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I just love how you rescue animals from poarchers in the game.. by capturing them and either putting 12 of them in a pretty small (magical) cage or just selling them of at Hogmeade. Which is totally different from the things poarchers would do!
I remember meeting the charms professor and thinking “hey this guy is fun, I can’t wait to attend class with him throughout the game.” As I foolishly assumed the game would follow the Bully formula of having you attend classes every day and play mini games to gain new skills and bonuses. That guy did absolutely nothing for the rest of the game and only appeared briefly to teach you one spell and then has no dialogue whatsoever from that point forward. Quite frankly, if your game takes place in a school, you should strive to be Bully. Bully is the very picture of what a school-based game should be. RIP Bully 2.
I agree. Honestly, it feels bizarre that a game centered around Hogwarts and which is literally called "Hogwarts Legacy" has you spending almost no time at Hogwarts unless you need to do a main or side quest, find a collectible, or admire the faithfully recreated environment. Why isn't the player attending more classes, or having to sleep in their dorm room to change the day, or actually put in any sort of work to learn new spells?
I've always despised Harry Potter as I tend to dispise every "chosen ones" who does'nt really show any interesting character traits. I dispise it's world as I find most things with vaguely defined "Magic" to devolve in "Whatever the plot needs it to be" and I think the idea of "Opressed Wizards who have to operate in secret" DUMB AND LAZY. But I must admit, despite Harry Potter sucking, his world sucking (long before the Author decided she had to comment on shit she really did not have to comment on) even I would find a rapidly growing interest in it if the Protagonist was a no bullshit bully dick-head hooligan. That shit would be FUNNY!
This is such a fucking missed opportunity. I had the same thing. All these professors for... two quests? And then they are forgotten untill the very last end?
Yeah that unforgivable spell where you kill someone being bad but turning them into a barrel of doom and using said barrel to kill their friends being fine kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I mean is the barrel still sentient? Is it's last thought as it flies at 30 knots toward its friends "watch out Dave"?
Then the rest of the enemies are like "how dare you! You'll pay for that." Literally I have 0 morales here and you are all my enemy you should have used that time to say that to run instead but now you get to be a barrel too. XD
As per canon it kinda depends on how well the Transfiguration was applied, I think. The less well the spell is cast, the more attributes of the former shape are retained. This may range from fully perfect transformation to a vague consciousness to some horrible hybrid thing. Now, given that combat is generally a messy, hectic situation it's pretty safe to assume that the spell is applied rather hastily and thus the victim may well retain a fair amount of awareness, though it's probably fairly limited, since you also never see any ears or eyes on the barrel.
I mean im pretty sure this game takes a pretty lax attitude towards the player using unforgivables to. Just some npcs going ''now please don't do that okay?''
Something I find strange is how quickly the character just flat out fine with commiting magical murder. Like set that dude on fire and flung him into his mates.
The most the game does is have characters chastise you. That’s it. Like you’re an attending student at Hogwarts and there’s no real blowback for using the Unforgivable Curses. It’s a bit wild.
@@Scottz0rz The best possible explanation I have for that is that you HAVE TO WANT to kill someone with it. So there's zero doubt to the motive, it's automatically first degree murder. Then again, I had to wander into the realm of fanon to get it.
I understand if they didn't want to bother with a morality system, they've kinda been played out i get it, but if you're gonna include the option to literally murder people in the game, I can't help but feel like such a system should be necessary.
@@Mene0 Thankfully no. It does have painfully unskippable animations for a bunch of stuff and over 1000 collectibles. It was a completionist nightmare for me.
@@negative6442 yeah, famously so. As merchandise and wealthy people left the road for the railway, roads become less monitored and more dangerous edit: trains started becoming a thing in the early 19ies, not late 18ies but the point still stands
The morality of this game is all over the map. So much of the game has you going after poachers, but then it also has you "rescuing" animals by knocking them out and stuffing them in a sack. So they are the poachers, and you just rescue them. Yes, money does change hands, and the "rescued" animals are ultimately unaccounted for once you sell them off, but trust us, you are the good person here.
The best explanation of morality I've seen in the Harry Potter universe is basically there are no good and bad actions, only good and bad people. Like slavery, bad when the bad wizards do it but when Harry has a literal slave it's all good. Or child abuse, bad when the dursleys do it but totally cool when hagrid gives a pig tail to Dudley after only just meeting him and somehow knowing he's a bully
Hey remember when Hermione tried protesting chattel slavery and was treated as a laughing stock in the books? Do you suppose that was a red flag for something?
"Don't blame me if I give everyone tinnitus" Bold of you to assume that that bloody intro and outro haven't done so already, being about 6 times the volume of the rest of the video all these years.
Due to RUclips’s new guidelines they put out this week, you can now officially start swearing before the 30 second mark. I hope this brings you joy Yahtzee………
Ah yes... I feel so bad for using the unforgivable killing curse after TKing a full grown man into the air and slamming him violently into the ground over and over again breaking all the bones in his body and rupturing his vital organs.
Or just using ancient magic to Turn them into a blue mist Lets see, I can Avada Kadavra them.... Or i can Atomize them. Or i can just be more brutal, Expelliarmus the wand from their hand, Set them on fire and casing unknown levels of harm with Confringo and Diffindo, Then Depulso them off a cliff, With them unable to save themselves. Magic combat makes the whole thing seem so much worse. AK is like the most humane way to fight really as long as both combatants Are intent of actually killing eachother.... which If your fighting criminals, the Criminals Are infact almost always willing to kill. Seems less like the curse is unforgivable and more like it suppose to give combatants an actual fighting chance to face eachother rather then seeing whoever can land the first AK lol.
@@jjthe Also if you're learning the ''slamming someone into a wall'' spell you might use it to just knock someone out. if you're learning the kill people spell you're probably planning on killing people so people not being allowed to learn it does kinda make sense.
Yes, that spell that instantly kills and is completely painless is totally unforgivable, but lighting your enemies on fire is totally fine. Oh but the curse requires you to WANT to kill your enemy to use it... which makes you totally worse than a pyromaniac that would light someone on fire.
Because Rowling was a spineless hack even back when the same media dumping on her now all but deified her for turning Dumbledore gay and blasting anybody drawing attention to her crap writing as a homophobe. What kept the rest of you? Whose permission did you need to admit to what was obvious decades ago?
This is an issue (one of very, very man) with the Harry Potter universe. Imperio makes some sense as Unforgivable, because mind control is a very dangerous tool. But causing pain and killing someone can be done with a wide variety of spells.
@@TheFuzzician Imperio is kind of a grey area, Crucio is the only one that makes perfect sense as an unforgivable because its only purpose is to cause unimaginable pain. And yeah Avada Kedavra can't be blocked by magical charms... then again you can always just _dodge_ it or block it with a physical object.
Rip an axe out of their hands, slam them to the ground, shoot their axe into their head and then pull them all into aoe inferno blast. Turn one guy into a barrel and explode them all. Wrap it up by saying "You lost when you joined Ranrok " But casting UNFORGIVABLE CURSE? Oh well you get a pass you are MC anyway. Sebastian tho ENDS UP IN AZKABAN MOLESTED BY DEMETORS
If your game has menus that you must navigate often during the game play loop they must animate transitions instantly. Not quickly but instantly. I will die on this hill.
I could not give less of a shit about menu transition animations, I just want to navigate the damn thing. "Ohhh look it's a book" fuck off, let me actually look at my inventory.
@@mohamedbelkacem9889 The navigation in the menu is not particularly good in the first place, with or without unskippable animations. I'm actually having fun with the game on hard mode, but I still feel that most points raised by Yahtzee are 100% valid
Yeah, I could take a second or two for the intial access animation for a bit of flare (2 is pushing it), but certainly anything within that menu needs to be quickly transitioning. If they do want to include animations then you just make sure it doesn't delay access much if at all. There are some transitions that are still animated even if they feel instant, and then there are others where you've got quick access to all of the menus. When I think back to old games with transition animations that are acceptable I recall Ocarina of Time where every animation took half a second, but it didn't feel like it took ages to get through the menu because you could only really go left or right in the rotation. You also could many times select what you were after part way through the animation if you were fast enough.
@@Kio_Kurashi there is not much you can do if the animation is hiding some sort of load time, but at the very least, having a toggleable option to skip animations should always be a thing if possible.
Everyone brings up the murder spell, but honestly I think the weirdest unforgivable interaction is the torture spell. There's a student in the game who has an entire backstory around Crucio being cast on people around him and himself, to the point that being forced to cast it broke him inside and he's never really healed from it. He repeatedly and insistently states that there is absolutely no gray area with the Unforgivable spells; If you use them you've picked the absolute worst option and there's no downplaying or mitigating that. Especially Crucio, since it's deeply personal for him. He's a companion in a mission or two, and if you use Crucio in front of him he basically goes "Hey man cut it out."
Basically like Neville from the main books then? Barty Crouch jr impersonating Mad Eye Moody was the one who used the cruciatus curse to torture neville's parents to insanity, and he then calls on neville in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class to watch as he uses the curse on the spider thing in front of him. At first you think it's just Mad Eye being weird and not noticing how much it upsets Neville until Hermione shouts at him, but after the reveal later you understand just how fucked up Barty Crouch Jr is and how he wanted to torment Neville more and remind him of how he'd tortured his parents. Dark shit tbh.
@@NateTheScot Wasn't it the Sirius insane cousin that cast Crucio? And Junior simply cast it because he was a c**t and liked the role of power he had over the students
Surely hogwarts legacy is about a Wizard Jump Street detective being sent to find out why hundreds of goblins and gang members are hanging about within 10km of a school. Why else would the protag be willing and able to learn spells on the first try, kill hundreds to no effect, and blitz through class with no effort?
I prefer the idea that you're the avatar of some god that's frantically running around trying to make sure wizard society doesn't kill itself like some mother stopping her kid from shoving a fork into an electrical socket. Sounds a bit more Far-fetched, but everyone is so stupid that at divine intervention is the ONLY possible reason why the Wizarding world hasn't died out.
Controversy aside, going Jiminy CT for this game is just such a weird move. The hook of the HP franchise was never about fashion souls or killing nameless mooks. It was about using your spells (and occasionally magic items) to solve obstacles and play shenanigans on a roster of named classmates. Trying to cram Zelda into Life is Strange would've been a closer approximation. A crafting system only really makes sense for potions, and even then, they could've gone a Resident Evil route instead; do you want to use this Green Herb for offense, or error correction? Choose carefully! Thinking critically about how to use fewer resources > needing to collect a gazillion resources that don't have any mechanical depth. And it's like they don't understand _why_ the unforgivable curses were unforgivable. 'Oh it's because you killed that guy _by stealing his soul,_ it would've been fine if you killed him by throwing him out a window.' Like, no; the whole point of magic scuffles in HP was that death usually wasn't even an option, so you had to care about other stakes. In some ways, Psychonauts was more of a Harry Potter game than this.
Well, it is going with tradition of HP games being in whatever is currently the popular default AAA genre (I'm talking about PC/home console versions) - first 3 were 3d platformers, then there was a period of not really knowing what to do with them, I mean, I'm sure 4 and 5 were copying something I just have no idea what xD and then call of duty/gears of war/whatever shooter was popular with the last ones and now... we've got open word time-not-respecter
@@blairfujin Time not respecter sounds about right. I'm convincing myself to watch long gameplay for future releases to see if they feature unskippable useless animations. Seriously 95 merlin trial completion animations were 94 too many. And that's just one example.
