It seems that, despite his protestations earlier this year, dear old Ponty just couldn’t keep away from the warm, chubby, sweaty embrace of The Portly Politico.  We’re all too happy to take him back into our doughy arms.

Ponty’s breaking the silence with a powerhouse review of Hogwarts Legacy, a roleplaying game based on the beloved Harry Potter franchise.

I’m not a Potterphile—I was born just two or three years too late to be in the books’ key demographic upon their release—but I certainly appreciate magic and whimsy.  That said, I don’t know my Muggle from a Hufflepuff (except that I am, apparently, both), so for all you people out there whose only frame of reference for the world is a series of children’s books about kid wizards, don’t persecute me for my ignorance.

What I do know is that this game engendered (no pun intended) a great deal of controversy upon its release because the series’ creator, J.K. Rowling, is a TERF—a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.  That means that, while she loves all the feminist foolishness a woman of her age tends to believe, she still believes that men are men and women are women.  For that, detractors decried this game as “violence against trans people,” because apparently we can’t separate a work of video game fiction—itself quite distinct from the original author’s work—from one’s personal beliefs, and because one’s personal beliefs are now deemed violence if certain mentally impaired individuals deem it to be so.

Well, there’s no use arguing with the insane.  Ponty, however, does commit a bit of violence against Hogwarts Legacy from the other direction, though purely in an editorial sense.  And before he gets to some of the bad, he does extensive yeoman’s work covering the good, too.

With that, here is Ponty’s excellent review of Hogwarts Legacy:

Hogwart’s Legacy
Platforms: PlayStation 5 and 4; Nintendo Switch; Xbox series One, X and S; Microsoft Windows.

April 21^st 2023 was a very special day for Tina and I. It was on that day that, excited as children, we finally got to unwrap and install our brand new PS5. Oh yeah, it was our 15 year anniversary, too, but come on, priorities! (I’m going to hear about that soon!)

To be fair, this was our anniversary gift to ourselves, something we’d scrimped and saved up for and with our PS4 ailing and dying, it was the opportune time for the upgrade. With remakes to Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2 to rediscover (the latter won’t be on the shelves until either later this year or early next year), both of us were giddily intrigued to find out what this new device could offer in terms of graphics, immersion, and top notch titles, and the first game we just had to find out about was the remake to Capcom’s classic Resident Evil 4. More on that another day. As it was, it didn’t quite live up to our expectations and so, we decided to try Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world fantasy RPG which had been openly and often lauded as THE RPG for the new system. We had heard that there was a slightly Woke element to it, with the inclusion of a trans character, but as long as it was minute, like the pointless inclusion and acceptance of gay characters in 13^th century Japan (Ghost of Tsushima), we could live with it. After all, in Ghost, it’s such a tiny part, not even a blip, of the game that it could be easily forgotten and so we hoped for the same in this.

We’ve played through this game to its completion a few times now so we have a good idea of all the facets involved, from exploration to puzzles and action, story and character development, pretty much every niggle and tip and I can say that it’s a good game with a few flaws and issues.

You begin by profiling your character; what he/she looks like and providing a name. It’s not until you arrive at Hogwarts that you choose your house. Before then, your character is aided by Hogwarts teacher Professor Fig who, after he saves your life when your carriage is attacked in mid-air by a dragon, guides you through portals of ancient magic to lead you to Hogwarts.

From this point on, you will be required to learn spells, attend classes, and navigate through a series of trials, tests and missions, which culminates in the final boss battle with the evil goblin, Ranrok, who has led a rebellion against wizard kind. Your character will evolve in offence and defence by upgrades to equipment and clothes (found in the ‘Gear’ section), spells, potions and plants can be boosted in the ‘Talents’ section and through traits, which you add to your clothing which means, if you have explored properly and not just followed the story segment, when you get to the end of the game, you’ll be ready to battle whatever comes at you. The open world is vast enough to explore and you’ll find all sorts of interesting items and trinkets needed to advance you through the game. And if you take the time to look around, you’ll see how gorgeous it looks; the landscape, the villages and hamlets, Hogwarts. It’s very pleasing to the eye.

First of all, I’m going to start with the pros. If I get onto the things that niggled me about this game, I could be here all year.

