I wonder it’s because it attracted a bunch of people who weren’t into games, but are huge Harry Potter fans.
It’s also on every platform, including the Switch, while TotK is just on the Switch.
Yep it’s an unfair comparison. If Zelda was available on all platforms then it might have been a different story.
Yeah this feels like a Look What They Have to Do (release on every system) to Mimic a Fraction of Our Power (be Zelda) meme.
I think you just nailed it, this is exactly why.
Honestly it was just a good game. I saw it attracting both Potterheads and non-Potterheads. (I would not consider myself a Potterhead).
Does it have a bunch of replay value? Not really (neither do a lot of games). But man, that initial playthrough was just really good. It also looks like I clocked 113 hours on the game, so that’s a pretty decent return to me.
Also, despite the source material and the author, it had a lot of very inclusive elements, which were a nice touch.
if you seriously think this game was special, I have a far cry themed bridge to sell you
I absolutely loved hogwarts legacy personally. Any other year it would have won more awards, just that Baldurs Gate and Alan Wake were even better. We really were spoiled in 2023
Meh I wouldn’t be so sure about that… a lot of it was absolutely forgetable.
Yeah, lucky us, the largest transphobe in the world sold the most popular game in the world. As a trans person, I feel so spoiled and lucky!
Boo hoo.
Didn’t take much to make you go mask off…
I don’t know what “mask off” means, sorry. I’m sure it was clever, no doubt.
She didn’t sell the game, she only lend the IP.
Avalanche Software nor Warner Bro’s are anti-trans. As shown in the game where you can make a full fledged trans protagonist including your pronouns.
She makes money, directly and indirectly from the success of this game. She increases her relevance and thus the weight of her voice with the ongoing success of the game.
I’m playing this game right now and it’s honestly a six out of 10. The only reason to launch the game at all is because of the world design which is top notch. So top notch it scores all of those six points, because the plot characters story and gameplay are all a let down otherwise. This is the type of game that will disable the controls for your magical flying broom and then tell you that you need to climb a wall. I wish it wasn’t so successful so they didn’t think this formula was so good, because if they made the game actually good AND a Harry Potter property, that would have really been something special. But as it is now, it’s just an uninspired video game painted in a pretty coat of a popular franchise. I’m sure we’ll get a sequel.
I would have loved to have this game as a kid. It may be a 6 out of 10 but most of the other harry potter shovelware they shit out when the movies were coming was at best a 0.2 out of 10. The only arguably not that bad one was the prisoner of azkaban movie based game.
IDK. Most of the early games were actually pretty entertaining. I fairly recently played sorcerer’s stone on the gbc, and it was still pretty fantastic.
I’m curious, what open world games do you rate as a 9 or 10? I’m not saying Hogwarts did anything revolutionary, but it did most things pretty solidly. It’s been a while since Ive played an open world game that does a good job on making the world actually feel alive.
Witcher 3 I’d rate 9/10.
Not the person you asked, but for me personally to rate some open world games:
- Hogwarts: 4-5/10. It’s pretty damn bad IMO, beyond the fan pandering.
- Avatar Frontiers of Pandora: 5-7/10, it’s a slightly worse Far Cry (which is already damn tepid) but looks insanely pretty which makes it a good braindead time waster.
- Cyberpunk 2077: Originally 2/10, laughably underdesigned and so buggy it felt like industry-criticizing sarcasm. Nowadays 7/10 if including the expansion, still quite buggy but not in a bad way, and the redesigned combat and character systems feel artificial but pretty fun. City still too dead and underdesigned, sadly.
- Skyrim: 6-7/10, damn impressive at the time, but only briefly as the game was shallow as all hell, even in its best moments. Still impressive but it’s all on the mods and hence the players, not the game designers.
- Witcher 3: 8-9/10, essentially same design flaws as modern CP2077, but given its fantasy world suffers much less from it, of course the empty countryside is, well, empty.
- Subnautica: 10/10, amazing horror vibes, good progression, not too open and not too confined, focus on exploration.
- Outer Wilds: 10/10, completely open and pure exploration, reductive game design done perfectly right.
the redesigned combat and character systems feel artificial but pretty fun
What do you even mean by this? Artificial gameplay?
I got Subnautica for free twice (PlayStation and Epic), I should really look at giving it a proper try. I have the feeling it’d be really good in VR, played No Man’s Sky in VR recently and I immediately loved it while on flatscreen it didn’t click with me as much.
Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 are both up there for me.
