That lack of benefits and consequences extends to many other aspects of the game. You don’t gain any statistical advantages or disadvantages, you get to interact with most of the same characters in the same ways, and there’s not even a hint of a seemingly obvious “factions” system that asks you to balance your relationship between the various houses, students, or professors. Outside of a unique quest and a few cosmetics (your common room, robes, etc.), your choice of house has no real impact on the game whatsoever. Ok, that was a little anti-climactic, but surely my choice of house would have a meaningful impact on the rest of the game, right? Instead, Hogwarts Legacy asked me two basic questions about my character (one that didn’t affect the sorting at all) and then let me pick my house. Quizzes like that have existed online for years, and RPGs like the Fallout series utilize their own kinds of quizzes to help you determine what kind of character you might want to be in their worlds. While I knew the game would ultimately let me make that decision, I still expected to take some kind of in-game quiz that would help me determine which house I may be best suited for. Outside of creating your character, the first major decision you have to make in Hogwarts Legacy is which house to join. Hogwarts Legacy‘s Greatest Magic Trick Is the Illusion of Choice That problem was exacerbated by another of the game’s major role-playing issues. Maybe that’s what some are looking for, but having such limited control over the growth of a character that is positioned as your avatar in this world goes against one of the core tenants of the entire role-playing genre.Īs it stands, though, I rarely felt like I was actually crafting my own Hogwarts student or meaningfully shaping their adventure beyond that character creation screen. Meanwhile, your character is much closer to the cliche fan fiction writer avatar that everyone knows, loves, and respects. A big part of what made the Harry Potter character so compelling was that he was constantly being challenged and constantly had to overcome a series of hurdles that often showed how his main character status was a blessing and a curse. Harry was a classic example of the chosen one archetype, and he wasn’t the best at everything or someone who fits in so easily with so many different people. Actually, being the chosen one isn’t inherently the problem. There are story explanations for your character’s power level, but they don’t address the core problem of having to play as a “chosen one” regardless of what kind of character you really want to be. You’re not really building your own Hogwarts student you’re furthering the agenda of this character that the game needs to exist. There’s no such thing as slowly getting better at spells as you use them (outside of Talent Points that offer basic ability upgrades), and Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t do the thing most other RPGs do by forcing you to be good at some things and worse at others. They’re incredible at pretty much everything and they’re able to learn it all pretty much right away. You would think that a student joining Hogwarts in their fifth year would be far behind on everything. The biggest issue with that setup, though, is your character’s power level. Your character makes friends with ease right away, they’re going on world-spanning adventures on their first or second day, and they stumble upon some of Hogwarts’ biggest secrets in record time. Most of the ways they do try to address that strange situation involve treating your character as if they’ve been there all along. The problem is that Hogwarts Legacy struggles to adequately address the inherent awkwardness of starting Hogwarts as a fifth-year. Playing as a first-year student would have presented several gameplay hurdles. Not only does a fifth-year student naturally have more access to certain parts of the Wizarding World lore (taking their O.W.L.S., visiting Hogsmeade, etc.), but they’re able to learn more complicated and interesting spells. While the Hogwarts Legacy team has only offered passing explanations for why you start the game as a fifth-year student, it’s easy enough to assume why that decision was made. You can determine their name and looks, but those options often feel like window dressing on a character that isn’t entirely your own and is closer to being of the developers’ design. That’s certainly unusual enough, but it turns out that your character also has the rare ability to see and use a secret form of ancient magic and seems to be a person of great interest to many of the prominent people you’ll encounter. You’re actually playing as a fifth-year student who is only just now attending Hogwarts. However, that’s not exactly what Hogwarts Legacy offers.
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