YMMV / Hogwarts Legacy

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Despite being a teenager with no implied battle experience, the protagonist shows absolutely no reaction to killing sapients like Goblins and other humans. They can even do things like permanently turning enemies into chickens or turning them into a barrel before chucking them at their friends. In fact, the three or four digit body count is completely outside of the Potter franchise. Your character will kill more people in their first jaunt outside the castle than Harry did in all 7 books.
  • In the opening cinematic, your character and Fig see a man eaten alive by a dragon. Despite that, when they use the portkey, Fig immediately goes into "explore this cool thing" rather than "My friend of so many years is gone", and the student is barely phased despite it explicitly being their first experience with death since the thestrals appear.
  • It goes the opposite way, too, with the Student and even their friends being remarkably chill about enemies casting Avada Kedavra at them. It's one thing to be attacked with regular combat spells, but the Killing Curse is like someone who had been wielding a BB gun so far suddenly launching a tactical nuke at you. You'd expect some justified terror at being on the receiving end of this curse, but the characters just go "eh, whatever" and continue like nothing happened. The only exception is Amit, who freaks out at being attacked and bails, unfortunately dropping from the game.
• Award Snub: Some fans have been very disappointed to learn that the game was not named for Game of the Year or Best RPG in 2023. That being said, some have also admitted that this is fair considering that 2023 has been packed with games considered masterpieces and once-in-a-generation kind of classics, which is a level that despite its quality, Hogwarts Legacy may not have achieved.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Being able to suddenly cast "Avada Kedavra" out of nowhere can be quite funny... but the fact that the faculty and students only give them a minor tongue lashing if they see it makes it utterly hilarious.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Some players think Zenobia Noke is autistic, considering her lack of understanding of social cues when it comes to her hyperfixation on Gobstones and her bluntness.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Herbology Professor Mirabel Garlick plays only a minor role in the game, her biggest scene being in the introduction to Herbology, teaching the protagonist two spells later on, and not even showing up for the Final Battle. Despite this, she instantly became popular among the playerbase, in no small part for her Sensei-chan design and cheery personality.
  • Ominis Gaunt stands out as the most developed Hogwarts student who's not one of the protagonist's primary companions. He's a visually impaired character, a Slytherin that's vehemently against dark magic and not a bad guy in any way, the Only Sane Man and The Woobie in his family, with a Dark and Troubled Past on top of being distantly related to Lord Voldemort, used to have a Two Guys and a Girl relationship with Sebastian and Anne, and if you decide to accuse Sebastian and have him sent to Azkaban they'll get a heavy dose of We Used to Be Friends to boot; all of which just primes him to become Fanfic Fuel.
• Epileptic Trees: There's an automatic filter in the character's creation menu, preventing you from giving inappropriate names to the protagonist or the rescued magical beasts. The presence of a profanity filter in a currently single player-only game has resulted in some players speculating a multiplayer mode would be added in a future update.
• Escapist Character: The protagonist is an Instant Expert who can seemingly master any spell, is the Chosen One, has access to ancient magics that would make even Voldemort green with envy, and are so skilled/strong that they can take down entire groups of Dark Wizards and monsters without breaking a sweat. All this while still being a teenager who only just enrolled in Hogwarts at the story's beginning, something completely unheard of — this character is solely meant for the player to put themselves in the world of Harry Potter and go as buck wild as they, please.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Unforgivable Curses make almost every battle a breeze, even more so when it becomes clear that there's no consequences for using them unless you count maybe getting a light reprimand here and there. In general, all of them are able to break through enemy shields, forgoing the need to diversify your spell list.
    • Crucio stuns the target in place, while they suffer damage over time. You can incapacitate the most frustrating foe this way.
    • Imperio turns an enemy into an ally. Cast this on the strongest foe and watch them tear through their allies. When it’s only them left, you can just spam Petrificus Totalus on them or simply cast the below spell to finish them off.
    • Avada Kedavra instantly kills your target. Combine this with the Talent that allows it to instantly kill all enemies with the Curse debuff and you won't need anything else to clear out enemy groups.
