175 points

It’s honestly amazing how well this game sold considering how mid the gameplay actually is. Having a popular IP really helped.

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77 points

Eh, people don’t buy for the gameplay mechanics most of the time, they buy for what they see in the trailers and read in the descriptions. Being the only videogame available for this IP, having the WB marketing juggernaut behind it, releasing at a time of the year without much competition, coming out on every single platform - it would have been weird if this game wasn’t the best selling one in 2023.

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10 points

Exactly. You don’t know what the gameplay is until after you buy the game, unless you are savvy and watch reviews or something, which hardly any consumers do.

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5 points

Also, it’s not like the gameplay was mind bogglingly terrible, just some bland questing and a serviceable combat system. The main thing the game had to do to sell well imo was sell the environment and vibe which I think it did decently.

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4 points

Are you saying that marketing works?!

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59 points
*

My wife, whose entire history with video games is Sims 3, Animal Crossing: NH, and Pokémon Go, played through this game start to finish and loved it. It wasn’t really made for “gamers”, it was made for Harry Potter fans that wanted to play a Hogwarts game. It didn’t succeed as a gaming revolution, it succeeded in bringing non-gamers to buy it.

Personally, I love that she got into it whether it’s mid or not, because it introduced her to a lot of the mechanics necessary to play “real” games in the future. And she had a lot of fun.

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20 points

I’m both a gamer and HP fan.

I thought the game was great, and I didn’t really realize the depths of people’s distaste for it, I guess.

Was it crazy revolutionary? No, but it was fun.

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13 points

Fellow HP fan, I was kinda weirded out by the whole “free access to unforgivable curses” and “canonically killing people” and the honestly kinda disheartening stance on goblin personhood but man flying around the grounds is so fun

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2 points

the last video game my mom played before hogwarts legacy was like…pac man in the arcades. it was amazing to share our progress together and bond

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2 points

Haha! That sounds like so much fun!

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3 points

I thought the gameplay was awesome. To me, a really impressive entry to a potential series. What did you feel were the weak points in the gameplay?

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2 points
*

I found the combat to be serviceable, and at some points I had fun with it. But it kind of got repetitive really quick. Like once you learn the core mechanics, they didn’t really introduce a lot after that to keep you on your toes. But the main problem I had with the game came from the quests, they just felt so monotonous. I love exploring the castle, but finding every little collectible just felt tedious and didn’t really seem to have any payoff.

All things I hope can be improved with an eventual sequel, I’m definitely glad I picked up the game. But it’s not something I’ve ever considered revisiting once I beat it.

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2 points

Yeah, agree with these points. It had that first entry vibe to it, similar to the Outer Worlds. Lack of enemy variety was a pretty big one, once you were a few hours in.

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1 point

Just seen they’ve uploaded this pretty funny video 😂: https://youtu.be/gwyHqXMSkAw?si=7REw4Cgj2lEpbAc0

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2 points

The IP was my only interest. Games like this I get bored with so I generally avoid. But the views of the school looked great and I’ve always wanted to walk around it, like the fantasy version of it. I’ve been to the real set and walked around that which is cool. My only complaint is I bought it on PC so I didn’t get to see Azkaban.

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2 points

What do you mean? I played on pc and went to Azkaban, what very little there was to see anyway

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1 point

Azkaban is not based on platform but house, join Hufflepuff to see it.

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1 point
*

I thought that was a PlayStation exclusive

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-5 points

What can you say gamers love anti-Semitism.

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84 points

I’m playing this game right now and it’s honestly a six out of 10. The only reason to launch the game at all is because of the world design which is top notch. So top notch it scores all of those six points, because the plot characters story and gameplay are all a let down otherwise. This is the type of game that will disable the controls for your magical flying broom and then tell you that you need to climb a wall. I wish it wasn’t so successful so they didn’t think this formula was so good, because if they made the game actually good AND a Harry Potter property, that would have really been something special. But as it is now, it’s just an uninspired video game painted in a pretty coat of a popular franchise. I’m sure we’ll get a sequel.

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19 points
*

I would have loved to have this game as a kid. It may be a 6 out of 10 but most of the other harry potter shovelware they shit out when the movies were coming was at best a 0.2 out of 10. The only arguably not that bad one was the prisoner of azkaban movie based game.

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13 points

IDK. Most of the early games were actually pretty entertaining. I fairly recently played sorcerer’s stone on the gbc, and it was still pretty fantastic.

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3 points

I’m curious, what open world games do you rate as a 9 or 10? I’m not saying Hogwarts did anything revolutionary, but it did most things pretty solidly. It’s been a while since Ive played an open world game that does a good job on making the world actually feel alive.

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7 points

Witcher 3 I’d rate 9/10.

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6 points

Subnautica gets a 9/10. Fallout 2 and 3, if we’re specifically going RPGs. NieR: Automata for action RPGs. Look at Persona for school influenced RPGs. I’d have geeked out so hard if we got even Persona-style class experiences in Hogwarts Legacy. Instead, all we get is completely contextless montage cutscenes.

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5 points
*

Yeah I wish Hogwarts Legacy had taken more inspiration from Persona. Having a schedule, working on social links, engaging in fun activities outside of school, it all lends itself incredibly well to a Hogwarts game.

Unfortunately it sounds like the creators haven’t ever even touched a Persona game. I remember before the game launched they were asked if there’d be romance options, and they seemed almost offended by the thought since the characters are kids, despite Persona doing the same for literal decades.

Going to a ball in Hogwarts Legacy, or going on a date in Hogsmeade, would’ve been so much fun too.

