“Merlin, I swear the teachers are always kissing his arse in class- he’s such a wanker”

if there’s not Quidditch DLC we riot

 

Lmao you can have it. Playing Quidditch with these controls? No thanks.

 

What about a Quadpot dlc for our American friends?

 

Beat the main story of the game and finished roughly 80% of the field guide in total. I enjoyed the experience for the most part. Especially beating the economic problems of being a student by vacuuming up unicorns and puffskeins "rescuing them from poachers" so I can just sell them in town myself. My main issues with the game come from it being the type of game it is, with the limited spell slots and the small total number of spells in general. No particular encounter was too bad difficulty wise, but Herbology is confirmed the most useful class because cabbages can carry you through every boss fight.

Honestly I was disappointed in the dark artes path, there's nothing good. Just the unforgivable three. Where's the Fiendfyre or the dark cutting curse that can't be healed. I wanted to drown my enemies in acid and entomb them in ice.

Overall the game is a solid 8/10 if you're a Harry Potter fan. Would recommend if it's ever on sale.

 

I think Jarsha kinda nails it.

it’s a great experience. It’s Hogwarts. But it could’ve been perfect if everything was just a little bit deeper.

It’s like a 3.5 fic rough draft that could be 5 stars with a bit of polish and increased depth.

 

Looks like it's been great for a relatively inexperienced dev. The sequel will be legendary

 

I enjoy the game for the most part (would be a lot easier to say if they ironed out performance issues) but I think one of the bigger issues I have is that it feels like the player character is more of a ghost passing through the castle than some of the actual ghosts. None of the NPCs really react to your presence at all unless they're a questgiver, they just stand there and robotically reel off vaguely related oneliners at each other with almost no pause between each line. The Gryffindor common room feels empty despite all the people standing around in it, there's never much point in returning to it. Coming from the Witcher 3 I really miss the nearby NPCs talking to me, even if they mostly abuse Geralt. This game would work great with a reputation system where NPCs will react differently to the player depending on your House/quest choices/dark magic usage. Some companions with quest aware dialogue and a relationship system would also go a long way to making this game feel like the "Hogwarts experience".

It also feels awkward with the player character not really having any sort of name, I think compounded by the fact they're trying to use gender neutral terms for the PC. Quite the limiting factor for writing dialogue when they don't even have a title like "Dragonborn" or "Commander" etc - from how much I've played so far at least. I'm actually curious as to what most people would prefer because I know the whole "make your own wizard, this time it's actually you going to Hogwarts" was a big thing for a lot of people, but I'd say I'd probably prefer to play as a set character like Harry for this type of game. That way it's a lot easier to write them into scenes as an actual character rather than some abstract entity lacking a lot of firm details to build off of.

Not that the writing is all that incredible to begin with, but it's not as bad as I feared it might have been. The game is about as much of an RPG as most AAA games released in the last few years and marketed as RPGs were, not very much at all. Your dialogue choices are largely a binary edgy psychopath or saccharine sweet, and while I haven't fully explored the consequences of quests yet I'm definitely getting the impression it's pretty shallow. Not a deal breaker but disappointing as an RPG fan, plus as an HP fan other than seeing Hogwarts in high fidelity that was were a lot of the appeal for the game was for me.

While that was a lot of criticizing, I'm still having a good time and would definitely agree that it's a good base for future improvements and a great showing (aside from PC optimization) from Avalanche Software despite my skepticism of them. Definitely hope it leads to more Harry Potter games as a result of all the evident interest, I know it would never happen as they've lined up the next 20 years making Witcher games and more importantly WB would never go for it, but I'd love to see a CDPR (with competent devs) adaptation of the Harry Potter books. Largely just because they're the only devs I can think of who have successfully adapted a series of books before, and they'd probably go with a bit more of a mature take (e.g. they'd definitely let you romance Fleur). I'm not sure if it would be any good but it would definitely be interesting.