@@blairfujin True. I think the Goblet of Fire game was copying Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, but I never played it so I might be wrong. Then the Order of the Phoenix game was probably the series’ best attempt before HL at capturing the experience people really wanted from a HP game & Half-Blood Prince’s game was more of the same just with a more linear campaign. Then they went full Gears of War with it. And now HL is going the JC route, which is at least more fitting than Gears…
The game is really tho, the best version of The Wizarding World we will have so far. Perhaps with the level of success this version is They may greenlight a more, Serious and grounded version. When you really look into it. The Wizarding World is a lot darker then on the surface. its just covered by all the glamour of being at first a childrens book. But said childrens book really grew with its audience. I say they should Focus on the 2 halves of the community. The 1-4 years fairly childish approch to fantasy. with the olders more serious and well adult approch.
@@BlueBD >Perhaps with the level of success this version is They may greenlight a more, Serious and grounded version. They won't. You know that they won't. Everyone knows that they won't. If the current game as is worked, they'll just do the same shit, maybe add in some more grind and microtransactions.
@@BlueBD lets be real, if you treated the magic system of harry potter with an ounce of seriousness/common sense, it goes from "wacky and fun magic" to some of the most horrifying and nonsensical grimdark series in the world. If your guard isn't up 24/7 anyone can wipe your mind in an instant, cloud it with love potions, turn you into an animal, kidnap you via various teleportation methods, instantly kill you, ect, all while wearing the face of your friend. Mad eye moody is the most sensible person in the world, and even he in his paranoia wasn't immune. Also, did you know that if done correctly, conjuration and transfiguration is permanent? That you can't make food out of nothing but for some reason duplicate existing food? The economy in the world is literal nonsense, since the official price of the gallon being £5 is absurd when you actually look at what that buys. The wizarding world she wrote is best viewed at a distance cause when you start to question how the day to day operations of their world work it all falls apart. To make it "grounded and serious" so much would have to be rewritten.
It's the classic watered-down RPG. The kind of game that wouldn't be called RPG 10 years ago, but the definition has broadened so far that we now accept anything with stats and equipment management. In a world where Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and AC Valhalla can be called RPGs, this game fits nicely alongside them.
Yahtzee's "contempt" for Nick is probably my favorite running "fourth wall break." Reminds me when he'd preface his reviews with a very fast spiel about sponsoring the channel and ending it by yelling, "was that slow enough, Nick?!"
Not really. It can be, if you want it too but if you want to immerse yourself the game lets you transmog any piece of gear you're wearing into any you've picked up. So if you want to wear high lvl gear while still in your school clothes or whatever it's not an issue. The game has issues, but that criticism is kinda whack.
@@phemsee6838 but you gotta admit the transmog system is subpar, you have to reset it every time you put on a new piece of clothing (which happens a lot). A better system would just be to set a permanent appearance no matter what gear you are wearing.
@@max_208 Oh, that I agree on. They should've just let you set 3-5 outfit presets. I actually like having a school outfit and an "adventure" outfit picked so yeah, it's annoying. Like I said, the game has issues, I just think it's disingenuous to say you always look like a fashion disaster when you have an option not too.
I've always wondered what it is about the killing curse that makes it unforgivable, but somehow it's okay to turn people into animals and leave them like that to be eaten by predators, set people on fire and kill them more painfully, or just cast the petrificus totalus spell on a dude and then leave him there indefinitely. At some point, isn't it a little weird that the instant painless death spell is the only one that's illegal?
@@jamisonosborne Fun Fact, in the old Legends canon, Force Lightning wasn't actually evil in and of itself! Idk if it's like that in Disney's canon, but they changed how lightsabers work, so I just kinda ignore Disney SW anyway
It's because JKR, as well as being a hateful c*nt, is also a very mid lore writer. Harry Potter books are mysteries with a fantasy backdrop. There's just enough fantasy elements to make you think it's a good fantasy, but once you peel back those layers like how you did just now re: Unforgivable Curses, you'll realize it's all smoke and mirrors and the worldbuilding is pretty shallow.
In one mission, I was at a ruined castle on a cliff. Two of the poachers were talking at the edge, with no railing. I was in stealth and approached, evil and gleeful grin from ear to ear, and I petrified them. To my great joy, one fell straight forward to his death off the, I'd guess 50 meter fall, but the other one just fell a bit short and was staring straight down as their companion fell into the ocean below. I had to pause as I cackled like a damn hyena! That said, how is what I did better, in any way, than the killing curse, or the torture curse? That unfortunate bastard fell to his death, fully aware, eyes probably open, as the ocean kept getting closer, and no one even tried to save him. He either died on impact, or he hit the water, and drowned while in considerable pain from the impact. At least Avada Kedavra is supposed to be painless and instant! That unlucky SOB was probably mentally screaming in terror right to the end! Not to mention his companion who had to watch helplessly as it happened! "Dave, no! He was only a few days from retirement!"
It's the difference between why you can legally buy a knife in most countries but not a main battle tank. Both are dangerous and can be used to kill people; but one has legitimate uses for helping people and improving everyday life, and the other is solely a instrument of death and war. The only uses for the unforgivable curses are obstensively murder, torture and what is basically R word. Creating fire can be used or warmth or to cook food. Transmogging is useful for hiding, transport or manufacturing. etc etc. They aren't unforgivable because people who don't use them haven't ever murdered someone, but because if you use them it means that you are the type of person who fundamentally support the motives underlying them.
Discworld would be a more fun setting. Can see the orangutan librarian or have to deal with the horrors from outside reality wanting your magic. Maybe every time you die death turns up as a character
I feel like the books themselves don't do a good job of distinguishing "good" and "evil" magic! "Oh no, don't Kill, Torture, or Control people, that's awful! Here's a spell that lets you put people in Rigor Mortis WHILE THEY'RE ALIVE, have fun!"
I don’t care if I’m just screaming into the void, but I need to get this out there. I don’t think this video emphasizes how truly terrible the pseudo live service mechanics are in this game. All of your throwables need to be either bought for about 500 gold (selling LEGENDARY equipment only nets you around 200) or waiting for TWENTY PLUS MINUTES for a single plant to grow in your base. You can’t even pregrow a bunch of them because your inventory limit’s so low. If you use them in combat a lot, you need to pop in and out of your base after every few fights to restock (two terrible menu navigations and loading screens each time). Believe it or not, that’s not even as bad as upgrading your gear. You can’t just spend gold, you also need animal parts which is what the totally-not-poaching, single-party consent animal “rescuing” is for. You need to capture an animal, bring it back to the base, and feed and brush it before it’ll grant you ONE piece of upgrade material for the worst upgrades ever. You’ll need around three to five items to upgrade your gear and-you guessed it-you need to wait around 20-30 minutes before an animal is ready to give you another item just so you could apply Make Gobins Do Less Damage or something equally banal to your stupid wizard hat. Hogwarts Legacy is a truly terrible game. About 14 hours in I realized I was completely not having fun and instead just mindlessly zooming between collectibles. I firmly believe this game was intended to be a live service but they saw Marvel’s Avengers getting its kneecaps broken and chickened out. This was one of the most miserable, boring games I’ve played in recent memory and I resent it for wasting 14 hours of my precious free time.
Same, lmao. Luckily playing on pc so I straight up used a trainer for this one. That trainer is literally becomes my one bullet gun so I can end this suffering as quickly as i can. What a soul-sucking game.
The one thing I realised about this game by the end is that there is no actual reason why this game HAS to exist around Hogwarts. Like, every plot point could easily have been anywhere else at the end of the day and the story would have still worked perfectly fine. Combine that with how rapidly you complete everything in the castle and it became quite obvious to me that the "Hogwarts" part of the name was a selling point alone and not at all an integral part of the game. (This also explains why you're a fifth year, too. So you have magical ability, but still an excuse to be at the school) Oh, also several achievements couldn't always be gained at launch due to bugs, too.
I mean yeah, obviously? They couldve just made their own magic based rpg like the many already in existence and fallen into the Abyss. The fact it took you to the end of the game to see that is kinda assuming, why would they spend all the money to use the rights and likeness if not to take advantage of the fanbase to directly drive sales?
@@Jockuptown Missing the point. It literally didn't have to take place in *Hogwarts*, specifically, is what they're saying. It can still exist in the HP world but they could have put it in London, or castles in Ireland, or something, and still had recognizable names.
this is why "think of the developers (company)" argument fall flat. they did their research which should include how much a pos rowling is, and decided the extra money they'll (think) make from slapping HP on this is worth it. As for the developers (people) they got paid. and sure, well received games look good for the future yada yada, but you don't go around starting charity funds for all the developers in EA/ubisoft or whatever games ruined by the exec/marketing decisions do you?
Someone on reddit describe it pefectly, something along this line: "you don't feel like a student of a magical school, but an auror disguising as a student 21 jump street style and kick some random criminal's ass." It's ridiculuos how misdirected this game is.
@@mildlyderanged ironically, they have trained us all to be way more brutal using civilized terms. much like this review. well, without the civilized. :3
@@alqdsemper221 yeah I mean these days I use swears for day to day random nonsense but online when I want to explain to someone exactly why I don't like them I go full out without swear words which makes it a lot more brutal.
The biggest issue with Hogwarts is that it DESPERATELY wanted to be a TES/Star Wars game and was held back by having to be about nominally good people. The devs clearly wanted this to be about the freedom of being an absolute shitheel wrecking ball but the narrative kind of restricts that way too much. I hope we can have more out of this team.
What really throws it is that the narrative is about being a morally righteous goody two-shoes who also happens to be crushing a slave rebellion to maintain an oppressive status quo
I think most of the Devs of this game probably had a background in making MMO. And that MMO formula was refurbished into a Hogwarts game and that is the source of most of the issues.
I think that the biggest problem of this game is that it's not balanced properly. The story, morals, and worldbuilding are questionable, but if anything that is completely on brand for an HP property. What the books and movies do right is that they have excellent pacing and the main characters are likeable enough that you don't really stop and think about the unfortunate implications on a first read/watch. Hogwarts Legacy has a really fun combat system, that is quite a bit more nuanced than Yahtzee gave it credit for, but the nuance kinda stops mattering once you mastered the mechanics of all basic enemy types, which there aren't a whole lot, and approaching the mid to endgame you become so powerful that using the spell combos stops being fun because you start two-shotting even the fucking trolls. Which is really ironic considering that (playing on hard mode, I wouldn't know on other difficulty settings) there are several encounters that really feel like bullshit for how hard they in the early to mid game (most of them involving spiders, since they are immune to some of the most broken spell combos you have), due to the fact that in those encounters you're surrounded by several enemies at once all of them capable of gobbling up one to two thirds of your health in mere moments. I was actually having fun with that, until suddenly the game started feeling way too easy as previously mentioned. Once the gameplay issues become clear, it's harder to ignore the narrative problems. Or, indeed, the charitably questionable views of the author (I personally don't feel guilty over buying the game 'cause I bought it used, so none of my money went into JK's anti-trans funds).
Speaking of how disconnected the game is with morality - the game's money system is only obtainable in the world by looting, INCLUDING looting everyone's house in front of them yet no reprocussions what so ever. HEY POTIONS MAN don't mind I grab this glove you have in your chest in front of you and sell it right back to you because RNGelatinous didn't give me better stats from it.
