Okay, so I reserve the right to be as blunt and outspoken about my experience with Hogwarts Legacy as possible.

I just tried the Dark Arts Arena and I wasn’t aware that you couldn’t keep the dark curses, if you won the tournament. It’s just a short boss rush arena that doesn’t seem to have any impact on the story. I was so looking forward to this part and they ruined it.

The “gaming news” articles claiming Hogwarts Legacy runs on Steam Deck also seemed to be equivocating on the truth. Turns out, it only works on the LOWEST settings as per the game’s own recommendations when playing on Steam Deck and when watching cut scenes, it is actually choppy and cuts certain images out. I have the 512 GB Steam Deck, so gigabytes was not the issue.

I’m currently playing it on my PC and the spell combat is extremely annoying. I hooked up my PS4 controller to my Steam and every time I click R2, the character pauses inanely, and the triangle button sometimes uses the spell with R2 instead of the stupid protego charm I need to keep myself from getting blasted.

The Dark Arts DLC Arena being revealed to be glorified locked content that has NO BEARING on the story makes this game an auto 0/10 for me. I am so genuinely annoyed by this that I will not take any comments about buyer beware or how they advertised it would be arena only seriously. I read it on both the official website and on gaming news websites that the Unforgivables were freely unlocked once you unlock this tournament area. That isn’t true, therefore false advertising. Therefore, auto- 0/10 game. The fact they had the gall to show the player character shoot a killing curse in a story mission while advertising the Dark Arts Arena infuriates me.

I still have yet to unlock the stupid hippogriff and the thestral mount, so I guess that was more locked content that they lied would be freely available DLC in early game.

Anyway, on the positives side, I’m enjoying all the characters, the story seems interesting enough, the gameplay is mostly good with spell combos when I’m not using those awful basic attacks that freeze in the middle of casting or cast something wrong, and I am LOVING this version of Hogwarts. They absolutely pulled all the stops for it, Hogsmeade, and the Forbidden Forest, and I can genuinely say that it blew away even my highest of expectations. Love just messing around in the Common Room, or running around in the Castle aimlessly for character side quests or doing those side quests and picking selfish choices, and I love that there is so much to do from side quests, quest challenges, to main quests. I love the diversity in costume designs to choose from for my created character. I’m just very sour about this stupid DLC lie. Otherwise, I’d have rated this game a 10 / 10, simply for how much fun the character quests are and how much fun it is to explore and run around in Hogwarts. I’m actually surprised how much of the story and characters that I’m enjoying.

Graphics are phenomenal and exploring the large castle map is phenomenal. I noticed that with so much going on at once every turn of the corner, the “ubisoft” design surprisingly works well with “close-knit” places like Hogwarts Castle; which has a nice mix of open world and the wonder of exploring a magical castle. So I guess, the “ubisoft design” of pedantic handholding works for close-knit areas when games focus on things like a single school-castle like Hogwarts, but not for expansive open-world games which has you explore multiple towns or massive, fantasy world maps.

I think most people will enjoy it even more than I am, but I don’t recommend the DLC. 🙂