[Edward64]

In progress review by PCGamer and I’m liking what I’ve read. Large world to explore.

It will also benefit the talented folks at Avalanche Software, who have built a rich, almost annoyingly detailed world that routinely exceeds its source material in terms of quality and inclusivity. Hogwarts Legacy is full of simple but harmonious systems that keep things fun and accessible:

Wizard duels: A unique take on ranged combat where no aiming is required but spacing, dodging, and countering are key. Think Batman with cooldowns (and more murder).

Exploration: The world is surprisingly large, and gets bigger when you can simply fly anywhere you want, anytime.

Loot: Your clothes, cloaks, scarves, facewears, and hats have Destiny-like offensive/defensive stats, but you can just set your cosmetic look to whatever you want.

Collectibles: There's a seemingly endless list of things to find across Hogwarts, often concealed behind a micro-puzzle. Not enticing enough to seek out, but fun to grab on the way to bigger things.

Talking: You do a lot of it, often with two or three dialogue choices that express a chosen personality within bounds (but only rarely seem to influence the outcome of interactions).

The Room of Requirement: A personalized living space for your wizard with an almost Animal Crossing-level of decoration options. Eventually, it gets a lot bigger.

Maybe the single most distinctive and impressive aspect of Hogwarts Legacy is Hogwarts itself. Developers love to describe their games as "living, breathing worlds" but it's hard to think of a better way to characterize the titular castle.

You can't walk 10 feet without a part of Hogwarts castle coming alive: books reorganize themselves on shelves, suits of armor salute passerbys, hedges trim themselves to perfection, ghosts float around telling jokes, textbooks flutter above passing students, and paintings animate or conversate as if the MOMA switched to the .gif standard.