@Andrew Nesterov people bring that shit up all the time and make fun of how Link is a ridiculous domestic terrorist blowing up houses and trashing pottery. What are you, living under a rock?
Yeah, that's rpg money gathering 101. Some games make it so you get in trouble if spotted but that means nothing more than a some extra time spent on stealing and maybe a few quickloads for the vast majority of players.
Harry Potter has always had major issues with morality. Remember when Hague’s gave that kid a pig’s tail that required surgery to remove and we were supposed to think he was a good guy for maiming a child?
"just don't blame me if we give everyone tinnitus" he says a quarter second before playing his outro music at double the volume of the rest of the video haha.
@@BoardGamesBricksHobbiesthat's why I've felt alienated for the past few years. I don't like crafting, never have, so a good half of all indie games are an instant turn-off :/
@@penguinmaster16 yeah, I'm somewhere between indifference and dislike. I do really like how 2017's Prey did crafting: everything you collect from banana peels to circuit boards is broken down into 4 types of materials. You then use different combinations of those materials to build everything else. It's simple and streamlined.
@@penguinmaster16 Well, there is this little game called Wytchwood. Charming. And crafting IS the core mechanic of the game as the MC is a witch in search for her potion book pages and brewing/crafting her potions/tools. I enjoyed the game because crafting wasn't a useless add on but the main selling point.
Hogwarts Legacy is the most middling open world game possible, but has very fancy set dressing. So, naturally, it's already the best-selling game of the year. :/
Mostly because it's done terribly. They hire Americans to do a "British accent" and Americans lap it up, meanwhile Brits can see through it like glass. It sounds forced and awkward. Not everyone is a posh kid from 1800's London.
Well the developers definitely made _one_ correct design choice - they chose to make a Harry Potter game, ensuring that it'll be played by millions of people who've _literally_ never played a better game. Or _any_ other game for that matter. Millions of Potterites who have only heard of video games in passing, and for whom an Ubisoft open world bandit camp shooter will be _a work of pants-shitting genius._
@@whodatninja439 I mean, not really? Show someone an alright film who's never seen a film before and they'll probably be fairly impressed with it compared to those who watch a variety of films. Someone who's more up to date on game releases is going to notice when studios copy templates from other popular games on the market and become jaded by it. It's just the nature of things.
There needed to be more role playing in this role-playing game. Some actual impactful decisions, or something as basic as they way your character talks - honestly, say what you like about Dragon Age 2's copy-pasted dungeons it has the most player-chosen main character personality ever. Even if the main plot beats are the same being able to chose to react to situations and characters as a smarmy git, or goody-two-shoes, or jokester, or calm professional, or angry thug makes so much difference to game feel. Also - Putting a basically linear story in an open world game doesn't make it non-linear. Yes, you can technically do certain missions in any order, but when those same missions play out exactly the same regardless that's still linear. And player choices really don't matter in this game.
People always love shitting on Dragon Age 2, but it was one of the few games to come out in the 2010s that had characters that I actually gave a shit about, well most of them.
hell it would of been cool if the game was actually reacting to your character's rather liberal use of murdering spells that are not the "killing curse." And before you know it, the game has you arrested and charged for crimes against humanity and also outlawed said spells.
These lapses of logic didn't make a lot of sense until the author started tweeting. It's the same kind of mental gymnastics that takes to call oneself a feminist, while at the same time defending people who push anti-abortion and often downright fascist ideology. If you didn't do it directly, it's not your fault bad things happened to people you found inconvenient. It was hard to notice this while reading a children's book, because things don't have to make sense in a children's book, we thought. But now, with the author's views for context, it's forming a rather different sort of a picture. Suddenly, the way the protagonists start towing the line of the ministry once the big bad is defeated, despite nothing really changing about ministry's attitudes towards centaurs, goblins, and elves, makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?
"An open world who's vastness is matched only by it's pointlessness. Copy pasted grassy hills with the occasional Hamlet. That is one house one pub and a communal sheep tied to a fence." Yahtzee taking shots at Scotland.
Man I remember reading my first non-Harry Potter story about a boy going off to wizarding school (also published before Harry Potter). The main character had to actually learn magic, deal with school housing, pass tests to avoid getting expelled (unless you gave them a lot of money they really weren't interested in wasting time on students who didn't want to learn), and when demons invaded the mortal plane at the end of the school year you bet the board of regents had some pointed questions for him about the matter. There was no headmaster playing favorites in that school. Honestly, it could have made for a better wizarding school game.
@@hitotsudaketsukinoko It was called "Circle of Magic" by Debra Doyle. It was set in a generic pseudo-Medieval fantasy world (not to be confused with the other, more popular, Circle of Magic series about students in a magic school set in a generic pseudo-Medieval fantasy world by Tamora Pierce, which also would make for a neat game setting). Mostly it was for the 8-10 year age range and has been criticized for having a simplistic plots and boring characters, but I still kind of liked it.
All this game needed was a really well designed Hogwarts, and a decent Hogsmead. Who needs an open world for a Harry Potter game? All you really want to do is explore the stuff from the books or movies anyway. Maybe throw in a bus ride over to Diagon Alley or something.
It took me about 60% of the game before I noticed that you had to manually activate the bag space upgrades from the challenges menu. So yes that bag space joke hit home hard
The morality is all over the place in the game because the morality is all over the place in HP in general. It's fitting that the stories cover the high school years of a wizard because it's about roughly on par with a child's level of complexity towards morality in a story. "I'm good guy, they bad guy".
@@mariokujo384 I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing but it does mean you gotta just avoid thinking too much about it otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Which normally might be asking too much of someone, but then this is a fictional world in which flying magic sentient cars exist and yet everyone takes the train to school, so I think it's not unreasonable with HP to ask a player to just not think too much about it and enjoy being a wizard.
They were consulted by JKR's Wizarding World consultant staff so we were guaranteed to get the consistent inconsistency and self-righteous morality JKR herself is known for. It boggles the mind the thing some people's integrity are actually worth when it comes down to it. I can only assume they never had much to begin with.
@@JustSomeRandomIdiot Yeah that's true. I haven't really gotten back into Harry Potter in years, but I do remember that the whole appeal is doing crazy, wondrous shit with your spells and magic. I mean the whole appeal was that "poor fucked-over orphan boy becomes thrown headfirst into the limelight of a secret amazing magic wonderland society", it makes sense that realism and worldbuilding weren't too big of a main focus compared to character interactions and whatnot. Regardless, this game's not for me. I just wanted to hear Yahtzee's take on the game, especially with recent events
I'd pay serious money for a Unseen University Legacy, but I guess that would put me in the same fanboy demographic as this game's target market, wouldn't it? ...screw it, Discworld is worth fanboying over.
Terry Pratchett was always a good egg and never once wrote a book to vilify a tiny marginalised group of people. A game in Discworld would be pretty great.
Bro this. Dropped it at 20 hours exactly because I was getting bored with it at 15 hours. The open world is bland as fuck and combat gets repetitive with the handful of enemy types
Id say it peaks around 25th hour. First 10 are simply magical. So many secrets in Hogwarts. Very little to no Professor interactions. Cant sit on a bench. Dorm for one person, interact with no students... They missed so many things.
> […] when you try to hit a specific dude and the auto-target thinks its more of a "to whom it may concern" situation […] > Better get grinding lest thy numbers not go up. What a startingly apt statement on the modern education system. Well, on the plus side: Without Hogwarts Legacy we wouldn't have gotten this treasure trove of a quote collection :) Especially the first sums up the sins of so many badly implemented combat systems so on point it's almost scary.
Just read that Neil Gaiman was once asked whether Rowling stole the idea for Harry Potter from his character Timothy Hunter since they both had a similar origin story and even the same basic appearance. To his credit, Gaiman replied that he was pretty sure Rowling had just read the same source material he used for Timothy.
Terry Pratchett and the Discworld novels are so under appreciated in this day and age. I swear if half of all (grown up) Harry Potter fans took the time to sit down and read Equal Rites, The Colour of Magic, or literally any other Discworld book they wouldn't see the need to read anything by Rowling ever again.
@@UndeadSoldier32ery much this. Harry Potter was never much good - it just had a lot of whimsical names like Hogsmeade and Butter Beer, and a fantastical premise that was basically appealing to children. The actual writing is extremely derivative and lazy. Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, instilled some real thoughtfulness and quality into his works. I’m personally a really big fan of Reaper Man and the broader Death series - they have a very appealing premise to me, personifying Death and giving him a likable, somewhat pitiful personality, and whimsical touches like the little Death of rats, but unlike Rowling, Pratchett knows how to cook up a good narrative beyond just the basic premise.
for me it was the nasuverse. it was like harry potter, but made for adults and telling stories outside the school (there is literally a wizarding school in London, but we almost never went there). but then it turned into bullshit gasha cashgrab and it lost all its depth.
Yah, the curse that instantly kills is such a big deal, but setting dudes on fire and throwing them off cliffs is fine. This isn't even ludonarrative dissonance, the game told me to slow burn an enemy to death for extra XP...
In fairness, that's the Devs getting ahead of the morons "OMG, it sorted me into Slytherin when I'm CLEARLY a Ravenclaw!" complaints if it sorted for you. Gotta keep your audience and thier annoying tendencies in mind.
@@ErrantPathfinder "The hat knows your inner hopes" isnt the same as "you can unilaterally choose to be on the goodguy team even if you've been a bad person your whole life". That was a parent consoling their child lmao
no joke, about halfway through the game my strategy became "hurl everything at everyone" and combat became exceedingly trivial. Even the final boss has projectiles that you can fling back at it and it does stupid high damage if you go all in on the damage upgrades for it.
The facade coming loose moment for me was when i had been flying over all the places i could go too leveling up and solving puzzles on the way, very triple a generic world and combat so i give it a 5 or a 6 of 10.
I say this once again, this is just another last of us 2 game, a super mid game that either heavily hated or overly loved, but game it self is really just mid, not bad, just mid.
@@AttakusZakus Hmmmmm maybe From 40 to 12 years ago, when games were steadily growing but still niche, were unarguable to be deemed a happy but unnecessary waste of time, ideas for roleplaying sandbox games were still blossoming, sure But nowadays, when games are a profitable market for most, two tech companies (Microsoft and SONY) and a toy making & service providing company (Nintendo) are making millions from it yearly and it's now among their most lucrative businesses, I kinda disagree with you on that one Specially when a brand new idea just sprouted from nowhere from Tango, published by Bethesda, that promised almost nothing but delivered A LOT: Hi Fi Rush, a rhythm-based beat em up game
@@AttakusZakus Yeah, but that's because the games themselves were fun, not an amalgam of soulless features thrown together by an executive with a popular features checklist with a skin of a recognizable IP thrown on top.
Someone I know played this game and I can attest to the outfit stuff mentioned. They played the entire thing wearing a suit of armour and a pumpkin head.
Fingerless gloves, the reward dragon leather cloak, the black flat cap, sun goggles, and the pre-order bonus dark wizard outfit (scarfs just don't go with anything, especially if you want long hair). I ran around in my best approximation of a steampunk outfit, and couldn't find a better look the entire game. And I kept finding people whose robes kept clipping through them. The hem kept rising through their legs. Had to be the only consistent graphical bug I ran into the entire game. Robes in games need to be solid objects or they just ignore physics, I swear.
