Hogwarts Legacy

First, you'll be annoyed at how often you have to swap out your spells to solve puzzles. Then you'll be annoyed at how all the puzzles are, essentially, just picking the right spell and most of those spells are just different versions of the same spell. Get read to push, pull, levitate, and drop. Then get a spell that does all of those but just not with enough force. Sometimes the puzzle is you asking, "Why am I climbing this thing? I can literally fly." But the game says no, so pick the right up or down spell unless it's a push which is what works on wheels despite most wheels making things go up or down. This sounds like user error, I promise you that there will be several times where you'll go, "Okay. Yeah. Sure. Whatever." You'll fight the same four unchallenging spongy enemies over and over and then there's also some Pokemon thrown into a the room mechanic you'll likely not use. You'll fill your gear slots every thirty minutes and then have to break into several menus to travel to a shop to sell some (one at a time with extended button press), which I really hope you like the menu's overall look because you're going to spend a lot of time in there accidentally hitting the wrong fast travel or world button. The reward for collecting hidden stuff is an unlocking spell that adds even more gear you won't use. The map isn't the most helpful thing in the world, either, which makes sense because it's difficult to make a 3d map of a place that's designed to confuse and annoy you. You'll get the basic gist of where to go eventually but by then you're probably burnt out on wandering the halls running into the same puzzles over and over. Here and there you'll receive several pieces of mail at the same time telling you that you need to buy or grow stuff to use on those same enemies in order to advance in your classes where you'll learn another spell that does the same basic stuff as the last spell. Sometimes those spells will work where you want them, sometimes you're just gonna have to swap spell palettes or just manually reset your spell buttons since you're just going to have to reset it again after walking ten feet. In the end it's pretty funny that in a series where people famously point out obvious flaws that make the entire setting fall apart if you take the time to think about it, they managed to make a game that does exactly that with the fun addition of making YOU look at your screen and ask why you're doing any of this when there's a clear solution that's much, much simpler. There's a lot of baffling design decisions, poor optimization, and borrowed stuff from other (better) open world games that feel like folks were checking boxes. After the third try of installing and working may way into it, I just don't care. The nostalgia is strong, but not strong enough to make me care about literally anyone you talk to. It's like being stuck in a creative writing class full of people who are pretending to know how to read. Everyone sure is eager but there's some serious lacking in the basics. At least we didn't get as many racist names in the game about stopping what's basically a slave revolt against incredibly bad masters. If you need a skinner box with some nostalgia that pairs decently well with a couple edibles, go for it. But you won't feel smart or accomplished or really even feel like you had a great experience. It's a shiny box, though.