Because MW3 is just… garbage. It’s a cookie that was made with a cookie cutter. It doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of gameplay, or truly novel developments in the game universe.
HL, despite the Rowling-oriented issues with the franchise, frankly knocked it out of the park, and moreover pretty squarely addressed the Feminist/Trans kerfluffle Rowling kicked up - the gender selection during character creation is “witch” or “wizard”, and it simply determines whether or not you can go into one half of your dorm area, and all the lines that refer to your character use “they” - never a gendered pronoun. The second part was a deliciously holistic “fuck your bigotry” move, and it was very obviously directed at Rowling.
Is it good? I heard the gameplay was pretty bland, though serviceable for HP fans. I’m not a big HP fan, but I know my kids would love watching my play it. I have plenty of games that fit that, so I’m only really interested if the gameplay is interesting.
I found the stories to be extremely wholesome,
The puzzles to be a fun break from combat,
The combat to be wildly satisfying,
And overall I just thoroughly enjoyed existing in the world.
Note that I’m not a huge HP fan. A little bit, sure, but not much.
The enemy variety is mediocre, but there aren’t that many 3D games with compelling magic combat, and Hogwarts does a decent job of it. I would have liked to see a little more variety in the spells/upgrades and the gear, but the decisions they made do fit the theme and work pretty well.
It’s pretty fast. I play on hard for most games, and here that means you’re reasonably lethal and enemies hit hard. There are encounters i’ve failed where I had to have an explicit plan to deal with the enemies prior to engaging (though I was probably also slightly under leveled) because of how fast the combat can be. It’s not a perfect game, but they capture the Harry Potter “fencing duel” aesthetic of wand combat pretty well.
Overall, while I’m not a crazy Harry Potter fan (I’ve read all the books, but was older than most when I did, and have never actually sat down and watched any of the movies completely), the charm of the setting really shines through across the board. The writing, the implementation of Hogwarts and some of the other locations, the gear (while I wish it was more RPG-feeling in terms of stats and perks, it nails the look), the combat, everything from top to bottom. It’s pretty clear the people who worked on the game are either big fans of the source material (movies, specifically) or at least did their research, because it completely nails the feel of the IP.
The downside is that that crazy densely packed setting is really demanding to implement, so there’s a lot of loading (it tries to do it transparently, but if your hardware can’t keep up you get spinning circle delays on opening doors) that has to happen. I didn’t think it was bad overall in my 30 hours on steam deck (though traversing Hogwarts with 3-5 second door loads a couple times in quick succession can be frustrating), but tolerance for performance varies.
Awesome, shouldn’t be an issue then. When they announced the Switch version, I thought about getting it, but then saw the issues with loading times and noped out. So I’ll either play on my Steam Deck or PC, and both have fast SSDs and capable enough HW.
I only get those minor delays if I’m literally sprinting through the castle on my PC, and never at night in-game.
The game is absolutely gorgeous and my one main disappointment for it is there’s no photo mode.
Honestly, the vistas and scenery in the game are beautiful. There’s nothing quite like flying over a hilltop at night on your broom and seeing the castle looking over everything, lit up like Christmas lights.
I agree with the other poster, I’ve really enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy.
And I find the gameplay to be pretty good; the combat can be approached in multiple ways due to spell variety, there are a decent variety of puzzles to do (though some only become accessible fairly late in the game), and I enjoy the different side stories throughout the game. Also Hogwarts castle is gorgeous, and lots of fun to explore.
Oh so good. The combat was amazing for someone who was concerned how dueling would be integrated into a video game. The puzzles great. Story great. Cut scenes great. Flying on the broom with absolutely beautiful views. But I like Harry potter. But the game is it’s own beauty. I put in around 200 hours before beating it almost 100%.
And it’s funny you mentioned kids, I played this with my 5 year old daughter and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much because she enjoyed it. It’s not really a pg game, but I tried to keep it friendly for her when she watched.
Yeah, my kids are 7 and 9, and this is definitely in the “hard game” category for them. They like playing Minecraft (mostly on creative), Pokemon, etc, and they like watching me play games like Zelda, Ori, and Furi. I’ve even played scarier games with them, but I’m careful about what I let them see (I’ll sometimes look up spoilers, pause/skip cutscenes, etc).
They love HP, though we’ve only let them watch the first four movies (we’re making the older one read the books first). Buying it wouldn’t be for them, but for me, and they’d watch, and since I’m not as into HP as they are, I need to game to stand on its own, otherwise I’d just wait until they’re ready to play on their own.
I’ll tell you, there’s no blood in the game other than on the environment in some scripted parts of the game. The only other creepy or scary thing in the game would be the zombies.
Because MW3 is just… garbage. It’s a cookie that was made with a cookie cutter. It doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of gameplay, or truly novel developments in the game universe.