Subnautica gets a 9/10. Fallout 2 and 3, if we’re specifically going RPGs. NieR: Automata for action RPGs. Look at Persona for school influenced RPGs. I’d have geeked out so hard if we got even Persona-style class experiences in Hogwarts Legacy. Instead, all we get is completely contextless montage cutscenes.
Yeah I wish Hogwarts Legacy had taken more inspiration from Persona. Having a schedule, working on social links, engaging in fun activities outside of school, it all lends itself incredibly well to a Hogwarts game.
Unfortunately it sounds like the creators haven’t ever even touched a Persona game. I remember before the game launched they were asked if there’d be romance options, and they seemed almost offended by the thought since the characters are kids, despite Persona doing the same for literal decades.
Going to a ball in Hogwarts Legacy, or going on a date in Hogsmeade, would’ve been so much fun too.
Imagine that, teens dating… What a wild concept, they didn’t even had to play Persona, our own culture is filled with teen drama series, even DC made gotham academy.
I bought it and was hoping for more leveling up and more RPG elements but it wasn’t.
I really liked the side quests though. It felt like every single one involved going to a cave, finding out the NPC’s friend/relative was dead, and then report back. It definitely didn’t get old after the first dozen or so.
Also, the Merlin trials were great. Hundreds of locations, but only like 6 different puzzles.
I haven’t played a game where the devs copy/pasted that much in a while.
I really liked the side quests though. It felt like every single one involved going to a cave, finding out the NPC’s friend/relative was dead, and then report back. It definitely didn’t get old after the first dozen or so.
Sounds exactly like Skyrim tbh…
where do we find the stats for zelda?
I pirated the game. The first part in the actual school was really fun. But once you get out into the world, you quickly realise that it’s just another generic open world game with outposts, collectibles, and general busywork that you’ve seen in every other open world game. It got boring very quickly for me and I never finished it.
I was very interested in mods for this game, people found all kinds of fun cut stuff that would’ve elevated this game so much like companions having commentary for several quests when you used a mod to bring them, and having actual consequences for using the dark arts. But it’s impossible to implement.
I agree. The magical feeling of being a student at Hogwarts soon evaporated as soon as you got a broom and didn’t really need to visit Hogwarts again and instead just fight endless random enemies, which gets pretty easy as you level up.
I was also disappointed by the endless voice acting. There was so much pointless talking and you couldn’t really control the outcome, all options seemed to result in a positive outcome when I just wanted to be a badass Malfoy but you’re not allowed, you jave to be a goody goody Hermione, juat in Slytherin clothes.
I also pirated it, and yeah, I definitely got my money’s worth from it. I tried to have fun, but it’s the poster child for “mile wide, inch deep.”
Maybe they can reuse the environment for a better game in the future.
The open world Zeldazes were over hyped but still, really? I haven’t played it myself but watching others play, it didn’t seem all that great.
It really isn’t. They want you to play through each house but it’s literally the same story regardless of which house you choose.
The game is only fun until the hype of exploring Hogwarts fades. Then it’s just your average mid tier adventure game.
It only survived because it’s Harry Potter.
Edit: The broom flying was cool af though I’ll give them that
Edit 2 is what I needed to hear to know that this is definitely not for me.
Hogwarts Legacy is a 7.5 of 10. It’s a fun game. But it’s not revolutionary or break new ground. I hadn’t played Tears of the Kingdom.
The two things the boycott did is the make the trans community look bad and made people hate them. The final thing was to give the game free advertising.
Here’s a video about the Harry Potter IP. Like who owns the rights to the games, books, plays, and so on.
If you hated trans people because some people online told you to boycott the product of a piece of shit celeb, not gonna lie dude you were a shit person and it had nothing to do with seeing the backlash to the game.
No joke, if this drama in any way altered your opinion of “trans folk” as a concept, you need to sit yourself down in front of a mirror and not get back up until youve fixed the rot in your personality. Utterly brainless take.
I was talking about the harassment and doxing of people who played/streamed Hogwarts Legacy during the boycott.
Honestly surprised that people seem to have forgotten about the harassment. It was really bad for some streamers and was inexcusable. It’s like how gamingcirclejerk tried to deny that the harassment even happened.
They didn’t forgot about the harassment. They’re playing dumb.
If some completely anonymous random strangers doxxing people you dont know made you hate trans folk as a concept, it had literally nothing to do with the doxxing and you know it.
What a stupid thing to say. Invest in therapy asap.
When did I say I hate trans people? All I did is to point out an problem with the boycott. You had a group of people who harass and dox people. That group made trans people look bad. Keep on looking the other way. That will totally help the trans community. /s
It didnt make trans people look bad, because trans people arent a hive mind.
