I took a big break between the second and third trial to do collectibles and such. I've enjoyed clearing the open world and completing all the challenges, though I suspect trying to finish all the collections will get tiresome quickly when I have to resort to google for it.

Still, the third trial itself was abolutely gorgeous. Running around Polyjuiced was an absolute blast, treated with exactly as much seriousness as it deserved, and had me laughing or chuckling the whole time. After that, the trial itself was a breath of fresh air compared to the uninspired platforming and fights of the previous two.

The biggest flaw of the game is its uninspired plot and wooden, metaphorically skeletal characters, I think. It's okay because the worldbuilding, atmosphere and gameplay are enough to cover for it, but the lack in those areas is noticeable. Another major setback is how shallow the RPG elements and customization is.

 

Yeah no joke. I genuinely think there's room to do something great with a 'fanfic' questline if the mod support can manage it.

 

For anyone interested in learning how to mod for this game: https://modding.wiki/en/hogwartslegacy/developers/getting-started

Also link to the modding discord where there are a lot more resources. https://discord.gg/v3Wz5veR

I'm probably going to dive in once I finish up my MBA this summer.

Could be really cool to eventually build a DLP mod questline. NGL, I'd love to see a full conversion mod where you're Indy!Harry and you get to really have a full RPG experience.

 

I wish they had given us some different body types. The female character is rail thin and in desperate need of a sandwich. There are maybe like 7 or 8 faces that look like they have the right body fat content to match.




I am very appreciative of the loving detail that went into all of the suit designs. Even the "poor people" clothing looks like it came out of Downton Abbey's tailoring department.

 

I imagine restricting body types and the quality of the outfits go hand in hand.

 

Fit / clipping / movement, sure. But I was talking about detailing (i.e. patterns, fabric textures, embroidery etc).

 

What easily/realistically implementable QoL things would you guys wanna see in DLC/patches?

For me:

• A spell page that auto swaps the second you enter the RoR. I don't need most spells in there, and I can't use them outside, no reason why Page 1 (or whatever) can't auto swap as soon as you step in to cut down on the clunkiness.
• Pitch and Yaw on left stick, full camera control on right (I will beat this drum forever)
• Training dummies with damage numbers in the RoR to practise spells etc
• Some kind of PvPvE style of battle arena where you can team up with other players and play against other groups for points in a horde style mode etc
• Visiting other people's RoR - maybe other people's Hogwarts too
• Velvet blazers godamnit.

 

1) Q U I D D I T C H

2) An actual fucking hotbar.

 

More fluid spellcasting. I keep fucking up my flow by scrolling the wrong way through my spell sets.

 

I generally have each set be self contained - one set with the unforgivables + accio, the other with Glacio/Diffindo/Confringo and depulso. Minimises switching, basically apply curses then switch to Diffindo page (the other two pages are non-combat)

Accio and Depulso are often changed to Descendo and Flippendo depending on the fight. I think one thing that'd make combat feel more smooth is if maybe there was a single, contextual force spell that was 'smart' instead of having four seperate ones...

OTOH, combat gets so easy (even on hard) if you get the potions talents that you don't even really need to counter enemies anymore late game. Just focus/maxima and ignore everything else lol...

 

I have red/yellow/red/purple in each set, with greens filling in where necessary, just so I don't have to scroll to have the right spell to break a shield. I was thinking about going controller rather than kb+m so I could have 'hold x button for 2/3/4 spellset' but the reviews of flight on control put me off.

 

Unforgiveables completely bypass shields, so Curcio becomes really great for that and spreading Curse when you get it.

If you don't want to use unforgiveables, just make sure you make a lot of Maxima Potions and talent into them, then, instead of needing to use the right spell to pop a shield, just pop a pot and all your attacks break shields.

But yeah, on my non unforgiveables set I have 2 red a yellow and purple. I still mostly just use Crucio and Maxima to break shields though.

 

Really hoping they either patch it or someone can mod out the cutscene on the Merlin trials, it's genuinely impressive how aggravating I find it. Quidditch would be pretty hilarious with the current broom control scheme, even with a mod to add all the the controls onto the left thumbstick it's still awkward because there doesn't seem to be a function to move the camera vertically to look down at all. Would still like to see it but I imagine that's the sort of upgrade you use to sell sequels.

