Let's Play Hogwarts Legacy
This gameplay is set around the 10 hours benchmark of the game offering the opportunity to explore deeper secrets in the forbidden forest and practice flying with your first broom.
The uptake of spells is facilitating gameplay, encounter combat just begins to become fluid and enjoyable. The discovery of secret chamber after the exploration of the spider cave was rewarding, even if underwhelming at times – it feels the spatial dimension of the game almost always offer a similar volumetry – everything feels extremely large scaled at the cost of being generally empty or difficult to crowd.
The presence of multiple chests and gear items were simply justified to increase defence and attach stats before the first spider boss encounter, and makes absolutely no-sense from a narrative perspective. Unlike the segement of the secret chamber (9-10 hours) where you find cues of previous meeting epistolary forms.
Once passing the antechamber crowded with guards, and the unexpected underwater bridge, you enter a secret chamber. A short moment will suffice to animate the side panels and trigger a dialogue with one of the characters painted on the wall – you share the same gift but need a special missing book for the dialogue to proceed. Exiting the chamber, you find yourself in a wing of Hogwarts (after all that ?!?) on your way to find the book in question. The quest is marked completed and you have now a series spell modifiers to spend on top of your already-existing spell catalogue.
Once back at the school, the flying broom lesson is unlocked and the time to conquer the air has finally arrived!
I was very excited about flying my broom, only to realise the flying system will represent a greater challenge to overcome. 10 hours in the game, my biggest difficulty has been to coordinate action and camera movement – I find it very hard to adjust aim, camera direction and movement all at once - I have spent a great deal of time adjusting the setting, but honesty can't find a way for it to be satisfactory.
The same issue applies to flying, now considering the fact the right thumb stick is not only the camera axis tigger, but also control vertical movement. I find myself struggling a lot with this. The flying experience is impressive non-the-less, as you have wind resistance to manage, boost and speed options, and areas that are not allowed to access from the air (Hogsmeade for exemple). Flying your broom is exciting, even if it takes a while to get use to...
After Thoughts
10 hours in the game, I find HL overly ambitious – for good and bad reasons – I understand it's the stepping stone for many DLCs and future develop to be hosted in game – but I remain puzzled by the complete lack of jeopardy.
Indeed, there is no real motivation attached to the character, no pressure of sorts, no real drama happening. Most of the quest are fetching adventures with minimal importance / impact on your own story and character development. The journey of your character become increasingly diluted at the benefit of the school experience the game wants you to enjoy - and when trouble arrives, it's rarelly furthering the story itself.
Up to this point, I know very little about my character, it's roots, sentiments, what he could be missing from the world he has left behind, why he as so little reluctance to ambrace the unknown, what and who he cares about, what he wants to achieve and why... The character is also fairly contemplative - his commentary about the world is rather polite and simplistic. He only express his feelings on a surfaced level, missing to dig deeper in his heart, fears, desires, and hope.
Beyond the incongruous made-up lore, creative verbiage, and fanstasy linguistic of the wizardly-wizardly world; the heart of the story is quickly forgotten to service pretty much every NPC of Hogwarts. Unless you are versed with the Harry Potterverse, the amount of creative denomination will get you confused and frustrated at best – it's very unrelatable, and you will probably not remember most of the names, places, things featured in gameplay.
Whilst I understand the ambition to create the 'Ultimate Harry Potter' game experience fans were waiting for, this create a cognetive dissonance between player and characters with different level of appreciation of the world and culture taking place in Hogwarts. This issue is even more supported by the fact your own character knows very little about the wizardly-wizardly world in the first place - so should equally struggle to remember the name of people, places, and things...
Branching dialogue and critical choices are interesting in principle, but it's very hard to appreciate the impact of these decisions at this stage of gameplay (it might make more sense a little later). While you can complete the main storyline in about 37 hours of gameplay (source: VG Insights), it feel this first thrid of the story is mostly dedicated to exposition and the 'settling in' phase of the game instead of getting propelled into a proper adventure. With this in mind, I have noticed a drop of trophy win around the 10 hours mark - I think a large number of players have started to leave the game around this time (<48% of PS4 players have accessed the secret chamber).
I will certainly push through a little more, but must be honnest about my struggle to maintain interest in the storyline. I am not sure what this is about anymore, and more importantly, why should I care... and that's a shame.
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