The outfit system sucks, they give you a limited number of outfit slots then force you to sell/trash your favorite pieces constantly. I want the drip! Let me keep my standard issue school uniform and my funky cape and my enormous steampunk hat! Is that really too much to ask?
@@gabrieljohnson7997 You can change the appearance at will. On PS5, select the slot with something equipped and press square. It brings up a menu to change the appearance. Find a look that works and rock it for the entire game. I went with a pseudo steampunk outfit that didn't look half bad. Took damn forever to find the solar goggles, and there wasn't a scarf I could find that worked, so I made the slot invisible for the entire playthrough since the stats were a decent bump.
Looks like just the past month has given us our frontrunners for each of Yahtzee's end-of-year lists. Best: Hi-Fi Rush Worst: Forspoken Blandest: Hogwarts Legacy. Anyone want to take on the bet that just one of these will be replaced by year's end?
@@HeadRedShot So far it's the blandest this year, though. Maybe we'll get an even blander one, but the way it's going, Starfield might get pushed to next year.
Yeah. I played god of War: Ragnarok right after this, and while Ragnarok had somefaults, the first 10 minutes are better than pretty much all of HL combined. It's like only Sony knows how to quality control their products anymore.
@@MrDevious88 and to Australia, the place where there are more deadly creatures than anywhere else in the world. If he thought that was better than the English countryside, I can't imagine he's got a very high opinion of it.
The fact that you have to ask that means his opinion was dogsh*t from the start. Did he ever publicize his background in detail? If you think he's some kind of tough guy, hoo boy.
@Rae Shadowfox I mean, he did go on to leave the beast-ridden Australian hellscape for America after a few years, didn't he? He pronounced "tinnitus" the American way in this video, I don't know how they'd say it in Australia, but he certainly didn't pick that up here in England.
Yes, unlocking everyones doors and chests, taking their belongings is something a good protagonist would do. Dont get me started on the Avada Kedavra usage that goes totally undetected.
wait stealthing in a wizard game................what are you going to do jump out of a bush to shove your singular fancy chopstick up their nose to stab their brain
I enjoyed the game, but I would have definitely liked it more if basically everything South of hogwarts wasn't in the game, and classes were more fleshed out instead. Everything in the school, the part fans actually wanted to see, was solid but felt rushed. They make this massive, open, interesting building then do basically nothing with it.
Yes. Furthest parts of the map come too late and you have 0 incentive to do anything there. Pacing issue. More student and proff interactions were mandatory and they missed it.
A bit south would work: Everything down to where Sebastian comes from is solidly designed: but that's only like... half the map? I have no freaking clue why they felt the need to add in that offshoot. There's nothing there that couldn't have been moved to the northern half. And i definitely disagree: the school and castle is clearly the part they spent the most time on: so many details and easter eggs added in; they really thought about what to place and where to an absurd degree. It's just annoying the castle: the literal centerpiece of he game basically never gets used.
As someone who loved the Harry Potter PC games as a kid, I remember getting a sinking feeling from the first Hogwarts Legacy trailer that this was just going to be another "Jimmeny Cockthroat," and it's a shame that turned out to be the case.
I was alright with the equipment crafting. It definitely didn’t feel required since they're just upgrades and materials for it can be found raising animals (although you do have to wait in unpaused,in-game for them to drop). The mounts bothered me though. Your broom is your main, but you get two more. One is a hippogriff which isn’t as good as your broom since it can’t be upgraded. The other is gained in the second to last story mission and it’s a ground mount so there’s no reason to use it.
As an American I can't help but look at a game that gives school children literal boom-sticks and says "okay go nuts!" and wonder if there isn't some barely lampshaded statement that would have been more appropriately made if the setting were a country other than England. One plagued by school shootings. You know the one.
@@voomvoom4522 if we are going by the principle of it then there is a ton of gang violence at Hogwarts that involves deadly weapons, much more frequently and of much greater intensity than other schools
@@voomvoom4522 if Voldemort and the death eaters didn't have wands and the Wizarding World was a somewhat functioning society then the dark lord wouldn't have been able to do shit
Well okay but that was kinda before theyd all made this kind of game twelve times already. There is some truth in that stuff of this kind of scale is one of the few things AAA games are capable of delivering on in a way most indies just cant, but if its all they keep pumping out... I mean, I've gotten tired of open worlds, and I've not had to play anywhere near the amount of em he has.
Did he? I remember something similar way back in the day regarding open world spectacles like Just Cause 2, where the budget went primarily for having a really fun sense of chaos
Honestly I find it understandable. I'm a big fan of a lot of jiminy cockthroat games but even I've recently gotten pretty sick of them. Too much of anything will put you off of it.
Reading the comments, it kind of reminds me of the hazards of demanding that the thing you liked as a kid grow up with you. When you were ten you loved it because, "OOOH! Harry goes to a school that's 100 times cooler than the school I have to go to. He learns to do MAGIC at that school and gets to have adventures and saves the day from an evil wizard! That's awesome!" Now that you're older you start asking questions that would not occur to 10 year old you to ask or care about. How is a spell that insta-kills someone wrong but a spell that sets them on fire okay? What's the deal with the house elves? As for the whole child endangerment thing... We have all seen the scene where the young protagonist wants to help fight the villains. Only their parent or mentor says no and that it's too dangerous. When you're a kid you're on the side of the young hero. Stupid grownups underestimating you and trying to keep you from having adventures! You're officially an adult when you find yourself agreeing with the parent of the protagonist.
She's actively anti-trans. She's written articles for anti-trans publications and donated substantial amounts of money to foundations that only exist to make life harder for trans folk.
@@ErrantPathfinder According to every bigoted creep throughout history, yes. Of course you'd think it's an "appeal to sanity", you're not going to case yourself as the bad guy. "The idea of women voting is insane.", "Black people being equal to whites is insane.", "Gays marrying is insane". It's all the same song and everyone's tired of hearing it. Times will happily change without you. Get out of the way or get trampled. Your choice.
Nah, just another review that can't actually talk about the game without having to put J.K. and TERF in the same sentence more then once and thinks they're the first and most clever to do it.
@@humbleheathen69 the vast majority of this review is about criticizing the game itself while ignoring Rowling. Rowling is only briefly mentioned at the start and end.
''Hey we have all this Warner Brothers Potter money, maybe we can use it to make really interesting quests and content!'' ''What? Fuck no, crafting, collectibles and a giant open world where you follow a breadcrumb trail anyway.''
It’s funny that the game boils down to farcry with a building that sort of looks like one from a movie. It should have been a VR game. Or not exist at all. Setting it 200 years in the past was definitely the worst decision. If it was in the 70s during the wizard civil war they could have used some known characters or something. The world building is so undercooked in HP that how could anyone give a shit?
Watch this week's Zero Punctuation episode on Atomic Heart - www.escapistmagazine.com/atomic-heart-zero-punctuation/ - Watch it early on RUclips via Patreon or RUclips Memberships to support the show and channel.
@@garhent weak bait
oh good lord almighty
@@tonycampbell1424 Making it very easy to remove them from the channel. Bait away.
Oh boy, and I thought this comments section was going to suck.
Cannot wait
I just love how you rescue animals from poarchers in the game.. by capturing them and either putting 12 of them in a pretty small (magical) cage or just selling them of at Hogmeade. Which is totally different from the things poarchers would do!
If Harry Potter has taught us anything, it's that the Good Guys can do the exact same thing as the Bad Guys but it's fine.
"The reason is, I'm doing it and I say I'm the good guy"
Yep, checks out as Rowling logic.
Yeah, there are so many "are we the baddies" moments in this game, and it's not just during the Sebastian side quests lol.
Having only the choice between evil and slightly lesser evil is too much like real life. I thought this was a fantasy game, not a realistic one. Booo!
@@FTZPLTCIt's just like real life, but replace "good guys" with "the rich."
I remember meeting the charms professor and thinking “hey this guy is fun, I can’t wait to attend class with him throughout the game.” As I foolishly assumed the game would follow the Bully formula of having you attend classes every day and play mini games to gain new skills and bonuses. That guy did absolutely nothing for the rest of the game and only appeared briefly to teach you one spell and then has no dialogue whatsoever from that point forward.
Quite frankly, if your game takes place in a school, you should strive to be Bully. Bully is the very picture of what a school-based game should be. RIP Bully 2.
I agree. Honestly, it feels bizarre that a game centered around Hogwarts and which is literally called "Hogwarts Legacy" has you spending almost no time at Hogwarts unless you need to do a main or side quest, find a collectible, or admire the faithfully recreated environment. Why isn't the player attending more classes, or having to sleep in their dorm room to change the day, or actually put in any sort of work to learn new spells?
Excuse me he's also the last combatant in Summoners Court fyi 😂
I've always despised Harry Potter as I tend to dispise every "chosen ones" who does'nt really show any interesting character traits. I dispise it's world as I find most things with vaguely defined "Magic" to devolve in "Whatever the plot needs it to be" and I think the idea of "Opressed Wizards who have to operate in secret" DUMB AND LAZY. But I must admit, despite Harry Potter sucking, his world sucking (long before the Author decided she had to comment on shit she really did not have to comment on) even I would find a rapidly growing interest in it if the Protagonist was a no bullshit bully dick-head hooligan. That shit would be FUNNY!
This is such a fucking missed opportunity. I had the same thing. All these professors for... two quests? And then they are forgotten untill the very last end?
@@alnu8355 If you want wizards that operate in secret there are SO many better examples. The Dresden files is a great book series for instance.
Yeah that unforgivable spell where you kill someone being bad but turning them into a barrel of doom and using said barrel to kill their friends being fine kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I mean is the barrel still sentient? Is it's last thought as it flies at 30 knots toward its friends "watch out Dave"?
Then the rest of the enemies are like "how dare you! You'll pay for that." Literally I have 0 morales here and you are all my enemy you should have used that time to say that to run instead but now you get to be a barrel too. XD
"Wheee-!" 🎆BOOM!🎆
Reminds me of the old college humor Batman sketch when Batman figures out he's been killing people the whole time
As per canon it kinda depends on how well the Transfiguration was applied, I think. The less well the spell is cast, the more attributes of the former shape are retained. This may range from fully perfect transformation to a vague consciousness to some horrible hybrid thing. Now, given that combat is generally a messy, hectic situation it's pretty safe to assume that the spell is applied rather hastily and thus the victim may well retain a fair amount of awareness, though it's probably fairly limited, since you also never see any ears or eyes on the barrel.
I mean im pretty sure this game takes a pretty lax attitude towards the player using unforgivables to. Just some npcs going ''now please don't do that okay?''
Something I find strange is how quickly the character just flat out fine with commiting magical murder. Like set that dude on fire and flung him into his mates.
The most the game does is have characters chastise you. That’s it. Like you’re an attending student at Hogwarts and there’s no real blowback for using the Unforgivable Curses. It’s a bit wild.
What's weirder is that the painless, insta-death spell is more controversial than the explody barrel transformation burning everyone to death.
@@Scottz0rz The best possible explanation I have for that is that you HAVE TO WANT to kill someone with it. So there's zero doubt to the motive, it's automatically first degree murder.
Then again, I had to wander into the realm of fanon to get it.