  • The Focus Potion is far and away the best support item, as it lets you spam pretty much every spell in the game. Its upgrade even recharges its duration every time you cast a spell, meaning the odds of it running down in a fight are essentially zero.
  • The traits you can weave into high-level outfits are extremely powerful. The tier-3 versions seem to roughly double the effect of whatever they're attuned to, and their effects stack. There's a trait that increases the damage of all Damage-type spells. Equip two or three of them and almost any Damage spell can now one-shot basic enemies, two-shot elites, and in case of Confringo or Bombarda, wipe out entire enemy squads in a single cast. The best thing is that you don't need to grind through the lower trait tiers first to unlock tier 3. If you know which enemy camp holds the trait you seek, you can waltz right in, defeat a few enemies and turn yourself into a wizard god. Combine with the Focus potion mentioned above for maximum ridiculousness.
  • The Glacius/Diffindo combo absolutely ruins enemies health, especially if you put severing traits on to your clothing, most enemies will die to one use of this combo, with more powerful enemies such as Trolls usually only requiring an extra 1-2 casts to die.
  • Chinese Chomping Cabbages are no slouch on the battlefield even in their vanilla form, but with a Room of Requirement upgrade that doubles the amount you throw out and the traits Fangs and Herbology, they take down mobs and bosses alike in seconds.
  • Once you unlock the breeding pen upgrade for the vivariums, having at least one male and one female of a given beast species in a vivarium basically gives access to an unlimited money maker (by selling babies to the Brood and Peck store in Hogsmeade).
• Good Bad Bugs: You're meant to only access the common room of your own house and not any of the others. However, due to some aggressive occlusion culling, it's possible to glitch under the Transfiguration Courtyard and fly around an unloaded Hogwarts. If you know the locations of the three other common rooms, you can then simply fly towards those parts of the castle and dismount your broom at a specific point to load in the interiors, leaving you free to explore to your heart's content. The Floo Flames for the other houses aren't marked on the map even if you unlock them, however.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Yuna Yoshino voices Imelda Reyes in the Japanese dub of the game. Later the same year she voiced Lesedi Ingwe in the anime adaptation of the very Harry Potter-inspired Reign of the Seven Spellblades.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The game’s biggest antagonists, Rookwood and Ranrok, are somewhat interesting characters. Rookwood has a charming personality whilst Ranrok leads a badass army of goblins. The same cannot be said for the two nameless students who attempt to hurt animals and mock Poppy for interfering. Despite making only one small appearance in the game, the player standing up against them is much more cathartic for some players than defeating the game’s main villains.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Lucan Brattleby, a third year who is the leader of a ‘secret’ fight club within Hogwarts, and proves to be quite a tough opponent during his duel, despite his young age.
  • The playable character is this in combination with being a Memetic Psychopath, with many going so far as to claim that the playable character is a dark wizard as powerful as Voldemort, despite being a fifth year.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "You wouldn't believe how inconvenient travel was before I invented Floo Powder."^ExplanationBefore the March patch significantly toned it down, Floo Powder inventor Ignatia Wildsmith talked to you almost every time you pass or fast travel to a Floo Flames location, with this being one of several frequently repeated lines. It became so much of an annoyance at launch that one of the very first mods of the game involved muting her.
    • "What are you up to now?" ^Explanation Another one of Ignatia Wildsmith's frequent lines.
    • "Deek thinks you should be proud of all the potions you've brewed." ^Explanation Deek often repeats this particular line when idling in the Room of Requirement in the same vein.
    • "It seems like all roads leads to Hogsmeade." / "It doesn't get any cosier than Hogsmeade."^Explanation One of the protagonist's repeated lines when in and around Hogsmeade.
  • "Nobody will believe me I defeated an Ashwinder by myself" ^ExplanationBy the time the protagonist is fighting Ashwinders, they're already famous for having defeated a troll in Hogsmeade, so defeating an Ashbringer shouldn't be so incredible. Like the above, they can repeat this particular line.
