The Harry Potter universe has finally come to life for many who enjoy video games and gaming with the creation and launch of Hogwarts Legacy. Released on Feb. 10, Hogwarts Legacy is a single-player open world game where you create your own wizard or witch and attend the famous school Hogwarts. The timeline of the game is about 100 years before the titular character Harry Potter attended the school and the events in the books and movies occurred. 

Hogwarts Legacy was developed by Avalanche Software and was published by Warner Bros and Portkey Games. The game was announced in Sept. 2020, and after three years of creation and development, it’s here. But there is controversy, The author of Harry Potter, J.K Rowling, previously came out with anti-transgender statements which caused many to not want the game to be launched because she gets a royalty for each Harry Potter item game or movie. This aggravated many people to want to ‘’cancel” the game including streamers who are playing the game. 

I do not support or agree with the statement J.K. Rowling said. However, It hasn’t stopped me from playing and enjoying the game. I am loving the game very much and have been taking up a lot of the time I spend at home. I really enjoyed Harry Potter so I was waiting and very excited for the game to come out. But even if you don’t know much about Harry Potter you can still play and enjoy the game. 

In Hogwarts Legacy, there are hours and hours of gameplay. There is always a quest or mission that you can do. The main story is around 35 hours and adding the side missions it has a total of 50 hours of playing time. Meeting new characters, new spells, and new magical creatures allows there to always be something to spark interest.  

You begin the game by creating a character on your way to Hogwarts with professor Fig, one of the main characters in the game. You make it to Hogwarts and the sorting hat chooses your house: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin. When choosing a house you get a pathway that sets your story in place. When progressing through the game there are choices that you make that affect the outcome of your gameplay.  

One of the game aspects that was either going to make or break the whole thing is the combat system. You get a variety of spells in the game that you can use when fighting. Enemies have shields and there are different levels of how strong the shield is which you can disarm with various spells. One thing fans were really looking for was the unforgivable curses which are Crucio, Imperio and Avada Kedavra, These are all available to learn and master in the game. However, you have to get the deluxe edition to access them early in the game when playing the standard edition you have to progress very far in the storyline to start unlocking the curses. Unlocking these spells it adds to the fun and variety when fighting and casting spells at enemies. 

Not only can you use the spells you learn to fight, but you also use them thrown out the map to solve puzzles and find collectibles. When solving these puzzles you can get gear that you can apply to your character which can upgrade certain stats that you have which include health, offense and defense. A problem I have with the gear is you have barely any inventory space to hold all the items you get. And the only way to increase the space is by doing puzzles that are hard to find and hard to do and get annoying after the third one. 

There are not many negatives when talking about Hogwarts Legacy. It’s a very fun game with so much to do. I enjoyed playing and exploring and I can strongly say many others agree. The customization with the exploration is almost magical; It creates the world of Harry Potter but it’s your story. The game has a lot of attention to detail; you can go anywhere in the castle and explore everywhere you can see. I think if you have the chance and the game system you should play Hogwarts Legacy. The story is amazing and the experience is one of the best in the video game world.