I understand if they didn't want to bother with a morality system, they've kinda been played out i get it, but if you're gonna include the option to literally murder people in the game, I can't help but feel like such a system should be necessary.
@@Mernom while throwing a flaming living body you set on fire in an exploding barrel with magic is just manslaughter. I see.
This game legitimately has bandit camps. Damn you far cry!
Does it have towers you need to climb to reveal the map?
@@Mene0
Thankfully no.
It does have painfully unskippable animations for a bunch of stuff and over 1000 collectibles. It was a completionist nightmare for me.
Did late 1800s england have a lot of highwaymen or something
@@matosz23 Holy shit! 1000 collectibles?! Yeah, I think I'll skip the plat even if I end up playing this some day :)
@@negative6442 yeah, famously so. As merchandise and wealthy people left the road for the railway, roads become less monitored and more dangerous
edit: trains started becoming a thing in the early 19ies, not late 18ies but the point still stands
The morality of this game is all over the map. So much of the game has you going after poachers, but then it also has you "rescuing" animals by knocking them out and stuffing them in a sack. So they are the poachers, and you just rescue them. Yes, money does change hands, and the "rescued" animals are ultimately unaccounted for once you sell them off, but trust us, you are the good person here.
Don't even get me started about forcing you to have a slave when Harry Potter magic can do anything and everything without drawbacks.
The best explanation of morality I've seen in the Harry Potter universe is basically there are no good and bad actions, only good and bad people. Like slavery, bad when the bad wizards do it but when Harry has a literal slave it's all good. Or child abuse, bad when the dursleys do it but totally cool when hagrid gives a pig tail to Dudley after only just meeting him and somehow knowing he's a bully
"there is no good or evil Harry, only power and those two weak to seek it" 🐍
@@DiscardedLeaf Are you talking about Shaun‘s video? That one was excellent
Hey remember when Hermione tried protesting chattel slavery and was treated as a laughing stock in the books? Do you suppose that was a red flag for something?
"Don't blame me if I give everyone tinnitus" Bold of you to assume that that bloody intro and outro haven't done so already, being about 6 times the volume of the rest of the video all these years.
Haha, right? I always double tap to skip forward 10 seconds
@@BoardGamesBricksHobbies You can also tap L which also skips 10 seconds.
infinity this comment.
Yes yes yes omg I'm so sick of this theme music and the volume it's set to
Finally someone else said it. Really obnoxious.
Due to RUclips’s new guidelines they put out this week, you can now officially start swearing before the 30 second mark. I hope this brings you joy Yahtzee………
They're gonna say that, but they'll still keep demonetizing anyone not deepthroating their advertisers.
Conveniently enough, the intro is 10 seconds, which is past the threshold
Until they change it again and retroactively demonetize videos that break the new new guidelines.
Well, at least he addressed the elephant in the room quickly and didn't harp on it the entire time. And yes, as he said, "Rowling is a c***.
Only specific swear words. This would definitely not be one of them, lol.
Ah yes... I feel so bad for using the unforgivable killing curse after TKing a full grown man into the air and slamming him violently into the ground over and over again breaking all the bones in his body and rupturing his vital organs.
Or just using ancient magic to Turn them into a blue mist
Lets see, I can Avada Kadavra them.... Or i can Atomize them.
Or i can just be more brutal, Expelliarmus the wand from their hand, Set them on fire and casing unknown levels of harm with Confringo and Diffindo, Then Depulso them off a cliff, With them unable to save themselves.
Magic combat makes the whole thing seem so much worse. AK is like the most humane way to fight really as long as both combatants Are intent of actually killing eachother.... which If your fighting criminals, the Criminals Are infact almost always willing to kill. Seems less like the curse is unforgivable and more like it suppose to give combatants an actual fighting chance to face eachother rather then seeing whoever can land the first AK lol.
@@BlueBDYeah I think you're right. It's only unforgivable because there isn't a counter to it and it can't be blocked.
@@jjthe Also if you're learning the ''slamming someone into a wall'' spell you might use it to just knock someone out. if you're learning the kill people spell you're probably planning on killing people so people not being allowed to learn it does kinda make sense.
@@jjthe Can't it be blocked though? With the POWER OF LOVE!
I'm pretty sure that's canon.
Honestly the instant-death spell is a mercy by comparison. At least they die presumably painlessly
Yes, that spell that instantly kills and is completely painless is totally unforgivable, but lighting your enemies on fire is totally fine. Oh but the curse requires you to WANT to kill your enemy to use it... which makes you totally worse than a pyromaniac that would light someone on fire.
Because Rowling was a spineless hack even back when the same media dumping on her now all but deified her for turning Dumbledore gay and blasting anybody drawing attention to her crap writing as a homophobe.
What kept the rest of you? Whose permission did you need to admit to what was obvious decades ago?
But you can shield yourself from fire and have a chance of fighting back. The Killing Curse is literally unavoidable if it hits
This is an issue (one of very, very man) with the Harry Potter universe. Imperio makes some sense as Unforgivable, because mind control is a very dangerous tool. But causing pain and killing someone can be done with a wide variety of spells.
@@TheFuzzician Imperio is kind of a grey area, Crucio is the only one that makes perfect sense as an unforgivable because its only purpose is to cause unimaginable pain. And yeah Avada Kedavra can't be blocked by magical charms... then again you can always just _dodge_ it or block it with a physical object.
Rip an axe out of their hands, slam them to the ground, shoot their axe into their head and then pull them all into aoe inferno blast. Turn one guy into a barrel and explode them all. Wrap it up by saying "You lost when you joined Ranrok "
But casting UNFORGIVABLE CURSE? Oh well you get a pass you are MC anyway.
Sebastian tho ENDS UP IN AZKABAN MOLESTED BY DEMETORS
If your game has menus that you must navigate often during the game play loop they must animate transitions instantly. Not quickly but instantly. I will die on this hill.
I could not give less of a shit about menu transition animations, I just want to navigate the damn thing. "Ohhh look it's a book" fuck off, let me actually look at my inventory.
I agree, even with the hype for the game I and many people who like it recognized the menus as ass
@@mohamedbelkacem9889 The navigation in the menu is not particularly good in the first place, with or without unskippable animations. I'm actually having fun with the game on hard mode, but I still feel that most points raised by Yahtzee are 100% valid
Yeah, I could take a second or two for the intial access animation for a bit of flare (2 is pushing it), but certainly anything within that menu needs to be quickly transitioning. If they do want to include animations then you just make sure it doesn't delay access much if at all. There are some transitions that are still animated even if they feel instant, and then there are others where you've got quick access to all of the menus.
When I think back to old games with transition animations that are acceptable I recall Ocarina of Time where every animation took half a second, but it didn't feel like it took ages to get through the menu because you could only really go left or right in the rotation. You also could many times select what you were after part way through the animation if you were fast enough.
@@Kio_Kurashi there is not much you can do if the animation is hiding some sort of load time, but at the very least, having a toggleable option to skip animations should always be a thing if possible.
Everyone brings up the murder spell, but honestly I think the weirdest unforgivable interaction is the torture spell. There's a student in the game who has an entire backstory around Crucio being cast on people around him and himself, to the point that being forced to cast it broke him inside and he's never really healed from it. He repeatedly and insistently states that there is absolutely no gray area with the Unforgivable spells; If you use them you've picked the absolute worst option and there's no downplaying or mitigating that. Especially Crucio, since it's deeply personal for him.
He's a companion in a mission or two, and if you use Crucio in front of him he basically goes "Hey man cut it out."
Me: *commits exposure therapy on a rape victim*
Rape victim: "hey man cut it out"
Basically like Neville from the main books then? Barty Crouch jr impersonating Mad Eye Moody was the one who used the cruciatus curse to torture neville's parents to insanity, and he then calls on neville in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class to watch as he uses the curse on the spider thing in front of him. At first you think it's just Mad Eye being weird and not noticing how much it upsets Neville until Hermione shouts at him, but after the reveal later you understand just how fucked up Barty Crouch Jr is and how he wanted to torment Neville more and remind him of how he'd tortured his parents. Dark shit tbh.
@@NateTheScot
Wasn't it the Sirius insane cousin that cast Crucio?
And Junior simply cast it because he was a c**t and liked the role of power he had over the students
@@marseldagistani1989 Bellatrix?
@@marseldagistani1989 IIRC from the books (and it's been a VERY long time), torturing the brains out of the Longbottoms was a team effort
Surely hogwarts legacy is about a Wizard Jump Street detective being sent to find out why hundreds of goblins and gang members are hanging about within 10km of a school. Why else would the protag be willing and able to learn spells on the first try, kill hundreds to no effect, and blitz through class with no effort?
This is now Canon and no one is going to convince me otherwise.
I prefer the idea that you're the avatar of some god that's frantically running around trying to make sure wizard society doesn't kill itself like some mother stopping her kid from shoving a fork into an electrical socket.
Sounds a bit more Far-fetched, but everyone is so stupid that at divine intervention is the ONLY possible reason why the Wizarding world hasn't died out.
Wizard101>>>
Unironically Wizard101 sweeps
Yes, such a shame Disney has are seriously tight death grip on it alongside Pirates both of the Caribbean and 101.
A man of culture I see
🗣
amen
Controversy aside, going Jiminy CT for this game is just such a weird move. The hook of the HP franchise was never about fashion souls or killing nameless mooks. It was about using your spells (and occasionally magic items) to solve obstacles and play shenanigans on a roster of named classmates. Trying to cram Zelda into Life is Strange would've been a closer approximation.
A crafting system only really makes sense for potions, and even then, they could've gone a Resident Evil route instead; do you want to use this Green Herb for offense, or error correction? Choose carefully! Thinking critically about how to use fewer resources > needing to collect a gazillion resources that don't have any mechanical depth.
And it's like they don't understand _why_ the unforgivable curses were unforgivable. 'Oh it's because you killed that guy _by stealing his soul,_ it would've been fine if you killed him by throwing him out a window.' Like, no; the whole point of magic scuffles in HP was that death usually wasn't even an option, so you had to care about other stakes.
In some ways, Psychonauts was more of a Harry Potter game than this.
Well, it is going with tradition of HP games being in whatever is currently the popular default AAA genre (I'm talking about PC/home console versions) - first 3 were 3d platformers, then there was a period of not really knowing what to do with them, I mean, I'm sure 4 and 5 were copying something I just have no idea what xD and then call of duty/gears of war/whatever shooter was popular with the last ones and now... we've got open word time-not-respecter
@@blairfujin
Time not respecter sounds about right. I'm convincing myself to watch long gameplay for future releases to see if they feature unskippable useless animations.
Seriously 95 merlin trial completion animations were 94 too many. And that's just one example.
Zelda+Life is Strange actually sounds like sth nice
@@mcslender2965 right? I thought so too :D
@@blairfujin True. I think the Goblet of Fire game was copying Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, but I never played it so I might be wrong. Then the Order of the Phoenix game was probably the series’ best attempt before HL at capturing the experience people really wanted from a HP game & Half-Blood Prince’s game was more of the same just with a more linear campaign. Then they went full Gears of War with it. And now HL is going the JC route, which is at least more fitting than Gears…
Yatzhee fighting with the editor in chief of the escapist is the sketch routine I didn't realise I needed
Yeah, and at least he addressed the elephant in the room quickly and didn't harp on it.
It's like Jonathan Pie quibbling with his producer.