I like the variety offered in the game. It has a good range of exploration, puzzles, missions, and action to keep you interested, and that’s before you get to building up your character via tools in the Room of Requirement. With collections to find and challenges to attain, there’s always something to do, and while you build up your character and relationships, it gives you the opportunity to learn your surroundings better. Tina and I have a good gauge on the surrounding countryside and landscapes around and further on than Hogwarts but as for the castle itself, we still get lost. So many stairs, so many bridges and doors and hidden entrances; it’s absolutely vast. But it’s stunning, in the day, especially at night. There are certain no go areas for flying but thankfully, you can explore Hogwarts in the air and it looks great. Just see for yourself:

The valley around Hogsmeade and Hogwarts is quite stunning too:

The battle sequences are fun and interesting and are made even more intriguing by dueling feats which give you bonus xp [experience points —TPP]on completion. For the most part, they’re not overly challenging but it depends on how many foes you’re up against and how tight your fighting space is. Not only that but each of your enemies offers up a different test; inferi (that’s the dead brought out of the ground by dark magic) dawdle at a distance but are quick to attack, plus they can’t be hurt until they’ve been ignited first. Spiders can burrow into the ground, reappearing – if you don’t move – right next to you to either pounce or tie you up in knots. Dark wizards and goblins will throw up shields, which you can only break with the appropriate spells; mongrels hunt in packs and require some quick spell work; and trolls and dugbogs might seem innocuous at a distance but up close, they can be a pain in the backside to kill, especially if you get both sets coming at you at the same time. Here’s one player having fun with the Quagmire Troll, one of the game’s infamous foes. If you get too close to the marshes, you will attract more dugbogs to the battle and let me tell you, when dealing with an infamous foe, a troll even, with limited spells, the last thing you want added to it is a hoard of rampaging dugbogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkLkM4d6TQE

However, your tasks become easier as you progress. Your clothing and equipment will get hardier, with traits added to improve defence against certain foes or to make your weapons and spells more effective. Going up against that Quagmire troll with Avada Kedavra, the killing curse, makes short work of him but it takes away from the challenge. You don’t want every battle to last seconds.

The Keeper trials are interesting, each journey linked to one of the 4 keepers, former Hogwarts professors from the past. Your character must explore these vaults, solve the puzzles and come up against dangerous foes in order to learn more about the keepers and a former colleague of theirs, Isidora Morganach, who used the ancient magic within her in new and dangerous ways. In some way, you could say she was the Voldemort of her time, except that in this environment we find ourselves in, she is given excuses for her path to isolation. One of my favourite aspects of the trials are the portals, where your environment changes depending on your position within or without them.

Though it was a little on the nose, I enjoyed Niamh Fitzgerald’s trial, 3^rd on the list, which bizarrely takes you through the Deathly Hallows (the unbeatable wand, the invisibility cloak, and the resurrection stone) to get to a pensive story that has nothing to do with any of them. It even contained a similar animation to that used in the films, a wispy nightmare like atmosphere where not everything is as it seems. Despite that, it was fun to play and after going through trials of puzzles and action, it was good to have the opportunity to use stealth, an action which you’re not directed to undertake much (unless by choice) in the game.

Flying is cool and while you can get a good knowledge of the area on foot, you get a real scope from the air, noting positions you want to reach whilst also taking in any dangers that might be nearby. There are 3 flying challenges which take a bit of getting used to and they provide a sterner test each time but truth be told, I wish there had been more of them. You get the opportunity on completion to better the scores on the leaderboard but having only 3 routes is rather limited.

The puzzle aspects of the Merlin trials and some of the treasure crypts are interesting, offering up a variety of different resolutions to gaining your rewards. They don’t take an awful lot of thought to work out but nevertheless can be tricky to achieve. I enjoyed some of the magical elements to some of the missions, where, for instance, your character might get sucked through a wall as they attempt to get to their destination, making it so you have to work out how to avoid the trap in order to succeed. Like I said, they don’t require you to have membership status in Mensa or an Ivy league degree to accomplish but they’re entertaining all the same. The depulso rooms, though, which become available at Hogwarts after you’ve accomplished the side mission ‘The Hall of Herodiana,’ can be slightly taxing; they’re like giant Rubik’s cubes, which can only be pushed or pulled into position.