  • Spoiling the ending to Hogwarts Legacy, in keeping with the tradition of Harry Potter memes, though for this game it's less people goofing around and more maliciously spoiling people so they won't play the game, or ruining it for those who have yet to finish it due to the controversy surrounding it. One particularly popular copypasta mentions an event that happens "in all possible endings".
  • Quidditch DLC when?^ExplanationDespite having pretty well-designed broomstick flight mechanics, the game released without a Quidditch minigame whatsoever, with the headmaster Nigelus Black cancelling the popular Quidditch Cup and even banning the sport off the Hogwarts' ground for that year due to an injury during the last final being the sole lore explanation. Fans are understandably anticipating a Quidditch DLC in the future.
  • Free Biscuit!^ExplanationOne sidequest has you go rescue someone's pet Mooncalf, Biscuit, from poachers. However, if you had already come across the poacher camp before while exploring and happened to unlock the cage used in the quest, the quest became Unintentionally Unwinnable, as the lock would not respawn and Biscuit (and several other Mooncalf) would be stuck in the cage, unable to be rescued. This phrase began circulating as players waited for a patch so they could save Biscuit... which eventually happened.
  • "What on earth are they teaching you at that school these days?" "AVADA KEDAVERA!" ^{Explanation, spoilers ahead} In the "Minding Your Own Business" quest, you find that Cassandra Mason has been trying to sell her shop to people, but in reality getting them trapped in a chest and tormented by a poltergeist until they're driven mad and sent to St. Mungos. In her ensuing fight and after lowering her health to a certain amount, she says the line above as a taunt. Many videos have surfaced with players responding with the other spell above, the killing curse. Considering her crimes though, it's likely a warranted response.
  • "Torture a burning enemy." ^Explanation The hilariously dark Dueling Feat that pops up after learning Crucio, the Torture curse, just known for being overkill for no real reason. The fact that it's unclear who is making these feats (the protagonist, Professor Weasley, or a sentient Field Guide), adds to the morbid ridiculousness of this particular feat.
  • "The protagonist is a dark wizard even more dangerous than Voldemort." ^Explanation Due to Protagonist being seen as a combination of Memetic Badass and Memetic Psychopath by the fandom, many have gone so far as to claim that the playable character is potentially even more dangerous than Voldemort.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Poppy Sweeting became this before the game even released, with fans running with a vague character profile describing her as hating poachers and liking magical beasts more than people, using this to claim that her sidequest would amount to hunting down, torturing, and assassinating poachers or anyone who commits even the most minor crimes against animals while showing a violent disregard for human life in the process. It also doesn't help that her response to the player using the Unforgivable Curses is more or less a cheerfully put "Looks like someone's not afraid of the Dark Arts!". Compare this to how Amit and Natsai respond more fearfully or angrily, and to Sebastian's more approving stance due to teaching you those in the first place.
  • The Player Character themselves. After it was learned that the game would allow you to use the Unforgiveable Curses and that there would be no in-game punishment for doing so, many players began joking about how their character would start using the Unforgiveable Curses left, right, and center on anyone at any time for any reason. Even without the Curses, the sheer number of casualties they rack up over the course of the game made some players think that it would give Voldemort a run for his money. This also leads to jokes about the player being the resident of Azkaban instead. There are also jokes about the protagonist's tendency to break into people's houses to steal clothes right in front of the house's residents with the idea they don't say anything because they're terrified of the protagonist.