 

The Witchers world building with Cyberpunk's first person game play and character selection options would be amazing. I sort of wish that we could go back to the days of an unvoiced protagonist too, it was much harder for me to identify with say Fallout 4's PC than Skyrim's. CDPR would be a good shout for the sequel, but WB is never going to let Harry Potter go.

 

A reputation reaction system would be cool. Having the nemesis system would also be fun, I feel like it’d be fun to wander the castles and have your asshole rival pop out randomly to start shit.

You’re right on the dialogue too, I think a solution could be just making the last name of the character pre-ordained. You can still customize first name/character, but they npcs will have something unifying to call you.

Will be interesting to see where they go from here, like others said, now that they have something to build on. Hopefully they hire someone to create maybe a mature story? Hell, there’s a bunch of fanfiction authors whose stories from like 2008-2012 would still be lightyears ahead of this one lol

 

Get @Joe to write the sequel.

 

Get CDPR to adapt Reminiscent Exile.

 

I'm about 30 hours in. Feels like 30-40% completed.

I'm giving this (thus far) a barely 9/10. Would be an 8 if this wasn't a good Harry Potter game.

Very slow. Very explore-y, very puzzle solve-y. This is maybe the first open world game where I'm actively avoiding some enemy camps and other points of interest. It just feels a bit... well, pointless? The hook is clearly the Hogwarts and general Harry Potter experience, and I think it does it overall pretty well. But the open world is... a bit bad, and I'm already tired of my 25th Merin's Trial, etc. I dread how much I'll hate them in any possible subsequent playthroughs. Hogwarts is... very confusing to navigate. Genuine experience, I suppose. Combat feels just a bit off too. I'm probably quite bad at it. Something about cooldown-based spell combat with some awkwardly placed controls I never bothered changing with swapping spell lists is hard for my brain to do well.

The MC's personality is very... milquetoast. And the choices seem extremely shallow.

The music and atmosphere are phenomenal, though.

The crafting and Room of Requirement stuff has been done really well, too. I like how smooth everything is. Coming to base, picking up my completed herbs and potions and materials, watching all the stuff animated, growing, bubbling away, feels good and smooth. Why the hell did they have to include identification in this game, though? Literally just adds tedium.

Despite a lot of complaining, I've been really immersed and sucked in. It feels like I've only played half of what I have. The first playthrough experience - good. Subsequent playthrough experiences - probably tedious.

 

I feel like this is an acceptable middle ground between a silent protagonist and voiced one. He's essentially a blank slate that you can insert into. The next step is obviously letting you map more of your personality onto him with more dialogue options.

I think studios like Sony's first party and the other big ones have kind of ruined the game for mid-tier developers when it comes to facial mapping and mocap. They've raised the bar so high that games like this just look budget in that regard by comparison. Hopefully, after this game's success, they're given a blank check.

This game has reignited my passion for Hogwarts and the surrounding area though. Specifically if you age the characters up. I quite like the idea of the students being as free to do whatever they want out of classes as the protagonist here is, so that the entire Highlands is just filled with Hogwarts students with their own RoRs trying to hustle to pay their tuition or fund their advancement, getting into mischief and solving the locals' problems etc.


I'm only up to Winter just now at 30 hours in, but I'm already thinking about the sequel. Do you stay in Hogwarts? Or do you do another school?

Maybe you just do some crazy From shit and, if you stay at Hogwarts, they find a hidden elevator that takes you below Hogwarts where there's an entire OTHER Hogwarts that's been under the castle this entire time! lol


Btw, I dunno what y'all are doing for builds (we don't have much wiggle room atm because of no respeccing), but atm I'm using Improved Crucio to spread curses onto everything on the screen, I've slotted the Unforgivable III trait into all my pieces of armour and I do 'significantly increased damage' to everyone that's cursed.


It's fun, it lets me not over specialise because I can have literally all sources of my damage boosted by attacking cursed targets. And Crucio itself just slaps. Atm I'm using Glacius and Bombarda (switching to expelliarmus and confringo when undeads/beasts there).