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 Fun Fact: This game was made by the same company that made Tak and the Power of Juju games.
@@DanGamingFan2406 He harped on it for like a third of the video lmao
@@khamjaninja. and what do you have against Halo.
I have Tinnitus, and yahtzee is right. The bleeps do indeed aggravate my tinnitus. Now I can't sleep! Darn you Nick!
Same
place your palms over your ears with your fingers at the back of your head and drum on your head with your fingers for a bit. that should relieve it .
@@cassidepowers7006 bro im hearin the reeeeeeee too now, lol
Nick, you're hurtin' us!
You Monster!
Fun fact, the video on the escapist website is not bleeped
I feel like they should have put more role playing into this RPG.
The game is really tho, the best version of The Wizarding World we will have so far.
Perhaps with the level of success this version is They may greenlight a more, Serious and grounded version.
When you really look into it. The Wizarding World is a lot darker then on the surface. its just covered by all the glamour of being at first a childrens book. But said childrens book really grew with its audience. I say they should Focus on the 2 halves of the community. The 1-4 years fairly childish approch to fantasy. with the olders more serious and well adult approch.
@@BlueBD >Perhaps with the level of success this version is They may greenlight a more, Serious and grounded version.
They won't. You know that they won't. Everyone knows that they won't. If the current game as is worked, they'll just do the same shit, maybe add in some more grind and microtransactions.
@@MilkyNep That'd just be Bully except the Halloween missions never end. Sign me up.
@@BlueBD lets be real, if you treated the magic system of harry potter with an ounce of seriousness/common sense, it goes from "wacky and fun magic" to some of the most horrifying and nonsensical grimdark series in the world.
If your guard isn't up 24/7 anyone can wipe your mind in an instant, cloud it with love potions, turn you into an animal, kidnap you via various teleportation methods, instantly kill you, ect, all while wearing the face of your friend. Mad eye moody is the most sensible person in the world, and even he in his paranoia wasn't immune.
Also, did you know that if done correctly, conjuration and transfiguration is permanent? That you can't make food out of nothing but for some reason duplicate existing food? The economy in the world is literal nonsense, since the official price of the gallon being £5 is absurd when you actually look at what that buys.
The wizarding world she wrote is best viewed at a distance cause when you start to question how the day to day operations of their world work it all falls apart. To make it "grounded and serious" so much would have to be rewritten.
It's the classic watered-down RPG. The kind of game that wouldn't be called RPG 10 years ago, but the definition has broadened so far that we now accept anything with stats and equipment management. In a world where Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and AC Valhalla can be called RPGs, this game fits nicely alongside them.
Yahtzee's "contempt" for Nick is probably my favorite running "fourth wall break." Reminds me when he'd preface his reviews with a very fast spiel about sponsoring the channel and ending it by yelling, "was that slow enough, Nick?!"
It's OK, I'll get him back by putting him through E3 again this year!
@@theescapist ...what E3, Nick? ;)
@@theescapist That escalated from tinnitus pranks to psychological warfare rather quickly.
@@theescapist he said he misses it tho.....
@@janosrock Guess we'll see. We're going to GDC in two weeks :P
I'm glad you brought up the outfits. It's the "When your custom character appears in a cut scene" meme.
Not really. It can be, if you want it too but if you want to immerse yourself the game lets you transmog any piece of gear you're wearing into any you've picked up. So if you want to wear high lvl gear while still in your school clothes or whatever it's not an issue.
The game has issues, but that criticism is kinda whack.
Reminds me of Alpharad playing Jump Force and laughing whenever his custom character appeared in the cutscenes
As someone currently playing through Cyberpunk 2077 as a Duke Nukem clone this is a feel.
@@phemsee6838 but you gotta admit the transmog system is subpar, you have to reset it every time you put on a new piece of clothing (which happens a lot). A better system would just be to set a permanent appearance no matter what gear you are wearing.
@@max_208 Oh, that I agree on. They should've just let you set 3-5 outfit presets. I actually like having a school outfit and an "adventure" outfit picked so yeah, it's annoying. Like I said, the game has issues, I just think it's disingenuous to say you always look like a fashion disaster when you have an option not too.
I've always wondered what it is about the killing curse that makes it unforgivable, but somehow it's okay to turn people into animals and leave them like that to be eaten by predators, set people on fire and kill them more painfully, or just cast the petrificus totalus spell on a dude and then leave him there indefinitely. At some point, isn't it a little weird that the instant painless death spell is the only one that's illegal?
@@jamisonosborne Oh we know why.
Because JKR is a mid tier writter
@@jamisonosborne Fun Fact, in the old Legends canon, Force Lightning wasn't actually evil in and of itself!
Idk if it's like that in Disney's canon, but they changed how lightsabers work, so I just kinda ignore Disney SW anyway
It's because JKR, as well as being a hateful c*nt, is also a very mid lore writer. Harry Potter books are mysteries with a fantasy backdrop. There's just enough fantasy elements to make you think it's a good fantasy, but once you peel back those layers like how you did just now re: Unforgivable Curses, you'll realize it's all smoke and mirrors and the worldbuilding is pretty shallow.
In one mission, I was at a ruined castle on a cliff. Two of the poachers were talking at the edge, with no railing. I was in stealth and approached, evil and gleeful grin from ear to ear, and I petrified them. To my great joy, one fell straight forward to his death off the, I'd guess 50 meter fall, but the other one just fell a bit short and was staring straight down as their companion fell into the ocean below. I had to pause as I cackled like a damn hyena!
That said, how is what I did better, in any way, than the killing curse, or the torture curse? That unfortunate bastard fell to his death, fully aware, eyes probably open, as the ocean kept getting closer, and no one even tried to save him. He either died on impact, or he hit the water, and drowned while in considerable pain from the impact. At least Avada Kedavra is supposed to be painless and instant! That unlucky SOB was probably mentally screaming in terror right to the end! Not to mention his companion who had to watch helplessly as it happened! "Dave, no! He was only a few days from retirement!"
It's the difference between why you can legally buy a knife in most countries but not a main battle tank. Both are dangerous and can be used to kill people; but one has legitimate uses for helping people and improving everyday life, and the other is solely a instrument of death and war. The only uses for the unforgivable curses are obstensively murder, torture and what is basically R word. Creating fire can be used or warmth or to cook food. Transmogging is useful for hiding, transport or manufacturing. etc etc.
They aren't unforgivable because people who don't use them haven't ever murdered someone, but because if you use them it means that you are the type of person who fundamentally support the motives underlying them.
Discworld would be a more fun setting.
Can see the orangutan librarian or have to deal with the horrors from outside reality wanting your magic. Maybe every time you die death turns up as a character
If only Christopher Lee were still able to voice him, at the very least we still have Eric Idle for a more jokey Death
that is a fantastic idea !
Lesson 1 is "How to Run Away Very Quickly," with Prof. Rincewind
@@dr-greata wait, really ? did she work on anything in specific ?
@@wesleythomas7125 i was thinking do something with sourcerers, the old magic type. And witches too
Wow, that BEEPING sound was so good that I'm still hearing it
I feel like the books themselves don't do a good job of distinguishing "good" and "evil" magic! "Oh no, don't Kill, Torture, or Control people, that's awful! Here's a spell that lets you put people in Rigor Mortis WHILE THEY'RE ALIVE, have fun!"
"Be the main character in a work of self-insert harry potter fanfiction" so this is My Immortal: The Game.
I don’t care if I’m just screaming into the void, but I need to get this out there. I don’t think this video emphasizes how truly terrible the pseudo live service mechanics are in this game. All of your throwables need to be either bought for about 500 gold (selling LEGENDARY equipment only nets you around 200) or waiting for TWENTY PLUS MINUTES for a single plant to grow in your base. You can’t even pregrow a bunch of them because your inventory limit’s so low. If you use them in combat a lot, you need to pop in and out of your base after every few fights to restock (two terrible menu navigations and loading screens each time).
Believe it or not, that’s not even as bad as upgrading your gear. You can’t just spend gold, you also need animal parts which is what the totally-not-poaching, single-party consent animal “rescuing” is for. You need to capture an animal, bring it back to the base, and feed and brush it before it’ll grant you ONE piece of upgrade material for the worst upgrades ever. You’ll need around three to five items to upgrade your gear and-you guessed it-you need to wait around 20-30 minutes before an animal is ready to give you another item just so you could apply Make Gobins Do Less Damage or something equally banal to your stupid wizard hat.
Hogwarts Legacy is a truly terrible game. About 14 hours in I realized I was completely not having fun and instead just mindlessly zooming between collectibles. I firmly believe this game was intended to be a live service but they saw Marvel’s Avengers getting its kneecaps broken and chickened out. This was one of the most miserable, boring games I’ve played in recent memory and I resent it for wasting 14 hours of my precious free time.
Same, lmao. Luckily playing on pc so I straight up used a trainer for this one. That trainer is literally becomes my one bullet gun so I can end this suffering as quickly as i can. What a soul-sucking game.
The one thing I realised about this game by the end is that there is no actual reason why this game HAS to exist around Hogwarts. Like, every plot point could easily have been anywhere else at the end of the day and the story would have still worked perfectly fine. Combine that with how rapidly you complete everything in the castle and it became quite obvious to me that the "Hogwarts" part of the name was a selling point alone and not at all an integral part of the game.
(This also explains why you're a fifth year, too. So you have magical ability, but still an excuse to be at the school)
Oh, also several achievements couldn't always be gained at launch due to bugs, too.
I mean yeah, obviously? They couldve just made their own magic based rpg like the many already in existence and fallen into the Abyss. The fact it took you to the end of the game to see that is kinda assuming, why would they spend all the money to use the rights and likeness if not to take advantage of the fanbase to directly drive sales?
@@Jockuptown Missing the point. It literally didn't have to take place in *Hogwarts*, specifically, is what they're saying. It can still exist in the HP world but they could have put it in London, or castles in Ireland, or something, and still had recognizable names.
this is why "think of the developers (company)" argument fall flat. they did their research which should include how much a pos rowling is, and decided the extra money they'll (think) make from slapping HP on this is worth it.
As for the developers (people) they got paid. and sure, well received games look good for the future yada yada, but you don't go around starting charity funds for all the developers in EA/ubisoft or whatever games ruined by the exec/marketing decisions do you?
Someone on reddit describe it pefectly, something along this line: "you don't feel like a student of a magical school, but an auror disguising as a student 21 jump street style and kick some random criminal's ass."
It's ridiculuos how misdirected this game is.
I love the disclaimer in the credits: "official company policy is probably a bit less sweary"
Even better now cause youtube revised the profanity rules yesterday so its more laxed
We live in a world where you can describe blowing up three people with improvised explosive made from the fourth guy, but can't call someone a c*nt.
Because the people who run this world believe that the latter is more damaging than the former. And refused to be swayed otherwise.
I blame hang-wringing Americans moms who've always been traumatised by bad language
@@mildlyderanged ironically, they have trained us all to be way more brutal using civilized terms. much like this review. well, without the civilized. :3
Also loving that the auto captions spell out the word accuratly in at least some instances.
@@alqdsemper221 yeah I mean these days I use swears for day to day random nonsense but online when I want to explain to someone exactly why I don't like them I go full out without swear words which makes it a lot more brutal.
The biggest issue with Hogwarts is that it DESPERATELY wanted to be a TES/Star Wars game and was held back by having to be about nominally good people. The devs clearly wanted this to be about the freedom of being an absolute shitheel wrecking ball but the narrative kind of restricts that way too much.