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6 points
*

Not the person you asked, but for me personally to rate some open world games:

  • Hogwarts: 4-5/10. It’s pretty damn bad IMO, beyond the fan pandering.
  • Avatar Frontiers of Pandora: 5-7/10, it’s a slightly worse Far Cry (which is already damn tepid) but looks insanely pretty which makes it a good braindead time waster.
  • Cyberpunk 2077: Originally 2/10, laughably underdesigned and so buggy it felt like industry-criticizing sarcasm. Nowadays 7/10 if including the expansion, still quite buggy but not in a bad way, and the redesigned combat and character systems feel artificial but pretty fun. City still too dead and underdesigned, sadly.
  • Skyrim: 6-7/10, damn impressive at the time, but only briefly as the game was shallow as all hell, even in its best moments. Still impressive but it’s all on the mods and hence the players, not the game designers.
  • Witcher 3: 8-9/10, essentially same design flaws as modern CP2077, but given its fantasy world suffers much less from it, of course the empty countryside is, well, empty.
  • Subnautica: 10/10, amazing horror vibes, good progression, not too open and not too confined, focus on exploration.
  • Outer Wilds: 10/10, completely open and pure exploration, reductive game design done perfectly right.
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2 points

the redesigned combat and character systems feel artificial but pretty fun

What do you even mean by this? Artificial gameplay?

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1 point

I got Subnautica for free twice (PlayStation and Epic), I should really look at giving it a proper try. I have the feeling it’d be really good in VR, played No Man’s Sky in VR recently and I immediately loved it while on flatscreen it didn’t click with me as much.

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1 point

Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 are both up there for me.

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64 points

I pirated the game. The first part in the actual school was really fun. But once you get out into the world, you quickly realise that it’s just another generic open world game with outposts, collectibles, and general busywork that you’ve seen in every other open world game. It got boring very quickly for me and I never finished it.

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17 points

I also pirated it, and yeah, I definitely got my money’s worth from it. I tried to have fun, but it’s the poster child for “mile wide, inch deep.”

Maybe they can reuse the environment for a better game in the future.

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1 point

Maybe they can stop making games set in a world where slavery is good

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6 points

I agree. The magical feeling of being a student at Hogwarts soon evaporated as soon as you got a broom and didn’t really need to visit Hogwarts again and instead just fight endless random enemies, which gets pretty easy as you level up.

I was also disappointed by the endless voice acting. There was so much pointless talking and you couldn’t really control the outcome, all options seemed to result in a positive outcome when I just wanted to be a badass Malfoy but you’re not allowed, you jave to be a goody goody Hermione, juat in Slytherin clothes.

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1 point

I was very interested in mods for this game, people found all kinds of fun cut stuff that would’ve elevated this game so much like companions having commentary for several quests when you used a mod to bring them, and having actual consequences for using the dark arts. But it’s impossible to implement.

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1 point

I loved the mod that turned all those animated paintings into anime vtubers, so goofy

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1 point

Technically it’s possible, but you’d have to reply on the cooperation of empress and that’s… not gonna happen.

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60 points

It’s multi-platform, uses one of the biggest IPs of an entire generation and seems to do it quite well too. Everything else would have been more surprising to me.

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4 points

I’m shocked the online outrage from gamingcirlclejerk didn’t work

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7 points

It’s like the sub made for taking the piss out of gaming criticism and critique did what it was supposed to do.

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4 points

Not really, they were often really serious about it which made it all the more ridiculous. Sometimes it’s a fun circlejerk sub, sometimes it’s presenting their slacktivism almost as being some gaming vanguard and fighting a war against the game.

It was pretty funny.

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4 points

I used to love that sub, but these days they are only focused on the outrage culture. Nothing inherently wrong with that, I like to laugh at people who take their video game waifu too seriously. I initially joined that sub because it seemed like the best place to have level-headed conversations about overhyped games, like the Witcher 3. Everywhere else seems to love that game as if it’s the second coming of Jesus, but if you find some places that didn’t like the game, they swing a bit too hard on the opposite site, so you can’t have a conversation with them either. I found plenty of people in that sub who loved that game, but knew where the shortcomings were.

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1 point

It worked. I stopped being friends with everyone who still likes Harry Potter these days, and now I’m safer from transphobes.

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1 point

funny, because one of the nicest characters in the game and one that gets a lot of in-game praise from students is trans. the barkeep at hogsmeade

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1 point

Would you have otherwise been friends with transphobes or Harry Potter fans? What about the boycott changed stuff?

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52 points

I wonder it’s because it attracted a bunch of people who weren’t into games, but are huge Harry Potter fans.

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63 points

It’s also on every platform, including the Switch, while TotK is just on the Switch.

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24 points

Yeah this feels like a Look What They Have to Do (release on every system) to Mimic a Fraction of Our Power (be Zelda) meme.

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1 point

More like: Even a bland game will sell more if it is released on multiple platforms, no matter how good the other game is.

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11 points

I think you just nailed it, this is exactly why.

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6 points

Yep it’s an unfair comparison. If Zelda was available on all platforms then it might have been a different story.

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1 point

But it isn’t, and that is the problem.

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8 points

Honestly it was just a good game. I saw it attracting both Potterheads and non-Potterheads. (I would not consider myself a Potterhead).

Does it have a bunch of replay value? Not really (neither do a lot of games). But man, that initial playthrough was just really good. It also looks like I clocked 113 hours on the game, so that’s a pretty decent return to me.

Also, despite the source material and the author, it had a lot of very inclusive elements, which were a nice touch.

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-1 points

if you seriously think this game was special, I have a far cry themed bridge to sell you

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