Potions are OP. 20 seconds invuln with improved Endurus. Maximus for bursting down bosses and Focus if you wanna just spam Glacius + Bombarda/Diffindo over and over.

The combat is incredible.

 

It might just be because I'm a huge Goblet of Fire fan, but I feel like the Triwizard Tournament would be a good framework for a sequel. Hogwarts is the main draw (and also literally the title so even harder to separate from it if you want to keep brand recognition) but you can expand the map out to areas like Diagon Alley, the Ministry, maybe have some events at Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. You can even do a refresh of the main Hogwarts map (let me land my broom at the Astronomy tower please) with a built in lore explanation because sometimes the castle does just change parts of it's layout. I know the tournament was supposed to be ended about a century prior, but you could get around that - just say it's a one off and then memory charm everyone in the end, or say it was such a disaster they're striking it from the record books or whatever.

But the events would be pretty cool and you could introduce a bunch of new characters from the other schools. I'm not sure how they'd handle the usual video game sequel "you forgot how to do all the OP stuff you can do from the end of the last game, time to learn it all again" since it would feel bad to forget all the spells you've learnt. Maybe you get attacked by a proto-Lockhart at the beginning of the sequel and he takes a bunch of your memories away.

From what I hear of Unreal Engine 5 it could be a real step forward with a sequel if they build off this games assets in the new engine.

 

The tri-wizard tournament would be a spectacular idea. BUT. Part of my optimism going forward is how fleshed out Hogwarts is here, and I'd rather the devs focus on the magic and spells and conversations and what not than trying to make another castle from scratch. Another castle with which we basically don't know a good goddamn thing about.

I think it would be easier to fashion Diagon Alley or some other Alley or both. Or fashion some parts of the Ministry of Magic than trying to get another big ol fuckin school realized.

 

Tri Wizard at another school?

I don't think you need to wipe spells. Just add more that adds new gameplay. Animagus, animate summons, patronus, big flashy elemental charms, illusions etc

 

Yeah to be clear I'm in agreement about sticking with Hogwarts, I think it's in their best interests to keep building on the existing assets as there will still be plenty of interesting stories to tell around Hogwarts - we can all attest to that with the amount of fanfic that has been told in the setting.

The mention of Durmstrang/Beauxbatons being included I was imagining more as small side levels were you visit the schools for some competitions they were hosting and get an idea of what they're like without fully modelling the whole schools for each. I know it wouldn't make sense having Hogwarts host two tournaments in a row but since we're already sidestepping the whole "disbanded the tournament in ~1792" thing, I figure it's not that much more of a stretch.

With not wiping spells, for the most part I agree but I'd imagine it's hard to balance the game if you have the unforgivable spells from the outset. Plus a large part of the appeal of this sort of game with all these puzzles is having to unlock the tools you need to fully explore everything which is difficult if you have to many answers for puzzles from the outset. I suppose they could just add a lot more magic to expand the potential challenges, but the current amount of spells is already pushing the abilities of a controller to their limits in terms of spell selection.

 

I would have liked for the FF to be way bigger. It feels way too small as is.

 

I haven't played the game so I don't know how they treat them, but I think that you could balance the unforgivables by introducing consequences for a player who uses them too much. Put the aurors on the player character, have certain wand types fail when trying to use dark magic. Murder chips the sou in HP, so that could be a thing, and maybe overuse of the cruciatus could give you a hidden effect that makes some npcs feel uncomfortable around you and less likely to give you information. And then of course, gossip spreads like wildfire in Wizarding Britain, so you could have a reputation system that is easily tarnished by public use of the dark arts. The flip side of that could be a dark wizard who tries to recruit you or contract you if things get bad enough while the aurors target you, and then the reverse of the same situation if you openly preach against dark magic.

 

I want a game set before modern plumbing was installed so we can see wizards dropping a deuce right in the middle of a hallway.