The multiplayer stuff definitely seems possible, I saw a demo video on reddit from the people who made Skyrim Together already running around with ten players in Hogwarts. I imagine it would be less janky than the Skyrim version because there are existing multiplayer UE4 games to reverse engineer from, but I'm still not sure how it would work exactly with stuff like the RoR/quest dialogue choices, I guess it would just have a host player to decide most of that. The demo might go over it I haven't watched all of it.

It also seems like this game is seeing some insane sales, was considering if WB might expand their efforts in video games after this. James Gunn has already discussed video games being involved with his plans for the DC universe which suggests to me the new CEO is open to the idea. If they were looking at their bigger properties for where there was a similar appetite in the market for a videogame that hasn't been properly met as with Harry Potter, then ASOIAF/Game of Thrones would be an obvious one. A complicating factor is I'm not sure who actually has the game rights but the existence of the Telltale series suggests they likely remain with GRRM (I think I also recall hearing about his people reaching out to Paradox over the CK2 mod, and there's rumours they were in discussions with Bethesda for a game that eventually turned into Skyrim), he seems to have a good relationship with HBO though. It would obviously need to be a lot more mature than their previous video game adaptations and I'm not sure if that's a deal breaker for Warner Bros. Plus it would need to be a pretty deep RPG to do the series justice I'd imagine, and this game doesn't exactly instill confidence in their abilities in that regard.

 

There's loads of 'cut to black' quick cutscenes that are proper infuriating.

A random cat standing on an ancient magic point made me want to punt the little fucker to Dumstrang - and I love cats!

 

Funnily enough that reminds me of something amusing, but did anyone notice that only the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors have bathrooms in their common rooms? The Hufflepuffs and Slytherins don’t have any inside their common rooms, though the Slytherins do have bathrooms right outside their dorm rooms.

Mind you the only reason I noticed was because I made a manual save right before I was sorted so that I could explore each of the common rooms.

Still it’s funny to imagine that the Slytherins have to always exit their common room if they want to take a midnight leak while the poor Hufflepuffs maybe use their ’droppings’ for fertilizer for all plants in their common room.

 

I've been on-call this week so I've only had a chance to play ~10 hours, but I finally got my broom. Completely changed the game and it's so much gd fun.

The only thing that's a bit unintuitive is that the yaw has you go in the direction you want to go. Generally flight has you pull the joystick up to descend and down to ascend, but that's a minor quibble. Flying is so fun that I spent 2 hours just flying around the world not doing a single quest.

 

I could be wrong but I believe the idea of Uagadou students using wandless magic stuff comes from Pottermore. Not defending it, but I do imagine it was something they kind of had to mention once they decided to have her be a former Uagadou student, lest it be a bit of a elephant in the room.

Only mostly true, as it should be noted that Four Houses each have one exclusive House Quest involving

Spoiler

the search for the missing book pages and Richard Jackdaw.

I know from looking online that the Hufflepuff one, for example, lets you briefly visit

Spoiler

Azkaban

while the Gryffindor one involves

Spoiler

Nearly Headless Nick

and the Ravenclaw one involves

Spoiler

Olivander.

Still I suppose they are ultimately just four very different and unique ways of getting to essentially the same location.

 

There's an option in the controller settings menu to invert the flight controls I highly recommend, pretty funny they didn't have it set that way by default.

 

The Pottermore article says their specialist areas as Astronomy, Alchemy and Self-Transfiguration, and the article on North American magic published alongside it specifically notes that magic with a wand is more powerful than without. So the Natsai stuff is definitely the game's devs on a frolic of their own.

 

I don't get the hate for wandless magic. It's canon, no one claims it's more powerful -just different - and it's pretty clear a wand gives you orders of magnitude more control over magic than not having one.

I've always understood that magic in this universe is kind of like the Force insomuch that it's everywhere, and to be magical just means you're born with the ability to control it, no?

Why wouldn't different societies find different ways to go about it?

It makes the world more interesting, at least -in my opinion anyway.