Game Review: Hogwarts Legacy – PlayStation 5
This article has originally been featured on my Patreon page.
Hello everyone. Last Friday, on February 10, WB Games unleashed upon the world the game that Harry Potter fans everywhere were waiting for and deserved for a long, long time.
Developed by Avalanche Studios in collaboration with Portkey Games, Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world action RPG set in the universe introduced in the Harry Potter books, but the action is set in an unexplored era, the late 1800s, so the player will experience a new, original story.
Although I wasn’t able to play the game myself, as Hogwarts Legacy is not accessible for the blind, I enjoyed every minute of it alongside Alina.
From the first second to its last, Hogwarts Legacy is a love letter to the Wizarding World and its hundreds of millions of fans.
I will tell you everything I can about it, without spoiling the story for you and I will talk a little bit about accessibility at the end.
We received our review code on Thursday and we immediately jumped into this magical interactive journey filled with adventure, mysteries, wizards, witches, spells, house elves, trolls, Dark Wizards, goblins, and other mythical creatures.
We are invited to experience Hogwarts in the 1800s and our character is a student who may hold the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. We join Hogwarts as a fifth year student, and after a thrilling introductory segment about which I am not willing to tell you anything else, we arrive at the legendary school just in time to get sorted into our house. From now on, we must forge relationships and master skills to become the witch or wizard we always dreamed of being.
Learning new spells is a wonderful experience and in combination with other activities such as brewing potions, growing plants, and tending to magical beasts, you’ll always have something new to discover and experience in Hogwarts Legacy.
The story is captivating, feels new and original, the characters are well developed and I noticed a lot of good representation throughout the students, teachers and other non-playable characters. For example, we have a blind character in Hogwarts Legacy for which my dear friends Brandon Cole and Misty Rayburn were consulted in order to be properly representative of our disability. Aside from this one, we have characters from all over the world, from all walks of life as it is said, and it was a huge pleasure to discover them throughout our adventure. There is also significant representation for trans and LGBTQ+ characters.
We can freely explore iconic locations from the world such as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hogsmeade village, the Forbidden Forest, and other surrounding areas. We can travel by floo powder, broom or other winged creatures.
The gameplay is excellent, the spells are easy to learn and use, the combat is satisfying as it allows for a lot of combinations when facing enemies. We have over 100 side quests to keep us busy between missions or after we finish the main adventure, although that could take quite some time.
Just like any other reputable RPG, Hogwarts Legacy features a significant number of customization options both for the character and for abilities. We can string together spells, we can use potions to enhance our skills, we can customize brooms or change our outfit as we want.
This proved out to be one of the few games in which Alina has strayed away from the beaten path in order to explore her surroundings and even was inclined to complete some optional quests. We did not finish the game yet, but after 20 hours I can say that this is definitely one of the best games that will come out this year.
The world is so beautifully created, the attention to details and to the small things is incredible. The voice acting is most of the time excellent, the sound effects are beautiful and the musical arrangement is filled with masterpieces.
There are small issues here and there, like little bugs or some screen tearing, but these are so insignificant that will not take away from the magical experience Hogwarts Legacy is here to offer.
Sadly, as I said above, Hogwarts Legacy is not playable by the blind. Although it features one of the best text to speech functionalities that I’ve experienced so far in a video game, using the built-in TTS engine from PlayStation in this case, it lacks a significant accessibility suite tailored with blind individuals in mind. Those suffering from low vision or other impairments will find some options that will help them play the game. We have color blind filters, an option for high contrast, bigger text, larger UI elements, something called audio visualizer that should help deaf people and other nice options that will make Hogwarts Legacy more accessible.
If you choose to play on the Story difficulty, as we did, you will have the option to skip some activities and advance in the story even if you do not complete them successfully. This is a nice addition.
As good as the text to speech functionality is in Hogwarts Legacy, the fact that the development team chose to implement a cursor-based navigation system in this title is mind boggling since this is the most hated way and inaccessible way of navigating the user interface, especially on a console and especially for people with disabilities. These menus should be accessible directly with the D pad on the controller. Pressing up and down should allow us to move from one option to another, pressing left and right or X should permit the player to change a value or activate an option.
The almost perfect text to speech implementation, in combination with a navigation assist system which is already available in the game and that sadly is not configured as we would have needed, could have made Hogwarts Legacy playable for the blind. I will reach out to the development team to explain all of this, giving them some suggestions, so I hope they will be open to listen and hopefully put some more work into this fabulous game.
Of course, I am disappointed that I cannot play Hogwarts Legacy as a blind gamer, but I can’t help but congratulate everyone for the superb work they did. I listened to the Harry Potter saga audiobooks three times in the last five years, I’m not a big fan of the movies, but it is clear to me that each and every individual involved with this project is a huge Harry Potter fan and has treated this game as a labor of love.
If you are a Harry Potter fan who has grown up with the books, the movies, or have just discovered this universe later in your life, like we did, Hogwarts Legacy is the game that you’ve been waiting for, but even if you are not familiar with this world, Hogwarts Legacy is on its own a fantastic open world action RPG that everyone should try out.
Live the unwritten, take control of the action and create your own adventure in the wizarding world. Pick up Hogwarts Legacy, forge your destiny and leave to the world your unique legacy as its inheritance.
To coin a phrase that has been liberally used, Hogwarts Legacy delivers a living, breathing world, filled with mystery, adventure, unforgettable characters, a thrilling story and entertaining gameplay.
Verdict – 9.5
Accessibility verdict: not playable by the Blind
Review copy provided by WB games via CD media sa
Victor Dima
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