If this made trans people look bad to you, you are just a bigot looking for an excuse. You already hated them, this did not magically change anything
We’re done here. It was nice talking to you.
Nooooooooo!
I mean both were good games, but Zelda is just legendary status and on another level. It holds a special place for me, and they somehow nailed it out of the park yet again with TOTK. I don’t know how they keep doing it! They have some geniuses over there.
Never got into Harry Potter since I was too old. This game was really fun to just explore and I constantly felt a forward momentum. Some of the stories were good, and some were awful.
I would absolutely play a sequel just based on the well done sense of discovery alone. I just wish more of what you found was impactful instead of cosmetic.
On the one hand, I agree about wishing there was more to find than a new color cloak, but on the other hand I think it’s a neat way to keep the game approachable to more casual gamers (and to try and get as many Harry Potter fans to get it as possible). That being said, I would have liked if there were more challenge, and something other than just flat stat improvements could have been a way to keep that interesting if they had higher difficulties.
I get it, but it doesn’t have to be just pure stats. Could have been mild ability improvements or something or maybe changed some of the effects or visual things that occurred around you. Hell, even walking speed improvement or something like a tone to help you locate hidden items.
There’s a lot they could have done considering we’re dealing with magical items! Still had a pretty good time with it overall though.
Zelda was more fun though
Zelda would have been even more fun if it was available on every platform instead of just Nintendo.
That’s it, I never played Nintendo games because I never had their hardware. For me personally it’s just not worth getting into their closed ecosystem. Basically same reason I never had anything apple.
It’s available on PC.
PC gamers even got it before nintendo ones.
I only played the unpatched version with the dupe glitches, that was super fun.
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its not insane unless you’re doing completionist stuff, you can easily cap a few sets of armor for key purposes just with chest loot and some monster mashing.
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Genuinely curious which game has more “Hours Played”. I’m willing to put money down on it being Zelda.
I thought it was a great game that captured the spirit of the books & movies so well. Thankfully all the mock outrage and virtue signaling didn’t affect its sales and probably boosted them.
mock?
Yes. Some game “reviews” were such absurd, performative straw man attacks at JK Rowling that they bordered on parody. I’m thinking of the Wired one in particular but others were equally bad. The irony is these diatribes clearly helped the game, or rather, this really good game sold well in spite of that crap. Ultimately these websites just undermined their own reputations.
Considering one of the main hubs for outrage was /r/GamingCirclejerk who themselves use the defense of “lmao this list of streamers playing wizard game totally isn’t an invite to harass them. This is a joke subreddit why are you taking it seriously?!”.
I can hardly blame people for thinking the outrage was fake. Some of it was so over the top it was insane
That said, fuck J.K Rowling, and fuck her opinions
I bought the game only because of the obnoxious virtue signaling cunts screaming about boycott.
Ended up enjoying it tremendously and playing it way too much.
So, thanks to obnoxious virtue signaling lynch mob I guess.
There is something to be said about voting with your wallet and boycotting people who actively donate to anti-lgbt organisations.
But christ was that particular boycott super fucking obnoxious.
I thought the game was kinda mid. The first part in Hogwarts was amazing, the rest of the game turned into the standard open world grind a bit too quickly for me.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I can see how you did 😁
If you have nothing else to play and want a simple open world game set in and around Hogwarts, it’s perfectly servicable as long as you pirate it. Don’t expect to be blown away by it though.
I assumed that after literally nobody or any media outlets have talked about it since release. Telltale sign of bang on average game. Probably great for potter fans and boring for those who don’t care or haven’t seen the films/read the books.
I would - and I hate my saying this - rather recommend Avatar then. Yeah it’s a Ubisoft game. I know. Yeah, it needs a beefier machine to actually look really pretty.
But oh my fucking hell is it pretty when cranked up. And it helps the generic open world gameplay a lot to be this awesome looking. Fun to just wander around and take in the scenery, even when you leave the jungle areas and go to the plains and see the wind-swept grass and all.
The people who tried cancelling the game are the reason it sold so well and that is hilarious. Everyone was talking about it, any advertising is good advertising
Brain dead contrarians that have no thoughts and opinions of their own beyond “how do I piss people off?”
The boycotters or the people who played the game?
Completed both 100% and they’re such great fun games.
Hogwarts was awesome to walk through the wizardry world. Battling wizards, poachers, spiders, etc. Finding all the secrets and going through the story. Finished the game in a week, I just couldn’t put the controller down.