• Nightmare Retardent: The game does its best to make Ranrok an intimidating villain. But it can be very hard to take him seriously, being that he's a stumpy, 3 foot tall goblin.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Although not based on any of the Harry Potter films or books and employs Broad Strokes in regards to the Wizarding World franchise, the game is very well regarded by fans despite the negative reputation surrounding it up to its release.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity:
  • Before the game was released, several news outlets and influencers called for a boycott due to Harry Potter's author J. K. Rowling's statements about transgender people and accusations of antisemitism. Despite the negative tone of this coverage, the game's profile was raised, pre-sales increased, and it topped multiple sales charts a month before its release. It ultimately became the most streamed game on Twitch on its opening week with 1.2 million concurrent viewers and, according to SteamDB, the 8th most played game on Steam with over 800K players at its peak. Although given how monolithic the Wizarding World IP is even despite Rowling's controversies, such success was more or less guaranteed.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: While the game is considered a polished So Okay, It's Average game about Harry Potter, it has been massively overshadowed by the futile but militant attempt to force a boycott and associated backlash directed at J. K. Rowling's infamous statements about the transgender community and various accusations of antisemitism. For context of just how bad it got at the height of the drama, the collective hate towards Hogwarts Legacy caused several Vtubers to back out from playing the game out of fear of harassment, or in the case for Silvervale, actual harassment and doxxing to the point of a public breakdown. Making matters worse was a poor case of timing where one such VTuber, Amano Pikamee, extended her then-existing hiatus after getting harassed and shortly after her return, her graduation, something she had planned long before the hiatus, was announced. This caused several of her fans to think that the harassment was what caused her graduation or at the very least drastically accelerated her existing plans to do so, muddying the already muddy controversy and causing a massive counter backlash from the wider VTuber community.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first time shinies would be implemented into a non-Pokémon/Pokémon-related AAA title, though this would be the first game to implement them officially.
• Polished Port: The Nintendo Switch port has been largely praised as being one of the best attempts at porting a next-gen title to the Switch. While Portkey Games did have to cut down massively on the graphics, it's an otherwise smooth experience and relatively stable. If anything, the downgraded graphics are a point of praise towards the developers, especially when compared to larger games on next-gen consoles that were ported to the Switch that were unplayable or suffered a major hit in framerate and graphics, such as Mortal Kombat 1's infamous Switch port.
• Ron the Death Eater: A minor character called Leander Prewett (ironically an ancestor of the Trope Namer) is mentioned as being a bully, and makes one off-handed remark showing prejudice against Slytherin. Fans tend to flanderize him as being the school’s biggest bully who has an extreme hatred for everything that’s not related to Gryffindor. Whilst Leander definitely has his Jerkass moments, he’s mentioned as trying to live up to the Gryffindor legacy, and is shown to be affable to the player, no matter his or her house.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The game sours many of its otherwise great ideas by going overboard with the tired old formula of open world collectibles. For instance, Merlin trials are great little puzzles, but there's just so damn many of them (95 in total) that the constant repetition kills any fun after an hour at most. Unfortunately, ignoring them isn't really an option either because they're the only way to expand your severely limited inventory space. Collectible Chests and Field Guide Pages are similarly tedious, if not more so. It gets downright masochistic for anyone going after the "Collector's Edition" achievement, which requires finding and doing damn near everything there is to find and do in the game. Prepare for hours of grinding even with guides at hand.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Although there is no romance in the story, a certain sector of the fandom debates whether the protagonist should stay with Poppy or Sebastian.
• Signature Series Arc: For many people, Sebastian's questline stands out as the best written storytelling in the game. Even more so than the main story. Along with the fact that it's the questline that allows the player to learn the Three Unforgivable Curses, which it became a massive meme that the player could just go around using said curses everywhere without suffering any consequences whatsoever for using forbidden spells, the other part that really sticks out was how much the questline developed Ominis Gaunt despite him not being one of the player's primary companions.
• So Okay, It's Average: Once the various controversies died down, an interesting Four-Point Scale trend started to show up in reviews of the game: a surprising number of reviewers decided that, on its own merits, it was a pretty average open-world game "but it's Harry Potter so 8/10".
• Tainted by the Preview: Some players were put off by the game apparently having far fewer spells than other fantasy RPGs — 26 were revealed pre-release, compared to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim having 160 — as well as the game's user interface that drew unfavourable comparisons with Destiny 2.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Merlin's Beard!" requires solving every single Merlin Trial in the world. There are dozens upon dozens of these trials everywhere, and the few variations they have begin to repeat very quickly, making the whole thing tedious beyond words. And Merlin help you if you missed a couple of them while exploring the map. They don't get a map marker unless you came within about ten meters of their location, thus almost guaranteeing that you'll be forced to methodically scour the entire game world for that Last Lousy Point. Using Revelio on a mount will display their icons in-game from much further away, but that's never explained and the icons fade after a few seconds, forcing you to keep re-casting Revelio.
