So far I have been blown away by a couple of encounters I have had. The game has already taken me places I was not expecting to go and to be doing things I have always dreamed of doing. I’m rather thrilled to get some real-time into this game in the coming days and weeks.

With Hogwarts Legacy just releasing today on February 10th for those of us who did not buy the deluxe edition. I’ve not had a lot of time yet on the PC. So far I have enjoyed just about every moment outside of some issues I believe are a result of my below minimum.

I was rather pleased that the game even started since I have an R9 380 4G edition graphics card. It along with my other hardware is a bit below the system requirements for the game. Despite that I got it to work.

The game at least for me does take a while to start up. It will try and detect the best settings for you. For me, it recommended everything set to be low. After I got into the game a bit I ended up playing around a little bit and increasing material and texture quality since I noticed it was not as taxing on my GPU as I was expecting it to be.

While the screenshots I’ll be sharing from the game are not that great. It ended up being a lot better than I was expecting. As someone who is used to using hardware for quite some time before upgrading, I’m rather used to games being ugly when you have to set everything on low.

Other than reading all the Harry Potter books within the past couple of months. I’ve managed to avoid almost all spoilers for the game itself. I’m also pleased to see while they try and make some ties to what we know from the books like using certain last names it already feels like I’m off on my adventure. Hogwarts Legacy also takes place well before Harry Potter.

I’ve only once before played one of the Harry Potter games and I’ll say I was rather disappointed with how restrictive and to the book it felt. I’ve been waiting quite a lot of time to be able to play in this universe with a bit more freedom and not knowing what is coming next.

The character customize was not overly crazy but I felt there were more than enough options to play around with things. I’ve never been huge on spending hours making a character look a certain way.

I was rather pleased to be able to change the appearance of my face, complexion, moles, hairstyle, colors, voice tone, and a few other settings.

The game is starting you as a fifth year which is quite strange. While I’m not sold on that concept yet. The game seems to try more to make up for it by quickly putting you into some interesting situations right away.

I won’t spoil how you end up getting to Hogwarts. I will say it was quite a fun way to learn a few basic things about the game. From there they do have some linear things you need to get out of the way first.

One thing you have to do is get sorted right away. I did not connect my account to any WB account where I could have had the option beforehand to take a full quiz for house placement and the kind of wand I’ll have.

Instead, the Sorting Hat asked me some rather basic questions. Based on those questions I decided I should be in Gryffindor's house. The nice thing is the game gives you the choice to pick a different house than what the questions you answered would lead you to be. I however wanted to be in Gryffindor so I was fine with this choice.

Up to the sorting ceremony, the game did end up crashing twice. I am playing below minimum requirements so I was not shocked that happened. I was however rather pleased that I lost zero progress. The auto-save feature seemed to either have cough on or perhaps that crashes occurred right after them.

Either way, after I got back into the game after both crashes it just took me to the next cut since I had yet been to or left me right after where I had crashed. So at least the game has that going for it as I hate to repeat things I’ve already completed.

While there are many linear parts of the game to push you forward along the main storyline. It appears the game has a decent amount of side things to do as well. I’m also rather pleased to report I did get to explore around on my own before going to my first classes.

I spent a while roaming around the common room. There were just so many little things to check out on the walls and even a couple of people to engage with. I was rather glad the game allowed me the time to do so.

The game did seem to be opening up a lot of things to me right away. Including a rather complex menu screen. You can access to check things out like challenges, collections, inventory, gear, quests, the map, and other things as well. This seems like quite a busy game.

I’ll admit I did not try and push my luck to see how far I could go without going to those first classes. It was however quite clear I do need to advance along the main story to get into many different areas as I kept finding things locked that required a certain level of magic to unlock from the best I understand.

Someone like me however can’t go far into a game like this without wanting to check every wall and object. Along with speaking with everyone I can. I managed to find in no time hidden areas, upgrades, and even a few side things to work on.

I did find it interesting how the game went about providing a way for the player to get around the castle quickly. There is an insane amount of Floo Flames all over the place. Once you get close enough to one you unlock the ability to fast travel to it.

I feel the game could have gone with a lot fewer points to fast-travel to. Just in one of the towers I was exploring on my way to one of my lessons, I swear there was at least one on every floor if not more. As if walking around a short distance in a game is some kind of challenge for players these days.

A part of the experience at least for me in enjoying a game like this is walking around and finding things. It’s not going to be about how quickly I can just teleport all over the place. While perhaps at some point I’ll get tired of all the walking around. It is a bit shocking how many locations there are.

One thing I have found to be rather basic is how you learn the spells. At least so far the lower-level spells just have you trace an outline and push the space bar to speed up progress. If you are not fast enough you get overtaken by a red line. Since I’ve yet to fail any of these learning spells mini-games I don’t know what happens when you fail. I can only assume you get to try again.

I have also encountered quite a few mini-games and puzzles as I explore around and even take my first lessons among other things. They have been rather short but fun. I feel they add to the game in a way I feel it just helps add to the over-fun in the game.

Final Thoughts

So far I have had quite a lot of fun. At some point, I am going to try and mess around with my graphics settings a bit more. I have a feeling I can get a bit more out of things than the game set me up with.

I also can’t wait to jump right back in and get quite a few hours into Hogwarts Legacy. Having my first duel was already quite fun along with some of the limited amount of combat I’ve encountered. More on that and other things in a later post. For now, I’m off to play as a wizard some more in Hogwarts Legacy.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Hogwarts Legacy

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