WANDS UP

HOGWARTS LEGACY is the best Potter game yet, but a hard one to get excited about

- Morgan Park

I was over 20 hours into Hogwarts Legacy before it revealed that, on top of being an expansive RPG with skill trees, wizard combat, crafting, environmental puzzles and loads of sidequests, it’s also a quaint home-decorating game with a splash of zoo management. This is a much larger game than I think anyone was anticipating and as I’ve completed the main quest and dozens of sidequests over 50 hours, I’m still surprised by how good each individual element is.

It suffers from a meandering start and distracting technical issues, but once I was set free to explore the entirety of Hogwarts and miles of countryside surrounding it, I enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy in the same ways I did The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2: moseying across a convincingly rendered world at my own pace, letting myself disappear into a character I’m invested in.

NEED TO KNOW 

WHAT IS IT? An open-world RPG in the Harry Potter universe

EXPECT TO PAY $60

DEVELOPER Avalanche Software

PUBLISHER Warner Bros Interactive

REVIEWED ON Ryzen 7 5700G, 16GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3060

MULTIPLAYER No

LINK hogwartslegacy.com

Like those open-world classics I just mentioned,