Hogwarts Legacy

Notes

4 stars for being a poorly optimised console port and a missed opportunity to full in on the Hogwarts side of things. I really enjoyed the gameplay, and if you know that it's just a AAA open world action RPG disguised as Harry Potter then it's all good. I think the biggest shame is that although it starts out strong on the Hogwarts front; but takes no time at all before the lessons just become short montage cutscenes and you get taught the spells with no context, when really the lessons and school life should have been what the game was about. There's no daily schedule, no normal lessons, no Quidditch. In it's final form, the game is really about the open world combat side of things, and the castle quickly just becomes scenery.

Pros

Absolutely gorgeous, assuming you're running a high end card from the last year. Performance is a lot better after a couple of patches, but it's still not "well optimised" for PC
Everything is voice acted (including your own character), and it's all very high quality
Great animations for things like spell effects, movement, creatures
There are loads of fully acted side quests if you want more content
Excellent music, very similar to the films
Good fast travel system
Huge map littered with collectibles
All the locations have a huge amount of detail; even corridors, but especially houses, caverns, landscape etc; it's a really beautiful game to just walk around in
The combat is great. I will never get tired of flinging anvils at goblins with telekinesis
Keyboard controls work perfectly well
There's broom flying, and the controls for it are really good. There are also flying and ground mounts, but they're clunky and slower than the broom so I literally never used them
As you progress through the main story, time passes and the seasons change. The world map all changes too, and looks beautiful in winter
You can "rescue" magical beasts, and put them in special areas of the Room of Requirement, and breed them
There's a talent tree where you can basically make your favourite spells better, like adding shatter or explosion effects
The Room of Requirement is REALLY well done. It's basically an open space where you can build anything you like. Not just functional things like potion station and plant pots, but there are dozens of decorative items you can build anywhere you like
The final mission of the game does really feel epic

Cons

Disappointingly, after the first couple of lessons where you're actually participating, pretty much every lesson after that is a montage cutscene that you just watch, then they teach you a spell. Almost all the actual quests are away from the castle
If you look outside from indoors, it looks like a bright sunny day. When you step outside, fog and rain appears
The FPS inside Hogwarts and Hogsmeade is really bad. Even since upgrading my PC partway through the playthrough to a top end gaming machine, the movement in those areas is choppy, even though it reports high FPS
It has that lazy console port thing of "Preparing Shaders" when you open the game. Except that unlike Horizon Zero Dawn, this does it EVERY SINGLE TIME you open the game.
Poorly optimised for PC. Only uses 1 CPU core
You stop moving every time you cast Revelio, so if you're searching for secrets, you're constantly stop go stop go
The first cutscene in the Three Broomsticks was completely broken - everything was whited out and half the textures were missing
The female bartender in Hogsmeade is voiced by a man
There is no morality system or consequences of your actions. You can be a goody two shoes, or blackmail and kill people, and NO ONE CARES. Even using the unforgiveable curses, in front of your teachers, no one cares. The story, relationships and ending are identical no matter what dialogue options you choose
All the menus have lengthy flashy transitions on them, which looks pretty the first time, then just makes it a chore to use the menus
Has that annoying AAA tendency to need to hold a key every time you want to do anything rather than just tapping the key
You can transmog your gear, but it resets every time you equip something new (every 5 minutes)
While the inclusion of diversity is positive, it's insane that only about 10% of the people you meet are even white. Every teacher is from a different country, and almost none of the main characters are British
There's a very repetitive and simple lockpicking minigame. Which 1, doesn't make any sense because it's a spell and 2, doesn't make any sense from a game design perspective because you don't have a limited number of lockpicks
Because it was designed for consoles, you can only have 4 spells equipped at a time. That's ok, but you can also only have 4 sets of spells. There are spell challenges in every combat encounter which require the full range of spells, so you're always pausing to swap them out.
There are house-point counters in the castle, but they're never used as a game mechanic
You go from having zero magical training to defeating a super powerful enemy within the space of 3 months. The game ends at Christmas, term starts in September.