My impressions after 22+ hours of gameplay. Playing on Xbox Series X. Hard difficulty.
- Visually, game looks excellent. Hogwarts castle looks spectacular. So much detail everywhere. Feels alive from statues that talk and/or animate or most characters inside paintings animating while walking by them. So damn immersing.
- Audio is great thus far. Great music, solid voice acting and effects.
- Combat is good and challenging. I’m level 13 and it seems like enemies and even friendly duels level up to your level. The combinations with the spells is satisfying but I do wish I could have mapped a few of the spells to the directional pad myself instead of it all being preset.
- Gameplay outside of combat is far better than I was expecting. Fluid and responsive. The puzzles, mini games, etc. inside Hogwarts is a breath of fresh air in regards to open world games. I’m trying to open every locked door, solve every puzzle, collect every field guide, etc. Hogwarts castle is freaking huge. Even with the waypoint dots on the mini-map, im still getting lost from time to time mainly when trying to solve a puzzle.
- Outside of Hogwarts castle and Hogsmeade, I haven’t been anywhere yet. lol. The castle is just so immersing that im trying to do every side quest, puzzle, etc. Game has a lot of content in it but isn’t massive when looking at the overall world map. Compared to AC Valhalla for example, it’s probably 1/5th the size but is more packed with stuff to do instead of massive empty open spaces.
- Have only unlocked six spells thus far that you equip to the RT+face buttons. I love how when you get a new spell, you come across more puzzles that make use of the spell you just acquired. Easily gives you that feel and sense of progression.
- Side quests thus far have been enjoyable. Nothing really special but they just feel different. The entire game just hits different than your typical open world formulaic game. Granted, Hogwarts has a set amount of the same puzzles and whatnot but they’re not littered all over the map and it just feels different.
- Story and characters have been good thus far. I’m not that far into the main story. Maybe 5 or 6 quests. Been too busy doing everything else.
- Opening prologue was good. Starts slow but sets up the premise and whatnot.
- Haven’t gotten the Broom or any mounts yet.
- Character creation is fine. Took me 20 minutes to create my character and appears that you can for the most part, change your character’s appearance early on in the game once you get to Hogsmeade.
- Forgot the name of the spell but the one that’s set to the directional pad and highlights items and whatnot is probably my only major negative because you’re constantly having to use it. Reminds me of the vision in Dying Light 2. But at least in Hogwarts, it makes sense since you’re using magic so at least, it’s more believable than the vision crap in most games.
- Other than that, I wish the enemies health bar was just over their respective head instead of being on the middle top of the screen. It’s annoying for me but this is a pet peeve of mine.
- Playing on Performance Mode with the frame rate locked at 60FPS. There have been some minor drops while running around the castle but not major or serious. Game has run extremely smooth for me and outside of some flickering on the face of a main character I was talking to in one scene, no other issues at all. Had one enemy encounter where it was slowing down badly and Professor Fig always seems to have a visual glitch on his face every time in his room.
Overall, while still extremely early in what will probably be a 100+ hour game for me, im very impressed and enjoying the game a lot more than I was expecting to. Not being a Harry Potter fan whatsoever, never reading any of the books or watching any of movies or even having any interest in the franchise whatsoever has been a positive for me because I don’t know what to truly expect while in the world and whatnot where as with Sony or Ubisoft for example, I always know what im getting. I’m even reading all the field guides, notes, etc. that I collect which I rarely if ever do in games because I normally just don’t care. In this game and game world, it’s got me hooked. Will continue playing more every day for at least the next four or so days as im on vacation. Such a pleasant surprise, refreshing open world and just completely enjoying the game.