HL, despite the Rowling-oriented issues with the franchise, frankly knocked it out of the park, and moreover pretty squarely addressed the Feminist/Trans kerfluffle Rowling kicked up - the gender selection during character creation is “witch” or “wizard”, and it simply determines whether or not you can go into one half of your dorm area, and all the lines that refer to your character use “they” - never a gendered pronoun. The second part was a deliciously holistic “fuck your bigotry” move, and it was very obviously directed at Rowling.
Is it good? I heard the gameplay was pretty bland, though serviceable for HP fans. I’m not a big HP fan, but I know my kids would love watching my play it. I have plenty of games that fit that, so I’m only really interested if the gameplay is interesting.
I enjoyed it very much.
I found the stories to be extremely wholesome,
The puzzles to be a fun break from combat,
The combat to be wildly satisfying,
And overall I just thoroughly enjoyed existing in the world.
Note that I’m not a huge HP fan. A little bit, sure, but not much.
Cool, I’ll have to pick it up then. Thanks!
The enemy variety is mediocre, but there aren’t that many 3D games with compelling magic combat, and Hogwarts does a decent job of it. I would have liked to see a little more variety in the spells/upgrades and the gear, but the decisions they made do fit the theme and work pretty well.
Good. I was definitely worried about magic, I didn’t want it to just be a button mash fest.
It’s pretty fast. I play on hard for most games, and here that means you’re reasonably lethal and enemies hit hard. There are encounters i’ve failed where I had to have an explicit plan to deal with the enemies prior to engaging (though I was probably also slightly under leveled) because of how fast the combat can be. It’s not a perfect game, but they capture the Harry Potter “fencing duel” aesthetic of wand combat pretty well.
Overall, while I’m not a crazy Harry Potter fan (I’ve read all the books, but was older than most when I did, and have never actually sat down and watched any of the movies completely), the charm of the setting really shines through across the board. The writing, the implementation of Hogwarts and some of the other locations, the gear (while I wish it was more RPG-feeling in terms of stats and perks, it nails the look), the combat, everything from top to bottom. It’s pretty clear the people who worked on the game are either big fans of the source material (movies, specifically) or at least did their research, because it completely nails the feel of the IP.
The downside is that that crazy densely packed setting is really demanding to implement, so there’s a lot of loading (it tries to do it transparently, but if your hardware can’t keep up you get spinning circle delays on opening doors) that has to happen. I didn’t think it was bad overall in my 30 hours on steam deck (though traversing Hogwarts with 3-5 second door loads a couple times in quick succession can be frustrating), but tolerance for performance varies.
Awesome, shouldn’t be an issue then. When they announced the Switch version, I thought about getting it, but then saw the issues with loading times and noped out. So I’ll either play on my Steam Deck or PC, and both have fast SSDs and capable enough HW.
I only get those minor delays if I’m literally sprinting through the castle on my PC, and never at night in-game.
The game is absolutely gorgeous and my one main disappointment for it is there’s no photo mode.
Honestly, the vistas and scenery in the game are beautiful. There’s nothing quite like flying over a hilltop at night on your broom and seeing the castle looking over everything, lit up like Christmas lights.
And then you get to Christmas in-game.
I agree with the other poster, I’ve really enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy.
And I find the gameplay to be pretty good; the combat can be approached in multiple ways due to spell variety, there are a decent variety of puzzles to do (though some only become accessible fairly late in the game), and I enjoy the different side stories throughout the game. Also Hogwarts castle is gorgeous, and lots of fun to explore.
I got bored pretty quick, but I’ve never had any interest in the franchise either.
Oh so good. The combat was amazing for someone who was concerned how dueling would be integrated into a video game. The puzzles great. Story great. Cut scenes great. Flying on the broom with absolutely beautiful views. But I like Harry potter. But the game is it’s own beauty. I put in around 200 hours before beating it almost 100%.
And it’s funny you mentioned kids, I played this with my 5 year old daughter and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much because she enjoyed it. It’s not really a pg game, but I tried to keep it friendly for her when she watched.
Yeah, my kids are 7 and 9, and this is definitely in the “hard game” category for them. They like playing Minecraft (mostly on creative), Pokemon, etc, and they like watching me play games like Zelda, Ori, and Furi. I’ve even played scarier games with them, but I’m careful about what I let them see (I’ll sometimes look up spoilers, pause/skip cutscenes, etc).
They love HP, though we’ve only let them watch the first four movies (we’re making the older one read the books first). Buying it wouldn’t be for them, but for me, and they’d watch, and since I’m not as into HP as they are, I need to game to stand on its own, otherwise I’d just wait until they’re ready to play on their own.
I’ll tell you, there’s no blood in the game other than on the environment in some scripted parts of the game. The only other creepy or scary thing in the game would be the zombies.
Eh, my kids survived the first half of
Little Nightmares, I think they’ll be fine. :)