Hogwarts Legacy is a Lacklustre RPG Experience

Hogwarts Legacy is an action RPG title set in an open-world map based on the Harry Potter series by the infamous writer, J.K. Rowling. Announced in 2020, fans around the world couldn't wait to project themselves into the Wizarding World and attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — a dream of many that grew up with the books.

Except that... it's not really an RPG game; at least, it's not good at being one. Hogwarts Legacy's lacklustre RPG elements start from the very beginning with character customisation. If you have specific features that you want to add and create 'you' in the game, you're out of luck. You can make a choice from various faces with no sliders or customisation for your features aside from eye colour, eyebrows, skin colour, hair, and hair colour. 

It's underwhelming and disappointing. My wife often takes hours (yes, plural) creating a character and choosing a name; in Hogwarts Legacy, it was barely half an hour — and that's quick for her! After some complexion changes and a couple of minutes of deciding whether she wanted short hair that looked too much like a boy or long hair that she didn't like, and off we were into the Wizarding World.

 

I didn't give too much thought to the customisation options and moved on — most games get customisation wrong (COUGH World of Warcraft gnomes COUGH), and it ultimately doesn't entirely matter when it comes to roleplaying elements. Hogwarts Legacy's sins against the RPG element don't end there, and this is the least of them.

Many witches and wizards were excited to embark on a quest with heavy RPG elements where you get to inject yourself into a world unlike your own — one of the many reasons why The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is such a famous title. But, to compare Hogwarts Legacy with Skyrim is laughable at best and plain insulting at worst.

The second worst thing about Hogwarts Legacy's "RPG" elements is the dialogue options... or lack thereof. While your character (who is supposed to be you) talks however they want to in most cutscenes, you don't really get a lot of agency when it comes to the few choices you can make. Between pooping rainbows and flowers and bordering casting Avada Kedavra on every interaction, your character doesn't really have a "middle" option. You are either friendly or not, and it doesn't really seem to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

 

At this point, I felt pretty detached from my character; I don't get to "project" myself into the world, all the while being forced to choose between two dialogue options that either don't sound like me or are definitely nothing like I would have said in the situation.

But the worst of all is how my character — with issues deciding whether to be the nicest witch in the world or Voldemort's ancestor — just walks to shops and... steals. When you first go to Hogsmeade to get some supplies, you'll stumble upon various shops with a chest just sitting there waiting to be pilfered. And pilfer I did without any repercussions. One of the shops went out of their way to hide their chest by putting a bookshelf staircase that you have to decipher before you can get it — just that I solved it in front of the shopkeeper and stole his supplies right in front of him. And no one cared.

It isn't immersive, and it's difficult to imagine myself walking through the Wizarding World when my character does not look like me, act like me, or even seem to care for normal social rules like... not stealing. For a game that tells you that "your legacy is what you make it", I have had no agency in making my legacy at all.

 

All of this aside, though, despite how angry I try to sound and how insane my character's dialogue options are, Hogwarts Legacy may not be a great RPG title — if you can even call it an RPG at this point — but it is a good adventure title. No other game has ever depicted a magical world the way Hogwarts Legacy does, and the spell-focused fighting is incredible (or I assume, whilst I played it at 2FPS because of the optimisation issues), and the world feels the most "magical" I've ever experienced.

I may not be experiencing "my" legacy the way I was hoping to — like in Skyrim — but I am enveloped in a world that really engulfs you with magic unlike any other. Magic is around every corner and the world is gorgeous without a doubt — although I don't see "myself" in my character, it is no different than exploring the Nordic mythology as Kratos; it's not quite me, but it isn't the worst thing.

This is all to say that Hogwarts Legacy's RPG elements are lacklustre, but if you know what you're getting into, it won't be nearly as disappointing as it was to me. I love my witch, even if she is trying to diss everyone on her first interaction with them, and even if she isn't quite as much "me" as I was hoping she would be.