What, you thought that I was just going to play a game and not point out the negatives about it? Well if you thought that then you don't really understand much about me. I always complain, that is just what I do.
A few days ago I bought a game from the online PS store for the first time in a while. I don't normally buy any games and instead rely on the games provided with my PS-Plus Extra membership but that has been a bit shit lately and the monthly releases aren't really helping. Sure, they threw God of War: Ragnarok our way but since I have already played that it didn't do much for me. So I had no choice but to get drunk and then make a rash purchase based on the information provided by a few YouTube recommendations by people that were likely paid to say nice things about Hogwarts.
This is a beautiful game. That was my opinion at the start, it was my opinion after a couple of hours, and it will likely be my opinion the entire time I am playing it. The controls are easy enough and intuitive and customizable enough that you really can't complain about it even though trust me, I tried. The skills are introduced to you in a slow and coherent manner and I really like the way they did that. Enemies are already quite varied even though I haven't encountered a great deal of them up to now and the battle system gets increasingly difficult while still remaining in its roots so that you don't get many WTF?!?!?! moments in combat.
But hey, I"m me, and I am going to figure out a way to find fault in anything that I play that doesn't have the words "Hollow" and "Knight" in them.
Initially I was happy about how you are introduced to combat by innocent dueling with other students where there are no stakes and the only thing you are really risking is having to do the very short fight again if you fail. This was fun and slow-paced enough that you didn't seem overwhelmed during it. Now let's get to why this sucks. Early on, there are no other options for combat save one troll encounter in a nearby village to hone these skills and as it turns out, friendly dueling with your schoolmates is significantly different than when you enter a hostile goblin hideout a bit later on.
When you enter the goblin camps they have absolutely nothing in common with the only sort of combat that you have been introduced to up to this point. the enemies are much further away, some to the point of you not being able to see them until SURPRISE! there they are! and you also have sometimes 5 or 6 guys shooting at you at the same time. Your HUD of sorts does give you an indication of when shots are fired, but most of the time if you play like I do you are in the middle of dolling out some Van-Damme-age at that point so you get hit anyway. The cooldowns on your spells also were not a factor in dueling but you are thrown to the wolves right away. I am currently level 6 and the recommended level for this first goblin camp quest is level 2. I get absolutely wrecked in this camp and tried it enough times that I just walked away and figured I would come back later when I am powered up.
So I wandered around the area around Hogwarts looking for something to fight in the hopes that I would gain XP and go up in level but 90% of what you encounter in that is also something that is going to kill you in 2 hits.
Potions are very limited early in the game and I still don't have any idea how I am meant to get more of them other than buying them from various vendors. I have around 1000 gold total from playing for several hours and the potions are 100 each. That isn't going to last long now is it?
Whatever! I'll just have to git gud I guess.
Next complaint is the map system.
I get that they were likely trying to incorporate something new into the map system but Hogwarts being an enormous building you can imagine that there are multiple levels and therefore multiple staircases. They tried to make this simpler by having waypoints so you can fast travel but when you are looking at the map it isn't clear if said waypoint is close to where you have to go or perhaps 6 flights of stairs above or below it. I don't know how many times I have "warped" to a place only to be ages away from where I needed to talk to and had to use a spell in order to show me the way to some NPC that is only going to talk to me and then either give me a quest reward or another quest. Tell me.... why couldn't they make it so that you simply warp to the person who provided you the quest? Are they trying to get us to memorize the entire layout of the school?
While I am glad the loading is relatively short no matter where you go and I am yet to see it load at all when you are moving around, this does seem like an awful lot of busy-work and I moan and groan whenever I am forced to do a bunch of running for the 11th time in the past 15 minutes.
I tire easily of games that force players to do a lot of senseless running around and if it continues in this way I will likely put the controller down in disgust before I even get to the meat and potats of the game's story.
Oh, and there is way too much story. It's entirely too much information for a person to remember. What I gather so far is simply that there is an evil goblin named something that is trying to take over the world and I am standing in his way. Just like Harry Potter! wow!
I have only been playing the game about 4 hours at this point and my criticisms are real but I am exaggerating how I feel about it for dramatic effect.
I'm still going to continue playing it but I'm at a point now where I am just wandering around in the wilderness near the school hoping to find some enemies I can actually defeat. I don't want to do any more duels with other students.