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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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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.