Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy fulfilled an old gamer wish for an open-world wizarding school game, setting it in the nineteenth century, long before the events of the well-known books. The player creates their own student, who enrolls straight into the fifth year and simultaneously discovers that they can see ancient magic no one else perceives. The main storyline leads to a mystery hidden beneath the school, but around it spreads an entire region with villages, caves, poacher camps, and guarded chests that will keep players occupied for dozens of hours.

Combat is fully action-based: the player assigns spells to buttons, combines attacks to break shields, lifts enemies into the air, and supplements them with potions and plants from their own greenhouse. Outside of combat, they attend classes, solve puzzles, fly on a broomstick and on winged creatures, and manage the Room of Requirement, a customizable space of their own where they keep rescued magical animals and craft equipment. Choosing a house affects the common room and a handful of quests, but the main story remains shared. There are also flying lessons, duels with wizards in an arena, and collecting pages from books that expand knowledge about the world.

On PlayStation 5 the game offers several visual modes, including one with ray tracing, and fast loading that helps a lot given how intricate the building is. Its strongest asset is precisely the depiction of the castle itself: moving paintings, shifting staircases, and detailed interiors rank among the best-designed things licensed games have offered. The transition between the castle and the open countryside happens without visible loading, and the music builds on familiar themes without merely repeating them. Reviews were mostly positive, with reservations about repetitive side activities and a story that doesn't reach the quality of its setting. For fans of the source material, though, it's the closest possible approximation of what actually studying at such a school might be like.