I was over 20 hours into Hogwarts Legacy before it revealed that, on top of being an expansive RPG with skill trees, wizard combat, crafting, environmental puzzles and loads of sidequests, it’s also a quaint home-decorating game with a splash of zoo management. This is a much larger game than I think anyone was anticipating and as I’ve completed the main quest and dozens of sidequests over 50 hours, I’m still surprised by how good each individual element is.
It suffers from a meandering start and distracting technical issues, but once I was set free to explore the entirety of Hogwarts and miles of countryside surrounding it, I enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy in the same ways I did The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2: moseying across a convincingly rendered world at my own pace, letting myself disappear into a character I’m invested in.
Like those open-world classics I just mentioned, Hogwarts Legacy is a game you’ve probably played before, but also a rarity: a big-budget RPG attempting to bottle up all of the prestige, splendour and expectations of a massive media property into a seamless sandbox. For the most part, it nails it. This is Harry Potter’s Arkham Asylum moment – a game telling its own story in an established world, unshackled by the restrictive deadlines and creative boundaries of a movie tie-in, created by a studio that was itself once relegated to obligatory marketing products like Toy Story 3: The Video Game.
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Denne historien er fra May 2023-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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A New Dawn - The rise, fall and rise again of PC Gaming in Japan
The so-called 'Paso Kon' market (ie katakana's transliteration of 'Pasonaru Computa') in Japan was originally spearheaded in the 1980s by NEC's PC-8800 and, later, its PC-9800.
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE
Enter the multiverse of modness.
SLIDES RULE
Redeeming a hated puzzle mechanic with SLIDER
GODS AND MONSTERS
AGE OF MYTHOLOGY: RETOLD modernises a classic RTS with care
PHANTOM BLADE ZERO
Less Sekiro, more Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
STARR-MAKING ROLE
Final Fantasy XVI's BEN STARR talks becoming a meme and dating summons
THIEF GOLD
Learning to forgive myself for knocking out every single guard.
HANDHELD GAMING PCs
In lieu of more powerful processors, handhelds are getting weirder
FAR FAR AWAY
STAR WARS OUTLAWS succeeds at the little things, but not much else shines
FINDING IMMORTALITY
Twenty-five years on, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT is still one of the most talked-about RPGs of all time. This is the story of how it was created as a ‘stay-busy’ project by a small team at Black Isle Studios