The Room of Requirement is a fun aspect to the game. Not only do you get to conjure equipment to make plants and potions but it extends to make room for vivariums, where you can put animals collected from across the map and nurture them. This gives you feathers, fur, etc., which you need to improve your equipment. You can even add breeding pens, which give you extra resources plus the addition of a cute baby animal for your collection. The baby Nifflers, Puffskeins and Mooncalf are adorable. You can also change the furniture, décor and ambience in your room to make it suit your needs. While the rest of the castle and valley is unchanging, the Room is the only space in the game which you can constantly play around with. It is your area and you have lots of alteration options.

All in all, I enjoyed the exploration, the battles and the character development; that is, building up your character rather than the narrative throughout the game. Coupled with the very impressive graphics, it made for an enjoyable experience. But, as I said at the beginning of this review, there were some issues so I’ll get right to them.

The last thing you want when you’re trying to solve a problem is for your character (or another) to pipe in and tell you how to solve it but that’s what you’ll get in this game. It doesn’t happen all the time but it occurs way too often for my liking. For example, a side mission might require you to catch a creature or observe the night sky and despite the fact that you know you need it to be night, your character will keep telling you that until you change it. It really isn’t necessary. When you enter a vault or are faced with a puzzle, if you stand for longer than a second, your character will chirp up and offer solutions to an environment you’ve barely taken in. It really is incredibly annoying and you can’t even turn that option off. We switched it to hard in the hope that the annoying sweatsock would shut up and let us get on with it but no, there’s no off switch for his interfering assistance. Thankfully, the PS5 controller comes with a mute button so if you haven’t played this and plan to, on entering a puzzle environment, hit that switch and work out the problem yourself. Otherwise, like us, you’ll be shouting at the screen. One of the worst examples of this is on a side mission to find the missing gobstones of a student. She tells you from the get go that they all reside in high places and yet, when your character goes to look for them, every time he gets near the vicinity, it’s ‘I really need to look in high places.’ Yes! I know! Now shut up! In the below clip, he mentions 4 times in this same short mission that he needs to look in high places. How often does a player need to be reminded?! It really is infuriating.

This is the curse of the modern game. That the developers think of the average gamer as so stupid, they’ll need consistent reminders. Hogwarts Legacy isn’t the only game out there where you are pushed and prodded every 10 seconds. The Tomb Raider reboots do the same thing, to the point where putting it on mute is your only option.

And that’s another thing. In the clip you saw, you’ll notice that each of the locations for the gobstones comes with a route. Not only that but a large purple circle showing the vicinity of the gobstone. What sort of challenge does that represent, when you’re directed to the objects you need? Wouldn’t it have been better not to have to be led by the hand to those locations, rather finding them while exploring? On the map, whether it be Hogwarts, Hogsmeade or the World map, many tasks are highlighted, something else which irks me, though others, like landing platforms (which come up in challenges) aren’t. I would have much preferred to have none of it highlighted, only appearing on the map after you have found it. That would be your reward. You don’t have to do it at the time and the mission gains its place on the map because you, through your patience, have worked out its location. It diminishes what could have been a sizeable task, exploring and finding said challenges on your own rather than having them wave at you from the map.

While I quite enjoy a challenge, I don’t feel like those present in this game are that taxing. Not only that but once they have been completed, you don’t feel a need to continue as successive challenges offer you no xp. For instance, you need to complete so many Merlin trials, each of which come with their own rewards; for each part achieved, you gain more space for your pickups, which, considering what’s on offer, you really need. However, once you have completed all the challenges, you discover that there are many more Merlin trials. Tina and I are 100%ers when it comes to this sort of game. We want it all so off we ventured to find the rest of the trials and complete them 100%. The problem though is every trial after you’ve completed the challenges comes with no experience points so you’re going through the motions, resolving each one and getting no reward for it. As soon as we realised this, we stopped doing them. Apparently, the challenge comes in doing some but not all of them which, to me, does not a challenge make.

