Recent reviews by liquefry

Honestly I'm in two minds about this game. It's worth playing so I've left it as thumbs up, but there's so much more it could have been. It is beautiful, and you do get to cast spells and look at Hogwarts. But it lacks any emotional depth.

Positives:
+ they have captured Hogwarts and surrounds beautifully, it looks amazing.
+ casting and range of spells is fine.
+ exploration and progression is as per pretty much every other open world RPG.

Missed opportunities:
- there is very little meaningful interaction with any other students. The writers didnt seem to understand that it was the friends and enemies that Harry met that made the Potter series so memorable. I'm 27 hours in and basically you do everything solo. There should be a gang of friends that you have to rely on to progress and form deeper relationships with. The only interactions you have with NPCs is basically to get the next quest, there's no depth to the relationship at all. This is not an engine problem or programming difficulty - it's storywriting. They missed the mark here in my view.
- related to this - there's not a lot of life in this game. There's no need to eat, sleep or socialise, you only need to attend a handful of classes. Your house choice makes practically zero difference in game, I have barely been to my dorm. Basically the game has no social depth at all.
- So far I haven't felt any sense of danger in any situations. The battles are not particularly difficult, and your wizard/witch is pretty OP. But it's not just about combat, the environments are not full enough. eg You can run around the halls in the middle of the night, they are fully lit and noone is searching for kids out of their rooms. The only time you need to sneak is during quests which specifically require it.
- there's a huge variety of clothes and you can make an item look like anything you've collected already... but you end up looking like an idiot because you get more gear very quickly, and it is too much of a hassle to change the look. So your super powerful wizard is running around in their pyjamas with clown glasses and a crazy hat. Nowhere near a hogwarts outfit, but noone cares anyway. What little immersion existed is removed completely!

The game would be massively improved by:
- making the playable character less powerful and dependent on friends to achieve things, so you actually create bonds with the other characters;
- focusing on building up a couple of NPCs into these friends that you care about rather than a big cast of paper thin quest givers;
- forcing a daily cycle so there is some passage of time and need to plan out your activities. This would reduce freedom but you're a student! Make it so you have to actually be at Hogwarts (ie eat meals in the dining hall, attend classes, go to the dorm room occassionally) - It could feel much more like you're attending Hogwarts rather than just free to roam wherever you like. Earn the free roam as you move out of school life, not just get it straight away.
- remove the lighting in the castle during the night so you need to use lumos. Nights need to be gloomier, the forest needs to be denser. In fact make all the dangerous areas a bit darker.

And add quidditch!

This game is fairly atmospheric and a nice environment to explore. It has some serious shortcomings though. You can freely explore but the story progression is linear. There is very limited interaction with the environment - you can only climb certain buildings and even in those buildings you can only follow a set path which will end at the treasure you seek. There is no tension in the action since you can't actually fall off anything, and you know you will find something at the end of every trail. The story is also extremely short, I ran around finding everything I could and it still only took a couple of hours.

I picked this up on sale at $2, and thought it was a middling game at that price. At $20? Not even close to recommended.