This game was heavily discounted for whatever reason and I had recently read a review of it where the author stated that it isn't important for you to be a fan of Harry Potter to enjoy this game. This is good information because I have never even so much as given this game a look because while I thought they were just fine, I was never really a fan of the Harry Potter world in books or movie form.
It was a mere $20 and several reviewers had some really cool things that say about it so I figured what the hell, I'll give it a try. Here is what I have experienced thus far.
When I first fired it up the first thing I noticed was that the cinematics and the opening credits that introduce you to the world you are about to open up are extremely well-done. That being said they are also extremely long and while this normally would be something I loathe, I was in the right mood for it and it was kept interesting enough for me to stay almost completely interested in what was being said and what was going on.
I don't normally put a great deal of time into character creation but I feel as though they streamlined the process and made it simplistic enough to not discourage you from bothering. In games like this I will normally just take the default skin but they made it intuitive enough that I made a few adjustments before clicking forward. I was a little irked by the fact that my chosen name was rejected because it had "tard" in the surname. People are just so damn sensitive. I can't even imagine how extensive their list of "banned" words is especially since I wasn't trying to have a name that is crude or offensive, the 4 letters of TARD just happened to be in the surname. Whatever! It's stupid but I got past it.
Then you are put into a tutorial of sorts and for the most part, this keeps things moving at a fast enough pace while still teaching you what you need to know about the basics of combat.
There isn't much to this and I know that you cannot actually fail it because when it first started up I was actually in the bathroom when it started. When I came back these knights were bashing on my character but she was not dying and I think this is important when you are introducing people to the controls of a game. For whatever reason I had a flashback to the tutorial of Mortal Shell and how that alone was almost enough to convince me of that particular game not being for me.
Now I want everyone to understand that this game is extremely story heavy in that there is going to be a TON of talking and cinematics going on. I was in the right mood for it last night so I actually listened but there was also an option of skipping all of the cinematics and just getting down to the nitty gritty. I think from what I have seen thus far that it is kind of important to listen to them though, otherwise you are just wandering around a castle and don't really have any idea what you are doing or where you are going.
When I looked at my objectives early on and saw that two of my main objectives were to "go to class" I was thinking that i had made a terrible decision in buying this game because I don't want to go to school anymore. I was delightfully surprised though because they managed to make this entertaining as can be. The voice acting is superb and the characters that you are introduced to are meaningful and not just random NPC's that don't really have anything to do with the story. At least that is what I perceive to the the case thus far anyway.
The world you find yourself in is absolutely beautiful and engaging with wonderful scenery in the background and fantastic attention to detail in something as uneventful as a hallway in the school.
I can already tell that this is going to be an absolutely enormous game and while I would imagine that the huge story will start to grind at my nerves after a while, thus far they have been exactly spot on with their presentation and keeping you interested. Sure, you have to sit through some relatively long cutscenes but they are all relevant to what is going on and when they do pass the controls back to you, you actually have something meaningful to accomplish such as practice using a new spell in a dual that you just were taught.
I accidentally opened a skills menu while looking for something else and saw a ton of things that I have not yet unlocked so I can see this becoming absolutely immense over time.
So for me, a non Harry Potter fan, this game has been really surprising and good thus far. I seriously doubt that I will complete it, because it appears to be a monumentally huge open-world game, but you never know! There were other such games I played in the past that I never thought I would complete but I did so and was actually disappointed once it was over. Perhaps this will be the next one of those. At $20 though, I think that it is worth the risk but with only a few hours invested so far, the jury will still be out for a very long time.