I hope we can have more out of this team.
Don't we already have an undisputed champion of games where you can be an absolute shitheel wrecking ball in Grand Theft Auto?
@@Percival917 GTA tries to slow your roll with police and without cheats you eventually need to lay low😞
What really throws it is that the narrative is about being a morally righteous goody two-shoes who also happens to be crushing a slave rebellion to maintain an oppressive status quo
I think most of the Devs of this game probably had a background in making MMO. And that MMO formula was refurbished into a Hogwarts game and that is the source of most of the issues.
I think that the biggest problem of this game is that it's not balanced properly. The story, morals, and worldbuilding are questionable, but if anything that is completely on brand for an HP property. What the books and movies do right is that they have excellent pacing and the main characters are likeable enough that you don't really stop and think about the unfortunate implications on a first read/watch.
Hogwarts Legacy has a really fun combat system, that is quite a bit more nuanced than Yahtzee gave it credit for, but the nuance kinda stops mattering once you mastered the mechanics of all basic enemy types, which there aren't a whole lot, and approaching the mid to endgame you become so powerful that using the spell combos stops being fun because you start two-shotting even the fucking trolls.
Which is really ironic considering that (playing on hard mode, I wouldn't know on other difficulty settings) there are several encounters that really feel like bullshit for how hard they in the early to mid game (most of them involving spiders, since they are immune to some of the most broken spell combos you have), due to the fact that in those encounters you're surrounded by several enemies at once all of them capable of gobbling up one to two thirds of your health in mere moments. I was actually having fun with that, until suddenly the game started feeling way too easy as previously mentioned.
Once the gameplay issues become clear, it's harder to ignore the narrative problems. Or, indeed, the charitably questionable views of the author (I personally don't feel guilty over buying the game 'cause I bought it used, so none of my money went into JK's anti-trans funds).
Yahtzee knew he was going to get flak for this one.
How dare he call Istanbul boring???
He very much needs to backtrack that opinion (picking up his assistants on the way of course)
Istanbul was more exciting when it was called Constantinople.
That's nobody's business but the Turks'.
Speaking of how disconnected the game is with morality - the game's money system is only obtainable in the world by looting, INCLUDING looting everyone's house in front of them yet no reprocussions what so ever. HEY POTIONS MAN don't mind I grab this glove you have in your chest in front of you and sell it right back to you because RNGelatinous didn't give me better stats from it.
@Andrew Nesterov people bring that shit up all the time and make fun of how Link is a ridiculous domestic terrorist blowing up houses and trashing pottery. What are you, living under a rock?
@Andrew Nesterov that's a lot of assumptions
Yeah, that's rpg money gathering 101. Some games make it so you get in trouble if spotted but that means nothing more than a some extra time spent on stealing and maybe a few quickloads for the vast majority of players.
@Andrew Nesterov kek
Harry Potter has always had major issues with morality. Remember when Hague’s gave that kid a pig’s tail that required surgery to remove and we were supposed to think he was a good guy for maiming a child?
"just don't blame me if we give everyone tinnitus" he says a quarter second before playing his outro music at double the volume of the rest of the video haha.
Joke's on you Yahtz, I already have tinnitus
I do quite love the occasional, sneaky Archer reference.
I literally said "NO!" when Yahtzee mentioned the crafting. Like...whyyyyyyy
Classic "people like x in game y so let's add x to our game too"
@@BoardGamesBricksHobbiesthat's why I've felt alienated for the past few years. I don't like crafting, never have, so a good half of all indie games are an instant turn-off :/
@@penguinmaster16 yeah, I'm somewhere between indifference and dislike. I do really like how 2017's Prey did crafting: everything you collect from banana peels to circuit boards is broken down into 4 types of materials. You then use different combinations of those materials to build everything else. It's simple and streamlined.
Because like all AAA games, it’s designed by a committee of accountants.
@@penguinmaster16
Well, there is this little game called Wytchwood. Charming. And crafting IS the core mechanic of the game as the MC is a witch in search for her potion book pages and brewing/crafting her potions/tools. I enjoyed the game because crafting wasn't a useless add on but the main selling point.
Hogwarts Legacy is the most middling open world game possible, but has very fancy set dressing. So, naturally, it's already the best-selling game of the year. :/
This guy gets it
And what didn't help was political twitter not shutting up about it because of Rowling. Or thinking about buying this makes you phobic
same shit with elden ring
@@voomvoom4522 Fun Fact: This game was made by the same company that made Tak and the Power of Juju games.
@@TheDarkAngel969 'Telling that you lambast that side of things but not the people shelling out $60 just to own the libs.
There's no way I could pretend it's an adaptation of Discworld, it's not hilariously clever enough.
It is always a pleasure to hear Yahtzee tear apart british voice acting in games.
Mostly because it's done terribly. They hire Americans to do a "British accent" and Americans lap it up, meanwhile Brits can see through it like glass. It sounds forced and awkward. Not everyone is a posh kid from 1800's London.
part of why I love Xenoblade is how the VAs are actually British
Putting the moderators into overtime on the comments of this one.
I doubt he cares enough about the acne-riddled kids spamming the same thing like they're a pull-string toy.
I felt like Malfoy’s coke dealer with the way the best gear looked
I was wearing one of the cool looking poacher outfits to school. Baffling how no one reacts to outfits.
Well the developers definitely made _one_ correct design choice - they chose to make a Harry Potter game, ensuring that it'll be played by millions of people who've _literally_ never played a better game. Or _any_ other game for that matter. Millions of Potterites who have only heard of video games in passing, and for whom an Ubisoft open world bandit camp shooter will be _a work of pants-shitting genius._
The devs specialize in the movie-universe-to-mediocre-game genre, so it only makes sense that *eventually* they'd strike gold.
Not to mention the thousands of shitheads who bought it just to spite everyone who thinks, as yahtzee so eloquently put it, that "Rowling is a C*nt"
Potterites and the legions of TERFs who'll buy the game just to prove how much they hate people
ahh gatekeeping. games are only for real gamers (tm)
@@whodatninja439 I mean, not really? Show someone an alright film who's never seen a film before and they'll probably be fairly impressed with it compared to those who watch a variety of films.
Someone who's more up to date on game releases is going to notice when studios copy templates from other popular games on the market and become jaded by it. It's just the nature of things.
There needed to be more role playing in this role-playing game. Some actual impactful decisions, or something as basic as they way your character talks - honestly, say what you like about Dragon Age 2's copy-pasted dungeons it has the most player-chosen main character personality ever. Even if the main plot beats are the same being able to chose to react to situations and characters as a smarmy git, or goody-two-shoes, or jokester, or calm professional, or angry thug makes so much difference to game feel.
Also - Putting a basically linear story in an open world game doesn't make it non-linear. Yes, you can technically do certain missions in any order, but when those same missions play out exactly the same regardless that's still linear. And player choices really don't matter in this game.
People always love shitting on Dragon Age 2, but it was one of the few games to come out in the 2010s that had characters that I actually gave a shit about, well most of them.
hell it would of been cool if the game was actually reacting to your character's rather liberal use of murdering spells that are not the "killing curse." And before you know it, the game has you arrested and charged for crimes against humanity and also outlawed said spells.
Directly magicing someone dead is unforgivable. Using magic to create a situation where someone dies is just fine.
These lapses of logic didn't make a lot of sense until the author started tweeting. It's the same kind of mental gymnastics that takes to call oneself a feminist, while at the same time defending people who push anti-abortion and often downright fascist ideology. If you didn't do it directly, it's not your fault bad things happened to people you found inconvenient. It was hard to notice this while reading a children's book, because things don't have to make sense in a children's book, we thought. But now, with the author's views for context, it's forming a rather different sort of a picture. Suddenly, the way the protagonists start towing the line of the ministry once the big bad is defeated, despite nothing really changing about ministry's attitudes towards centaurs, goblins, and elves, makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?
Wizarding Britain only has Murder legislation but no Manslaughter I guess
Being a real Hufflepuff means being able to hear all of the jokes made about you and go “Ha, good one, friend!”
Damn you sound like the kind of person that really adds lightheartedness to a friendgroup
That's really sad, like, where is the fun in bullying when the victim doesn't fight back?
Do a pushover?
“I have asthma, I’m a Hufflepuff!!”
Hufflepuff is the stoner house
"...and more "Be the main character in a work of self-insert Harry Potter fanfiction."
Nah, this game not nearly as funny as reading "My Immortal".
Main character doesn't listen to my chemical romance or put their finger up at any preps, 0/10
We really need a My Immortal game at this point
"An open world who's vastness is matched only by it's pointlessness. Copy pasted grassy hills with the occasional Hamlet. That is one house one pub and a communal sheep tied to a fence." Yahtzee taking shots at Scotland.
More Wales, from the jokes I've heard.
Man I remember reading my first non-Harry Potter story about a boy going off to wizarding school (also published before Harry Potter). The main character had to actually learn magic, deal with school housing, pass tests to avoid getting expelled (unless you gave them a lot of money they really weren't interested in wasting time on students who didn't want to learn), and when demons invaded the mortal plane at the end of the school year you bet the board of regents had some pointed questions for him about the matter. There was no headmaster playing favorites in that school. Honestly, it could have made for a better wizarding school game.
And that book was titled...?
@@hitotsudaketsukinoko I also would like to know
@@hitotsudaketsukinoko It was called "Circle of Magic" by Debra Doyle. It was set in a generic pseudo-Medieval fantasy world (not to be confused with the other, more popular, Circle of Magic series about students in a magic school set in a generic pseudo-Medieval fantasy world by Tamora Pierce, which also would make for a neat game setting). Mostly it was for the 8-10 year age range and has been criticized for having a simplistic plots and boring characters, but I still kind of liked it.
Try Schooled in Magic by Chris Nuttall.
I like name of the wind
all these years, yahtzee still going strong
All this game needed was a really well designed Hogwarts, and a decent Hogsmead. Who needs an open world for a Harry Potter game? All you really want to do is explore the stuff from the books or movies anyway. Maybe throw in a bus ride over to Diagon Alley or something.
Should be called Bogshorts because of that one bit of lore that magic people just doody their pants and enchant it away.
You sure that isn't from the aforementioned fanfiction?
@@Servellion nope, that came from JK Rowling herself.
To be honest if I were a high ranking wizard and could just magic away my shitty shorts and the smell, I probably would.
@@BLZ231 Goddamn that woman writes some weird shit.
@@Servellion JK Rowling tweeted it
It took me about 60% of the game before I noticed that you had to manually activate the bag space upgrades from the challenges menu. So yes that bag space joke hit home hard
Jokes on you, I already have tinnitus.
The morality is all over the place in the game because the morality is all over the place in HP in general. It's fitting that the stories cover the high school years of a wizard because it's about roughly on par with a child's level of complexity towards morality in a story. "I'm good guy, they bad guy".
Part of why I loved the series as a kid, to be honest xD
@@mariokujo384 I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing but it does mean you gotta just avoid thinking too much about it otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Which normally might be asking too much of someone, but then this is a fictional world in which flying magic sentient cars exist and yet everyone takes the train to school, so I think it's not unreasonable with HP to ask a player to just not think too much about it and enjoy being a wizard.