  • "Finishing Touches" requires defeating one of every single non-unique enemy type with Ancient Magic. There's 37 of them, spawns are largely randomized, some types spawn extremely rarely, and Ancient Magic is a Limit Break of sorts and thus isn't always available when you need it. Also, there's no in-game way to track your progress, so you better keep a pen or an Excel sheet at the ready. The spawning issue can be circumvented for the most part through the three Battle Arenas, but this still leaves the tracking issue.
  • "Collector's Edition" requires you to complete your "collections" in your Field Guide: finding all the Revelio pages, seeing every type of enemy, completing all the Challenges (e.g. astronomy tables, landing platforms, balloons, combat challenges), and collecting all the spellcrafts, brooms, wand handles, certain clothing, and beasts. This essentially requires 100% completion of the game as it entails exploring/completing every location, main story, and sidequest, and it's extremely easy to miss a collector's chest while exploring.
• That One Sidequest:
  • "Summoner's Court: Match 4". The previous three rounds were relatively easy so long as you knew how to time letting go of Accio. Even with the obstacles, getting more points than your opponent wasn't too bad. In match 4, however, the difficulty ramps up with Charlotte, who is significantly more skilled and actually uses the board's obstacles to her advantage, while the starting positions of your own balls make it nearly impossible to get around them yourself. She can even get a perfect score of 150, making beating her impossible that time around unless you're somehow precise enough to bump one of her balls off the board and drop her score. Not helping matters is the constant repeating of her saying "Precisely as planned" after every single turn with her extremely polite and soft spoken voice as she sarcastically commends you if you make a mistake, which will surely be grating on your ears by the third or fourth attempt. Match 5 (the final round) is far, far easier than Match 4, since your opponent will usually make a few mistakes himself, making it almost anticlimactic compared to Charlotte.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Much was made about Ranrok and Rookwood working together and their Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, it seems primed for an Inevitable Mutual Betrayal and/or an Enemy Mine moment where you can get Rookwood to side with you against Ranrok or even use sneak tactics to pit them against each other, but in the end Rookwood ends up confined to a couple of cutscenes, a Flunky Boss fight that will be a walk in the park since it plays out just like every other boss fight in the game, and... nothing more. Even his second-in-command Harlow is featured almost as much as him thanks to him being the bad guy in Natty's side story.
  • Ravenclaw's Amit Thakkar is the one companion student who doesn't get a character questline, which leaves him underdeveloped compared to Natsai, Poppy, and Sebastian. One missed opportunity is that Amit could have been the companion involved with supporting the protagonist throughout the main goblin questline due to his knowledge of the goblin language. However, Amit ended up bailing out after just one mission.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While the setting of the game is Hogwarts, and pre-release conversation focused a lot on fans finally experiencing studying at Hogwarts, the game actually drops the plot of going to class at Hogwarts pretty early on. The first few classes are mandatory and you'll be interacting with teachers and classmates but after those first few all subsequent classes are reduced to an assignment (that you'll complete outside of class in your own time) followed by a short cutscene with no audible dialogue and a short scene where each teacher will teach you one enchantment (often completely unrelated to their class) and then you won't see them again until the final quest to protect Hogwarts. Even lampshaded by Professor Weasley who complains to Headmaster Black about the main character spending so much time outside of the castle.
  • With all the talk about the Unforgivable Curses being evil to the point of people being imprisoned for life just for using them once, you'd think that unlocking and using them yourself would have consequences or be locked behind an "evil" route. Instead, you gain them without consequence through Sebastian's relationship quests, using them has no consequence whatsoever, and the only mention of their moral and legal issues is in regard to Sebastian's use of them, with the protagonist knowing them as well never even coming up.
