Highlights
- Hogwarts Legacy has surpassed FIFA as the UK’s top-selling video game in terms of physical copies sold in 2023.
- The combat in Hogwarts Legacy could use some improvement, as it feels basic despite the wide range of spells available.
- Playing as Harry Potter and limiting oneself to only using the Expelliarmus spell can add an extra challenge to the game.
Hogwarts Legacy is seeing a major resurgence in popularity lately, mainly thanks to it’s takedown of FIFA (well, FC 2024 now) as the UK’s top-selling video game in 2023 as far as physical copies are concerned (as was pointed out by GamesIndustry.biz), a spot that football titles have held for the previous 10 years.
I got a copy back when it first launched in February 2023, and I enjoyed it well enough. Its best moments were full of nostalgia, as I attended classes, met my professors and classmates, and mastered the usage of a bunch of fun charms, curses, and all other manner of spells. Still, there just wasn’t enough going on to keep me entertained long enough to finish it, and my loyal Hufflepuff student has just been sitting there in electronic purgatory, unable to challenge Ranrok or find the last of those pesky demiguise statues.
A lot of that may have had to do with the combat, which was pretty basic, despite the wide variety of spells at my disposal. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not one of those masochists who puts Dark Souls on their all-time-favorite lists and wants to play through the same fight fifty times before I stand a chance of beating it, but it still feels like there’s a way to spice things up a bit. Maybe with a big-name rockstar of a wizard who’s known for only using one spell. Yeah, you know the one.
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Bring Forth The Chosen One
Yep. For this self-imposed challenge, I’m pulling out the big guns and playing as The Boy Who Lived himself, Harry Potter. (Nevermind that he won’t be born for another 100 years or so). I didn’t go all Daniel Radcliffe on his looks, but I forced my way into Gryffindor, picked the most untidy black hair I could, and gave him a scar in the general proximity of his forehead, so I think I did about as alright on the aesthetics as I was going to get.
Now, it’s time to get to the real meat and potatoes of the challenge: the spell list. I’ve obviously got to use the Basic Cast, because it’s the only spell in the game that doesn’t have a cooldown in combat. I can also cast Protego and Stupefy, as they’re the two spells that happen when you block attacks, and I don’t want to be The Boy Who Lived But Not For Very Long in this game. (I will be pronouncing them as “Potato” and “Supafly”, however, because that’s just fun).
And now, the real crux of the challenge. From my research, I’ve discovered that Harry Potter cast more than 70 different types of spells over the course of seven books, but the only one anyone ever seems to remember is the disarming charm, Expelliarmus. So, that’s going to be my only means of attack other than the incredibly basic Basic Cast. Oh, and I’ll also allow myself the vanishing charm and its related Petrificul Totalus spell, becauase I remember stealth wizarding being the most fun the combat in this game got, and if there’s one thing Harry overused more than Expelliarmus, it was the invisibility cloak.
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Starting Off The School Year… Slowly
Haaaaa. This took a lot longer than I thought it would. Even skipping through all cutscenes and conversations, Expelliarmus didn’t come nearly as early as I’d remembered. It’s by no means last to show up in your spell list, but it took about eifght hours of gameplay just to be able to set this experiment up. The things we do for video game challenges.
As such, I had to break pretty much all of my rules pretty early on. I guess I’d forgotten just how many puzzles and environmental obstacles were in Hogwarts Legacy, but suffice to say, I had to pull out my Revelio, Accio, and Incendio Spells pretty frequently before I finally got ol’ Professor Hecat to instruct me on that sweet yeet spell.
By that time, Natty and I had already taken down a giant troll in Hogsmeade, and that one of like, what, six boss fights in the game? Still, I knew that if I just powered through the main quest, I’f face another one in just a few hours, so I forged ahead.
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I Am Now The God Of Making People Drop Stuff
Finally, the power is mine! And it’s… pretty underwhelming, actually. In a game that gives you a long-ranged fire blast, a in-your-face flamethrower spell, and the ability to turn your enemies into explosive powderkegs, the droppy-hands spell seems kinds lackluster by comparison (and that’s not even mentioning the fun evil options). But hey, that’s what Harry Potter’s known for, so that’s what I’m going to do!
The first problem I’m running into is that enemies will put up impenetrable shields that can only be broken by a specific class of spell. The attack spells are grouped into yellow, purple, and red classes. Since Expelliarmus falls into the red category, I’m kind of up Bubotuber Creek if my enemies decide to use one of the other two shields colors. Or so I thought. I had either forgotten this tidbit from my first playthrough or it just never came up, but if you block an enemy’s big spell with Protego before it gets to you, you’ll counter with a stunning/damaging Stupefy spell, which will also break through any of those pesky purple and yellow shields. That’s going to be important, because it’s the only way I’m getting through some of these fights.
What’s more, some enemies seem to only unleash unblockable big attacks, and your only defence is to dodge roll out of the way. That’s all well and good defensively, but it doesn’t do anything to take away their shields. Luckily, my Stupefy spell targets whoever I happen to be facing, not whoever cast the attacking spell on me, so I have to be real careful not to save and of these dodge-roll brutes for last.
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Time To Take On The Big Guy
My strategy has served me well in little fights, but finally, Professor Rackham has given me my first major task, and at the end of it, I’ll be facing off against a giant, magically-animated suit of armor. I creep my way through the Forbidden Forest, sneaking up on spiders and petrifying them, and occasionally getting caught and making them drop whatever spiders would feasibly drop, but to death. I creep up to the professor’s tower, and I dispatch all the goblins surrounding it in similar fashion. It’s more challenging than if I just played with my favforite spells, but I’m not exactly being forceed to guzzle down potions either.
Finally, after entering the tower and Accio-ing my way through a bunch of puzzles that I am just not here for, I blast my way through some smaller knights and finally come face to faceplate with my biggest challenge.
And you know what? It was pretty easy too. The biggest challenge is that, once you eliminate about half of his health bar, he starts powering up these giant magical attach spheres. You’re supposed to blast him with the appropriately colored spell (and not once did he choose red, which seemed pretty cheap), but I was able to dodge roll out of the way most of the time.
I know it wasn’t in the gameplan, but I also unleashed an Ancient Magic blast on him, just to see the difference between it and my Expelliarmus spell in terms of damage done. Suffice to say, if I’d used both of my stored Ancient Magic blasts, I’d have taken down half his HP bar (and would have finished the fight in half the time), but where’s the challenge in that.
One More Lesson To Learn At Hogwarts
So, what did I learn? Well, honestly, I didn’t have a lot of fun with this playthough. I rushed cutscenes, skipped dialogue, and bypassed sidequests, all in the name of making a pretty basic combat system even more basic. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The lesson, it seems, is that this game is at its most fun when you’re playing it the way the devs designed it. It’s a nostalgic romp for Potterheads of all sorts, whether you came into the Wizarding World through books or movies. There’s so much to enjoy just from strolling through the castle and seeing what you can discover, gathering a meangerie of fantastic beasts, and flipping through your spell list to discover all kinds of fun and destructive solutions to your problems.
And I think I’m going to try doing that again. My Hufflepuff’s been waiting in the wings long enough.
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