The Talent section is where you go to boost your spellcraft, potions, stealth, or plants. There are so many of them and you get a talent point for each time you level up. Unfortunately, you can only level up so many times, which means as you go towards the final part of the game, you’ll realise that there are still a good amount of talent points you can never get because anything left on the map has stopped offering you experience points to level up. I doubt I’m the only gamer who found that irritating. In any game, if there are advancement points to be gained, you should have the opportunity to obtain them all but in this case, you have to work out what you want and pick your options, completing the game with points you could never hope to reach.

The story is pretty weak and predictable and some of the voice acting is atrocious, certainly among the minor characters scattered across the valley. There’s a shopkeeper in Hogsmeade with the worst Scottish accent I’ve ever heard. Think Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, when he pretends to be a Scottish Lord to get into a Nazi stronghold. It’s worse than that. Judge for yourself:

If you want interaction in your classes, sorry folks, you’re not going to get it. Apart from Beasts (or Care of Magical Creatures, as it was once known), where you get to care for the creatures, and Flying School, where you get a handle of your broom, there is little you can do in any of the classes but either watch or skip the cut scenes. To be fair, I don’t think it would matter anyway. The vast bulk of this game is taken up outside the castle walls and once you have your spells and the ability to upgrade, it doesn’t really matter what you do in school.

And lastly onto the legacy of all of it. What is the legacy in Hogwarts Legacy? Let me tell you that the Hogwarts you may have seen in the films or read about in the books is a lot more diverse than you’ll remember it. No longer is it the school for British witches and wizards, it now houses students and teachers from the world over. Which makes no sense at all, if you’ve read the books. French students go to Beauxbatons. Hungarian students go to Durmstrang. At various meetings and events in the books, it is alluded to that there are Ministries of Magic in Africa, Asia, the United States so the presumption is that wherever there is a ministry, there is also a school. Hogwarts Legacy disbands that idea, making the environment the multicultural centre of the wizarding world. It’s like modern day Britain but with magic.

And coming with modern sensibilities, Portkey Games felt it would be quite fun to spit in the face of the original creator, JK Rowling, by adding trans characters to the mould. As anyone who has been paying any attention knows, Rowling has been at the centre of a spat because of her extremely common sense views on what constitutes a man and a woman. Her list of detractors include practically everyone in the Woke mainstream media and even actors who, without Rowling’s novels, would probably still be unknowns but in the wake of this row, organisations and developers have been keen to show their right on credentials by including trans actors and characters wherever they can.

The legacy is that Rowling’s work wasn’t diverse enough and this game seeks to put that right, distancing itself from Rowling’s views (not her work, mind) by making Hogwarts in Victorian Britain a multicultural haven of acceptance. The soundtrack for the game contains undertones of John Williams, capturing the wonder and magic of the world, and the visuals take you back to the mystical milieu you’ll remember from the books and films, but that’s where it stops. Bizarrely, Portkey are telling their audience that the Hogwarts we’ve been treated to before this game has devolved and that their creation is the Hogwarts that was supposed to be. If JK Rowling had kept her thoughts to herself, who knows what sort of game we’d have got?

Would I recommend this game to others? It’s a tricky one. There are lots to keep you busy but there are some things I could frankly have done without. First off, I don’t want to see The Message rammed down my throat. I just want to play an entertaining game. I imagine gaming journalists will have noted the multicultural and LGBTQ elements as one of the key markers of success in this game and that would be wrong. Nobody plays games to be lectured to. They play them because they want to be entertained. If Portkey do a second game, I imagine they’ll take these elements and ramp it up to eleven, which will please a tiny minority of people (most of whom will never play a game in their life) but not your average gamer. We’ll see.

There are fun elements but combat aside, it is far too easy to complete and as far as exploration and problem solving goes, you’d be far better playing a game where your character isn’t telling you what to look for or what to do to the point where you have to mute the game. The whole thing looks wonderful on the surface and there is enough variety to keep you entertained but if you want to be challenged, this isn’t the game for you, which is why my rating for this is 6/10.

And don’t be fooled by the bots on Amazon, who widely proclaim with glowing 5/5 ratings, that this is the game of the year. Either this is the first game they’ve ever played or they’ve never played at all. Those reviews were for the diversity trumpeting, nothing more.