Hogwarts Legacy: Hour 1 First Impressions

Image by WB Interactive

I still remember being a child when the first of the Harry Potter films were released, and the feeling of the films and books, which could only be described as... Magic.

Image by WB Interative

First and foremost, the magic definitely lives on in this game. After completing the character creation and tutorial, the admittedly lengthy opening cutscene was nothing less than a thrill with the revelation of the Thestrals, and the grim implications thereof, being a particular delight.

Image by WB Interative

Upon getting a hang of the spell-casting system (or rather, the spell-learning system), which admittedly took me a few tries, I found that it played much like any role-playing game, which was certainly welcome.

Image by WB Interative

Then, upon reaching Hogwarts itself, I couldn't help feeling a surge of pride when the sorting hat put me in the same house Pottermore had decided I belonged to so long ago - Slytherin (as I played, I was even sporting a Slytherin green tee shirt, to help immerse myself in the game).

Image by WB Interative

Now, the bad. So far, being only a brief hour into the game, I have to say that a LOT of that first hour is just cutscenes. A lot of very long cutscenes. But it's done well, so I'm not really bothered by it. Additionally, while the characters and set pieces look absolutely amazing (my game automatically set the graphics and visuals to a very middle-of-the-road setting), I noticed that when animated set pieces moved, they seem to be a lot lower poly than the rest of the world around them such as the falling pillar in the Gringots vault, and the revelation of the door to the Slytherin common room looking several game generations older than the rest of the game, but for an animated sequence barely on screen for a few brief seconds, that's far from a problem.

Image by WB Interative

Furthermore, to address the elephant in the room, yes - the character creation does absolutely permit you to create a transgender character. For personal reasons, I didn't go that route, instead attempting, albeit poorly, to make a character vaguely resembling an admittedly much more flattering version of myself, using my own first name, and borrowing the surname of the English part of my lineage.

Image by WB Interative

All in all, my first hour had me giddy with excitement pretty much the whole way through, and I'm excited to see what new adventures await.