just through watching in the theatre and on TV screens, but by actively participating in the process of being a student of a Hogwarts house (Hufflepuff Pride!!).

I can definitely say Hogwarts Legacy is among my top five most-played games (falling under The Sims 4, Destiny 2, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons). Despite enjoying all those long hours of casting “Confringo” and the “Ancient Magic Throw” on trolls and evil wizards, I can also say that the game is far from perfect.

Let’s start with what I absolutely love about the game.

The castle was built soooooooo well!! I love all the incredible details from the great hall and the classrooms (I especially love the herbology and magical beasts areas) to the small boathouse by the black lake. Most places in the castle feel immersive, some interactive, with many portraits speaking to us when we walk by, and secret passages full of hidden chests that we can access by getting swallowed by frog statues. The different music, ambient noises throughout the castle, and the often silly dialogues you hear from fellow students and sometimes Peeves make me feel like a Hogwarts student. Quests in the castle or on castle grounds are among my favourites for the same reason.

The build of areas outside the castle, like the Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade, and the coastal areas like the Poidsear coast, are also mesmerising. Getting a platinum for the game entails finishing the main story, completing side quests and activities, unlocking all spells, and getting 100% progress in defeating all types of enemies, completing Merlin trials, and finding collectibles such as the field guide pages. Since these collectibles are spread throughout the entire Hogwarts castle and the outdoor areas, I’ve basically explored the entireeeee map.

I really got to see all the beautiful abandoned buildings, fields, beaches, and much more. I spent most of my Hogwarts Legacy hours before the Photo Mode update, and I had hundreds of screenshots already. Photo mode really hates to see me coming.

One other thing I also absolutelyyyy love is the fact that we get to interact with so many beasts!!!! If I could be a character from the Wizarding World franchise I would probably be Newt Scamander, and Hogwarts Legacy reallyyyy made me feel close to being him with access to the beast vivariums.

The non-magical beasts we randomly encounter as we traverse outside of Hogwarts are super cute, too!! I will always stop to pet cats I encounter, and stop to “talk” to cute animals like the Scottish Highland cows. Did you know you can use “levioso” on random goats and sheep? (I accidentally did this and felt sooo bad).

The feeling of being able to rescue beasts from poachers and take good care of them by feeding them, grooming them, and playing with them using toy boxes is heartwarming. It also gets exhilarating when, in the process of rescuing these beasts, you actually get to fight the poachers first. Incredibly satisfying.

OH and did you know that each of the beasts that can be placed in the vivarium actually has a vivarium/habitat that best fits them? And, some beasts dislike other beasts, so putting them together in one vivarium is a no-no. There isn’t that big of an impact if you do accidentally do this, but there are some little effects if you pay close attention to the beasts. Before doing some digging, I accidentally placed rival pairs like the unicorn with the thestral and the fwooper with the phoenix together. Apparently, the fwooper drives the phoenix crazy? I find the easiest way to know if a beast likes the vivarium they’re placed in is that they would often be seen getting restful sleep, like these precious unicorns in my forest vivarium!!

The fact that we can mount a graphorn and fly around on a hippogriff AND a thestral is crazy to think about too!! What we watched Harry do in the Prizoner of Azkaban we can do in Hogwarts Legacy, and I really appreciate that.

The storylines in Hogwarts Legacy are also not so bad, especially the ones involving our companions Slytherin’s Sebastian Sallow, Gryffindor’s Natsai Onai (Natty!!), and Hufflepuff’s Poppy Sweeting. They’re all quite interesting, and I appreciate how they all have different main themes in their story that actually fit each character’s traits, all much aligned to their designated houses. I would say character-wise, I find myself most aligned with Poppy as we both have such great love for beasts, but I have also become quite attached to Natty as a companion. The BEST STORYLINE, however, goes to Sebastian! There is so much intensity in his story, and the complicated involvement with the dark arts felt original, emotionally raw, and I really couldn’t help but feel invested. It is a little unfortunate that I find Sebastian’s storyline to be more intriguing compared to our character’s main storyline, but I’m definitely not complaining!

When playing as a Hufflepuff, I tried to keep myself as moral as I thought I could be by not learning any of the Unforgivable Curses, but went the other route as a Ravenclaw because I figured, being a student who values knowledge, I would want to learn EVERYTHING I possibly can. Playing through Sebastian’s storyline with extreme curiosity, no matter the cost, was insaneeeee.

SPOILERS (SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN’T REACHED THE QUEST CALLED IN THE SHADOW OF TIME).

