I was off to enter into the first of several trials. These would have to be completed alone without the help of any of the Hogwarts professors or students once I enter each dungeon. I was more than happy to be left alone without getting any owls or dealing with any other distractions while down there.
This first trial involved taking a little flight to what is known as the Tower. Broom travel is perhaps one of my favorite ways to get around in this game. I find it has a decent speed and it’s not that hard to get on or off the broom and move it around.
Once there I had a short talk with Professor Fig. We had to search The Tower to find Percival Rackham’s portrait before I can go inside the dungeon. Since the professor is not permitted to go on these trials with me he would be returning to Hogwarts awaiting to hear how things went down.
I found myself in another rather immaculate dungeon. The complex floor designs and stone walls make this place almost feel like it is a place of worship in a way. Its beauty however would soon fade as I started to run into the first puzzles this trial had for me to solve.
Before exploring too far in I did look around for any little side areas. I ended up finding myself a chest with a pair of Silver Spectacles in them that were a nice upgrade. These trials would often give me quite a few upgrades while I cleared them out.
On occasion, while I was trying to work out a puzzle or had done quite a lot of looting. I’d take a short break and check my armor bags to make any possible upgrades I could. At this point, I was not that picky about what I was getting as long as I increased my defense or my attack.
Later on, in the game, I would no longer be switching out armor as soon as I looted it. As armor in this game gets a bit more complex with the way you can upgrade things. Make anything you find needs to be upgraded to be worth using. I’ll be covering that further in a post at a later date in time.
Things started to get a bit more complex. The archways in this dungeon that I’m used to passing through to go to entirely different places operated quite a bit differently here. I would see a similar room to the one I was already in except there be a slight difference.
The first one must not have been much of a challenge. As my draws quite a bit blank on what it even invoked. The drawback of trying to run a bunch of these late at night is.
I then ran into some platform puzzles. While these started easy they started to get a bit more complex the further into the trials I went. At first, I just did what I have done up to this point and cast Accio to pull myself and the platform I’m on towards a similar-looking object that is mounted on the walls to get around.
You might also notice there is this red hue around the edge of the screenshot. That is from me passing from one side of an archway into another. It seems to serve the purpose of letting me know I’ve passed into a second realm if you will. Which is something I would often need to do to solve these puzzles.
At other times I would find myself in what I’ll just be calling the blue realm. With this blue hue around the frame of the game. Often I would go from one realm to another. Try and take in all the differences and explore what the task was at hand.
One such puzzle I ran into. There was this platform that I needed to move from one side to the other. This issue is in the red realm there was a walkway blocking my path from moving the platform to where it needed to go. In the blue realm, I could do so freely.
The most unnerving thing about this place was not so much the puzzles. It was the fact that things like walkways and bridges would move in certain places as I walked. Such as in this instance where it lowered down into a combat situation.
While most times I had zero control over how these tiles moved up or down. There are in some cases I would run into regarding these trial special blocks I could move around that would influence this type of floor. Allowing me to control it to reach a certain height I would need to get somewhere.
One puzzle that did take me a little while to work out invoked several archways where you could change which realm you were in. As you can see in the current blue realm I can see a chest I can loot. However, if I go through that archway into the red zone that chest is no longer there.
As such, I had to work out how to get around switching into these different realms moving a platform till I could cast Accio to pull myself to that spot. So I then could jump over the railing and loot the chest.
There were also entire parts of the walkway that did not exist in one of the realms over the other. As a result, to get around I had to keep in mind which realm had what. It all gets rather confusing trying to think back on it now.
I do however after some time get the boss of the first trial in the end. A Pensive guardian. I ended up making some quick work of him using my Ancient Magic ability to do a lot of single-target damage.
This was perhaps the first time I realized it would be quite important to increase my capacity to hold ancient magic for moments like these. I however would not work on doing so with any urgency for quite some time. It would just be something I increased slowly over time.
Once the boss was down there was a bit of a cut-scene with a memory. Showing me a bit more about the powers one of the people entrusted with this power was starting to show. I was then off to the map room again after I collected the first Pensieve Artifact.
What I feel was the coolest part of all of it. Once it was all done and over the seasons changed for the first time in the game. It went from summer to fall. The entire landscape and even the outside of the castle changed.
While there was quite an insane amount of pumpkin all over the school grounds making you think it was almost Halloween. This was quite unexpected for me to occur. Fall also ended up being my favorite season in the game.
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Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Hogwarts Legacy.