  • Poppy's companion questline where the player and her are dealing with dark wizard poachers around Hogwarts can come off a tad underwhelming due to the lack of a named Arc Villain. You end up just fighting nameless poacher Mooks the whole time.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • You gain the ability to ride both a hippogriff and a graphorn. The mounts are so important that your broom is set to the third mount slot despite being the first one you get. However, riding hippogriff back is slower and more finicky than your broom and you get the graphorn two quests from the end. Neither are really that useful and are almost completely ignored in the rest of the game.
  • Some players have regretted Natty, Poppy, and Sebastian only go with the player during specific, scripted story sequences instead of being full fledged followers who can be freely hired outside of story missions.^note During fights, one of the player character's lines is to note they should have brought along a friend, which implies followers could have been a planned feature which was cut somewhat late during development.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The storyline involving Sebastian is meant to be seen as a Grey-and-Grey Morality situation, with him being too stubborn to stop trying to cure his sister Anne, even if it means using the forbidden Dark Arts to do so. Gameplay and Story Segregation aside, some players found themselves siding with him against his uncle, Solomon, due to his abrasive personality towards Sebastian during his introduction and almost every word coming out of his mouth being practically “Anne will be in pain for the rest of her life, nothing will work, just deal with it already.” Later on, when Sebastian uses the Imperius Curse to save Anne’s life, Solomon banishes him, not showing even a hint of gratefulness, and doesn’t acknowledge that she could’ve died without intervention despite that tidbit being brought up to him ''twice'', especially given that he had broken something that would have saved her life earlier. Although many agree that Sebastian went too far with killing his uncle, for others, it’s no wonder why Sebastian went to the lengths that he did. It also helps that many players don't want him to get sent to Azkaban, because regardless of what Sebastian did, he does not deserve to get kissed by a dementor. And if a seasoned wizard like Sirius Black barely survived his stay in Azkaban, chances are that a teenage boy probably wouldn't even last a year in there.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Solomon Sallow is meant to be seen as being morally right with his constant insistence that Anne's curse cannot be removed, and if it can, it most definitely cannot be done with the Dark Arts, which serves as the crux of the conflict between him and his nephew Sebastian. While he might be well-meaning, the fanbase is of a different opinion and in fact support Sebastian over him. Not helping matters is how, in Sebastian's second sidequest, he's an Ungrateful Bastard who banishes Sebastian from their home because he saved Anne from a Goblin by using Imperio on the latter, focusing more on the fact that Sebastian used the Dark Arts with zero hesitation and not even acknowledging how he saved Anne's life. Not to mention that he also ends up accusing the player of dabbling in the dark arts too without tangible proof (regardless if the player has chosen to learn the unforgivables or not, and even if they did, Solomon has no way of knowing that). It's to the point that while Solomon's death in-game at Sebastian's hands is treated as Sebastian having gone too far, players fully believe he had it coming after he cruelly and stupidly destroyed an artifact that was keeping the Inferi horde in check and might have saved his niece's life, and right in front of Sebastian no less when he went through so much trouble to get his hands on the damn thing, which then makes Sebastian lose control of his Inferi and further endangers both his own nephew and the player in the process. And then, to put the cherry on top of the cake, instead of helping the player and Sebastian fight off the Inferi, Solomon then decides to attack the player instead, despite the fact that the player tried to reason with him beforehand, all the while proclaiming that he’s doing this to save Sebastian. Most players agree that while Solomon has good reason to fear the dark arts, he just made things worse for everyone and things could’ve probably gone better if he hadn’t been there.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: While the character models and animation do a great job at presenting the story, there is usually a fraction of a second at the end of every line of dialogue where the character models go back to their default or blank state. It's quite jarring, especially with Herbology Professor Mirabel Garlick, who usually displays a sunny and bubbly disposition, but then goes blank at the end of every one of her lines. This is even more noticeable if you skip dialogue, since the character will immediately stop talking but it'll take a moment for the game to load the next bit of audio, making the blank stare state last longer than normal.

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