When I reached the point where I had to convince Ominis to let Sebastian get out of the catacomb with dangerous knowledge in his hands, I sided with Sebastian and chose to learn “imperio” WITHOUT knowing this meant I would be casting “imperio” ON OMINIS right there and then! This was honestly one of the most shocking and memorable moments in the game for me, and I had to pause as soon as the cutscene ended. The story felt immersive to the point where making those choices made me feel like I was in that position, and I didn’t know what to do with myself after that. I felt like I, as a person and not as the character, was the one who felt the hurt and the consequence of what this might do to my and Sebastian’s relationship with Ominis, which, at the time I played Hogwarts Legacy, I had not felt with any game ever.

So, those are some of the things I love about the game. Here are things that I don’t!

I imagine that being a Hogwarts student entails crazy adventures outside of the castle, just like how it was with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. The franchise’s biggest theme has always been fighting the dark arts and entities that either have a personal vendetta with the main character or, at the very least, the main character’s ideals and morals. Hence, it’s unsurprising that he would have to work on many quests outside the Hogwarts castle.

Getting into Hogwarts Legacy, I expected all that, but I also expected a Bully-esque aspect to how the game would let us play as students. The first half of my playtime for every house I enjoyed the most because that’s where I got to go to class and feel like a Hogwarts student. Maybe I couldn’t help but compare it to Bully due to the school setting and perhaps the fact that it was one of the first games I have ever finished. However, if the lack of school activities were to be justified by the game’s wish to reflect Harry’s adventures in the movies, he still went to many classes and studied in the first few years of his school life. So, I wondered why Hogwarts Legacy couldn’t be a little bit of both?

I imagine it would be much more fun to go on with the main/side quests while, from time to time, stopping to go to more classes, with schedules that we can similarly find in Bully instead of making the classes simply be one of the quests we have to do and then never go through again. Aside from going to classes, I wish there were more acts or at least cutscenes that involve our characters hanging out in the Great Hall. They managed to make such a beautiful Great Hall, but underutilised it, only having us go there at the beginning and end of the game.

Another issue I find quite significant is that the choices we make, unlike in many other RPGs out there, don’t really matter, making the game, in my opinion, slightly lacking in depth. Dialogue options and making the “right” choices according to how we want to play the game seem to be a big part of the game, and so I made all those choices with much thought, thinking that they would impact the end of the game. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. No matter how good or bad you’ve been throughout the entirety of the game, you still get to choose near the end of the game, in the middle of the final boss fight, whether you want to be good or bad in making a “final” decision that would probably affect the entire wizarding world.

No matter how many times you’ve used “Avada Kedavra” or made decisions that disregard others’ lives, you get to be “good” in the end, and that doesn’t make much sense to me. There isn’t a morality system, and because we can essentially do whatever we want, and at the end still choose to do the exact opposite of what our actions and decisions reflect, the decisions we make are severely insignificant, so does anything matter? During my second playthrough, knowing my decisions didn’t matter made me question what I was even doing and why I was doing it. It felt slightly like the developers might have made a cowardly move by letting players chicken out. I find that this lack of depth might be a huge problem for veteran players who are used to playing RPGs with ending-altering choices, and that maybe Hogwarts Legacy would be a good RPG for beginners who are not “ready” to play RPGs that way. This isn’t a game-breaking factor, but it affected how I felt playing the game after my first playthrough.

Ultimately, I can’t deny that Hogwarts Legacy is an important part of my gaming journey. This was probably the very first RPG and game with an ending to which I have dedicated an immense number of hours. This was the very first game for which I felt significant emotions. I had difficulty parting ways with the companions I had grown attached to, and I went through significant waves of emotion dealing with a certain character’s death. It affected me for weeks, and not long after my first playthrough, I started a new save, longing for something more, but because there weren’t any new interactions, the “relationships” didn’t feel as fulfilling anymore. This was the first time I (embarrassingly) went through a parasocial relationship.

I had no idea if it was common for people to have parasocial relationships with game characters. I really thought I was overreacting, and I just didn’t know what to do with my feelings or how to handle them. I found out that it is pretty common, apparently, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. I also thought that maybe all these feelings came from the fact that the overly attached gamer that I am was just adjusting to a different type of game with a set of characters that I’ve never experienced before.

I told my boyfriend everything I felt, and he thought the same. He said it’s okay to initially feel this way after ending a game, and that it’s not unusual to be attached to a game character just as it is common to feel attached to a movie character. Still, it is also important not to let the feelings linger too long. That was difficult for me, and I tried moving on by playing other games. It eventually worked, but it’s funny to think about how my exploration of the wizarding world made me realise that I am still the same over-attached gamer, just in a different font. I’m looking forward to seeing how I’ll deal with other games. There are so many games out there that I want to try out, and so little time.

XO Reiko