Why I hated Hogwarts Legacy and my Wishlist for Game 2

As a long-time Harry Potter fan, I was, of course, one of the excited many ready to buy, buy, buy at the very mention of a game where we could truly explore The Wizarding World. I was super jazzed about the prospect of going into Hogwarts, learning magic, and being an unstoppable force.

Eat your heart out, Ranrock.

I've heard whispers that a second Hogwarts Legacy game is in the works, but I had a lot of gripes about the first game. Consider this post a late review of the first game, as well as my Hogwarts Legacy 2 wishlist, because I have some thoughts to unpack here that I never got to voice aloud.

Character Creation

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that character customization is everything. I like to feel like I'm well and truly placing myself into the world, looking cool as heck. But the character creator was mid, especially compared to other games coming out around the same time.

Credit where it's due: The hair looked amazing. I will always advocate for more choices, but the selection was solid. I liked how the light hit the hair and how it bounced around. But beyond that? Customization was seriously lacking. We had no real control over the height, body shape, or the face. And what I mean is that you couldn't customize anything. You had to pick one from a collection of faces. For a game this large and a story so beloved, I would have preferred a character creator that enables you to have more control over the faces at least. What if I love one face but I want a wider jaw? It wasn't possible to get exactly the character I was going for.

Also, it seemed like a lot of the faces in the creator were also used around Hogwarts. A lot of the portraits had similar faces, and I thought I was seeing Sebastian in a lot of the portraits. Even Garreth's face looked similar to Sebastian's in some scenes, and it would have been nice if they had more defined features beside hair and eye color seeing as they were central characters.

If I could add one FINAL note to Character Creation in the next game, I would love to see different background options for players—assuming we aren't playing the same characters. I actually have no idea what to expect. Imagine being able to choose if you're half-blood, pure-blood, or muggle-born. Maybe you're a bastard to a major Wizarding house and they have no idea you exist. Maybe you have aspirations to be a treasure hunter or a curse-breaker, and because of this you find treasures far more often. The possibilities are endless. Pump up the RP potential, team.

In Summary:

• Upgrade character creator to allow for greater customization.

• Allow for some player background options that will improve the RP experience.

Combat

I had a BLAST with the combat system. It felt powerful and impacting. Every smash of that ancient magic ability button was incredible. and the animations that came with it were immensely satisfying. There's nothing quite like yeeting an enemy off into the distance like Team Rocket. I don't know how much of the first game they'll be reusing for the second game, but I hope to see a repeat of the satisfying spell-casting.

One MAJOR problem for me in this game was the way I had to unlock the spells and I could only load four at a time. It was a tedious juggling act to make sure I had all the spells I would need in any situation. As for the spells themselves, they were gated behind story instead of level and I hated that. I hope they allow us to learn spells on our own time instead of making us follow the story to unlock them.

In Summary:

• Don't gate necessary spells behind storyline quests. Allow us to learn spells as we level.

• Maybe a combat UI upgrade so we don't have to juggle spells?

Replayability

It was an actual nightmare, trying to play through the game the second time. The whole second play-through was a grind, and I couldn't bring myself to come back for a third.

It's not just the spells having to be relearned. You have to sludge through the introduction and the sorting all before you can get to the good stuff. I would have really liked to replay my existing character from the Sorting, experiencing the game from another House without the side quests and without having to relearn all of the spells.

A little bit of consideration for those who are dedicated to seeing all four houses without the burden of dragging themselves through the terribly repetitive parts would have been really great, and it would make an awesome change in game 2.

In Summary:

• Consider how players replay the game and provide options to skip tedious early sections, letting us dive straight into the heart of the story.

Exploration

I spent the first week of Hogwarts Legacy exploring Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. I wanted to do full completion of the map before I did the story, but a lot of the exploration was locked behind spells, and so many of the spells were locked behind story. The necessity of Alohomora, for instance, ensured I had to go back to explore the entire map a second time to get the chests (among other things) I couldn't open the first time around.

But this aside, I really did love the environment, the animals, and the plentiful amount of combat I was able to do throughout the game. The game was pretty and the map was large enough to keep me fully entertained. I don't know if they're re-making the map or just keeping the same one, but I hope they add some more areas to it.

In Summary:

• Please don't gate minor exploration achievements behind main storyline quests.

• Add some cool new places for us to visit in game 2.

Story

My biggest expectation for Hogwarts Legacy was the story. I really love story and lore in games I'm invested in. But the story was HIT AND MISS. The beginning was great. It was fun, tense, and magical. The second half of the story left me disappointed.

Unfortunately, the characters and their roles were too predictable. The good and bad guys were obvious, and our protagonist had little control over the narrative. Choices felt meaningless, making the dialogue options annoying. Sometimes the dialogue alone was annoying. The game would have been WAY more interesting if someone else had been the villain. Even Professor Fig would have made a better villain, deceiving us for his own gain. I didn't even want to work with Fig. If we had the option to either trust him or keep our knowledge to ourselves—this would have added real player agency, especially for those embracing the darker path with Sebastian. And if Fig had been the great evil at the end, that would have been at least more interesting than everything unfurling exactly as expected.

Any choices that shaped our character’s personality would have made a world of difference. Instead, we were locked into playing a morally upright, do-gooder protagonist with no room for selfish, deceitful, or secretive personalities—except for learning the Unforgivable Curses. Without meaningful choices, our character felt flat, making the role-playing aspect of the game disappointingly shallow.

In Summary:

• The story was shallow and predictable, and players had no agency whatsoever because choices didn't matter.

• Please allow us to have actual personalities in the next game by providing choices that are meaningful.

• Consider making the story more interesting as a whole. Throw in a dash of betrayal, deception, and/or unexpected plot twists.

I know it might sound overly critical to dislike the game for these reasons, but I’m not just a Harry Potter fan—I’m a gamer. There are a lot of things in Game 1 that could have been improved, and they didn't even try. It’s clear the developers put a lot of work into this game, but the absence of player agency and interesting story was an L for me. The game may technically be successful with how many copies it sold, but it had the potential to be so much more.

Let me know down below if you agree or disagree!

Until next time, gamers—stay magical! ✨