They were consulted by JKR's Wizarding World consultant staff so we were guaranteed to get the consistent inconsistency and self-righteous morality JKR herself is known for. It boggles the mind the thing some people's integrity are actually worth when it comes down to it. I can only assume they never had much to begin with.
@@JustSomeRandomIdiot Yeah that's true. I haven't really gotten back into Harry Potter in years, but I do remember that the whole appeal is doing crazy, wondrous shit with your spells and magic. I mean the whole appeal was that "poor fucked-over orphan boy becomes thrown headfirst into the limelight of a secret amazing magic wonderland society", it makes sense that realism and worldbuilding weren't too big of a main focus compared to character interactions and whatnot.
Regardless, this game's not for me. I just wanted to hear Yahtzee's take on the game, especially with recent events
Yahtzee pretending to be worried about giving people tinnitus, when his outro has been like 30 decibels louder than the video for over a decade
Ah... So, Assassin's school for Horizon Far Wizardry.
Customized for fans successfully.
You forgot to mention Profesor Jiminicocktrhur as class teacher.
Glad I don't care for Mr. Pottah and I can watch this forest fire with no attachments.
Let's be honest, Bully is the superior Hogwarts game
Why did you say let's be honest and then did the opposite?
@@Rawen1982 They didn't. Try to pay attention.
@@Hawkatana I am, see, "let's be honest" followed by a complete sodding lie.
That's actually what I wanted in a HP game.
@@Rawen1982 Ah yes, how could I forget? Lies are when you tell the truth.
I'd pay serious money for a Unseen University Legacy, but I guess that would put me in the same fanboy demographic as this game's target market, wouldn't it?
...screw it, Discworld is worth fanboying over.
Terry Pratchett was always a good egg and never once wrote a book to vilify a tiny marginalised group of people.
A game in Discworld would be pretty great.
A nice detective game with the Night Watch characters might even make me forget that mash up stupidness that the new television series was.
This game was great... for the first 6-8 hours... in Hogwarts.
Agree 100%.
Bro this. Dropped it at 20 hours exactly because I was getting bored with it at 15 hours. The open world is bland as fuck and combat gets repetitive with the handful of enemy types
@@2canwin635
For combat I stopped trying. Just made sure to have tons of Thunderbrew and made combat trivial because yes, it was boring.
@@2canwin635 Fun Fact: This game was made by the same company that made Tak and the Power of Juju games.
Id say it peaks around 25th hour. First 10 are simply magical. So many secrets in Hogwarts.
Very little to no Professor interactions. Cant sit on a bench. Dorm for one person, interact with no students... They missed so many things.
> […] when you try to hit a specific dude and the auto-target thinks its more of a "to whom it may concern" situation […]
> Better get grinding lest thy numbers not go up. What a startingly apt statement on the modern education system.
Well, on the plus side: Without Hogwarts Legacy we wouldn't have gotten this treasure trove of a quote collection :)
Especially the first sums up the sins of so many badly implemented combat systems so on point it's almost scary.
Wow a worst witch reference, I knew the author Jill Murphey as I grew up in the same village. She died a few years ago.
I appreciate the alternate wizarding universe recommendations
Just read that Neil Gaiman was once asked whether Rowling stole the idea for Harry Potter from his character Timothy Hunter since they both had a similar origin story and even the same basic appearance. To his credit, Gaiman replied that he was pretty sure Rowling had just read the same source material he used for Timothy.
Terry Pratchett and the Discworld novels are so under appreciated in this day and age. I swear if half of all (grown up) Harry Potter fans took the time to sit down and read Equal Rites, The Colour of Magic, or literally any other Discworld book they wouldn't see the need to read anything by Rowling ever again.
Personally I'm a fan of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series
@@UndeadSoldier32ery much this. Harry Potter was never much good - it just had a lot of whimsical names like Hogsmeade and Butter Beer, and a fantastical premise that was basically appealing to children. The actual writing is extremely derivative and lazy. Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, instilled some real thoughtfulness and quality into his works. I’m personally a really big fan of Reaper Man and the broader Death series - they have a very appealing premise to me, personifying Death and giving him a likable, somewhat pitiful personality, and whimsical touches like the little Death of rats, but unlike Rowling, Pratchett knows how to cook up a good narrative beyond just the basic premise.
for me it was the nasuverse. it was like harry potter, but made for adults and telling stories outside the school (there is literally a wizarding school in London, but we almost never went there). but then it turned into bullshit gasha cashgrab and it lost all its depth.
3 types of enemies and it might instead be 2 types because there's apparently an arachnophobia filter
ALL HANDS BRACE FOR THE COMMENT SECTION
Had to pause and collect myself after "more of a to-whom-it-may-concern situation". What a great way of describing exactly that experience.
Yah, the curse that instantly kills is such a big deal, but setting dudes on fire and throwing them off cliffs is fine. This isn't even ludonarrative dissonance, the game told me to slow burn an enemy to death for extra XP...
Looking forward to seeing this one getting a "Bland-iest" award at the year-end roundup!
you get to PICK your house? Have these people ever actually witnessed harry potter in the flesh?
In fairness, that's the Devs getting ahead of the morons "OMG, it sorted me into Slytherin when I'm CLEARLY a Ravenclaw!" complaints if it sorted for you. Gotta keep your audience and thier annoying tendencies in mind.
@@ErrantPathfinder "The hat knows your inner hopes" isnt the same as "you can unilaterally choose to be on the goodguy team even if you've been a bad person your whole life". That was a parent consoling their child lmao
no joke, about halfway through the game my strategy became "hurl everything at everyone" and combat became exceedingly trivial. Even the final boss has projectiles that you can fling back at it and it does stupid high damage if you go all in on the damage upgrades for it.
As someone who has the closed captions switched on... Your attempt at self-censorship will not impact the literate.
The facade coming loose moment for me was when i had been flying over all the places i could go too leveling up and solving puzzles on the way,
very triple a generic world and combat so i give it a 5 or a 6 of 10.
I say this once again, this is just another last of us 2 game, a super mid game that either heavily hated or overly loved, but game it self is really just mid, not bad, just mid.
@@Fourtytwo4242 for me 5 or 6 is mid i had fun but the usual triple a world and combat and pc issues overshadowed that.
@@Fourtytwo4242 I say we oughta be okay with mid games too because some very mid games made our childhood fun.
@@AttakusZakus Hmmmmm maybe
From 40 to 12 years ago, when games were steadily growing but still niche, were unarguable to be deemed a happy but unnecessary waste of time, ideas for roleplaying sandbox games were still blossoming, sure
But nowadays, when games are a profitable market for most, two tech companies (Microsoft and SONY) and a toy making & service providing company (Nintendo) are making millions from it yearly and it's now among their most lucrative businesses, I kinda disagree with you on that one
Specially when a brand new idea just sprouted from nowhere from Tango, published by Bethesda, that promised almost nothing but delivered A LOT: Hi Fi Rush, a rhythm-based beat em up game
@@AttakusZakus Yeah, but that's because the games themselves were fun, not an amalgam of soulless features thrown together by an executive with a popular features checklist with a skin of a recognizable IP thrown on top.
2:52 - "School uniform, school uniform, school uniform, lanky kid dressed as a clown, school uniform..."
Someone I know played this game and I can attest to the outfit stuff mentioned. They played the entire thing wearing a suit of armour and a pumpkin head.
Fingerless gloves, the reward dragon leather cloak, the black flat cap, sun goggles, and the pre-order bonus dark wizard outfit (scarfs just don't go with anything, especially if you want long hair). I ran around in my best approximation of a steampunk outfit, and couldn't find a better look the entire game.
And I kept finding people whose robes kept clipping through them. The hem kept rising through their legs. Had to be the only consistent graphical bug I ran into the entire game. Robes in games need to be solid objects or they just ignore physics, I swear.
The outfit system sucks, they give you a limited number of outfit slots then force you to sell/trash your favorite pieces constantly.
I want the drip! Let me keep my standard issue school uniform and my funky cape and my enormous steampunk hat! Is that really too much to ask?
@@gabrieljohnson7997 You can change the appearance at will. On PS5, select the slot with something equipped and press square. It brings up a menu to change the appearance. Find a look that works and rock it for the entire game. I went with a pseudo steampunk outfit that didn't look half bad. Took damn forever to find the solar goggles, and there wasn't a scarf I could find that worked, so I made the slot invisible for the entire playthrough since the stats were a decent bump.
@@lordgenerias holy shit thank you
@@gabrieljohnson7997 Now if only one patch thry changed it to stick rather than be overwritten with new gear (frequent happening) it'd be perfect...
Looks like just the past month has given us our frontrunners for each of Yahtzee's end-of-year lists.
Best: Hi-Fi Rush
Worst: Forspoken
Blandest: Hogwarts Legacy.
Anyone want to take on the bet that just one of these will be replaced by year's end?
Jedi Survivor will either be blandest or not scored. I'm certain of that. Just a gut feeling.
idk weird to put a game like this as the blandest game. how is it any blander than every other AAA open world game thats released every year
@@HeadRedShot So far it's the blandest this year, though. Maybe we'll get an even blander one, but the way it's going, Starfield might get pushed to next year.
No joke, I think SOMEHOW Forspoken will be beaten out and/or moved to the blandest category.
@@zh-r4442 Yea, agreed. For some reason, I just bet we will end up with worse then forspoken. It just feels like that sort of year.
I never realised how much I want to see Discworld get more games. For whatever reason the games have been kind of small and niche.
Finally a review I can agree with. I cringe every time I see someone claiming that HL is GOTY material
Yeah. I played god of War: Ragnarok right after this, and while Ragnarok had somefaults, the first 10 minutes are better than pretty much all of HL combined. It's like only Sony knows how to quality control their products anymore.
I laugh really hard when the Dev yells "STOP FUCKING TWEETING"
What do you expect when the fandom have severe mental disorders?
Not sure why Yahtzee took off points for the game accurately recreating the English countryside. Don't you LIKE the countryside, Yahtzee?
Well he did move away ages ago, so I can't imagine he's that attached to it.
@@MrDevious88 and to Australia, the place where there are more deadly creatures than anywhere else in the world. If he thought that was better than the English countryside, I can't imagine he's got a very high opinion of it.
None of us actually like the countryside. That’s why there are so many pubs - we drink to forget we’re stuck out here.
The fact that you have to ask that means his opinion was dogsh*t from the start. Did he ever publicize his background in detail? If you think he's some kind of tough guy, hoo boy.
@Rae Shadowfox I mean, he did go on to leave the beast-ridden Australian hellscape for America after a few years, didn't he? He pronounced "tinnitus" the American way in this video, I don't know how they'd say it in Australia, but he certainly didn't pick that up here in England.
Watch the escapist version to hear the C-Words in all their glory
Hearing him call JK that so much was so god damn cathartic
tbh I watch on the escapist and only came here to see what the comments were like
Yes, unlocking everyones doors and chests, taking their belongings is something a good protagonist would do. Dont get me started on the Avada Kedavra usage that goes totally undetected.
wait stealthing in a wizard game................what are you going to do jump out of a bush to shove your singular fancy chopstick up their nose to stab their brain
I enjoyed the game, but I would have definitely liked it more if basically everything South of hogwarts wasn't in the game, and classes were more fleshed out instead. Everything in the school, the part fans actually wanted to see, was solid but felt rushed. They make this massive, open, interesting building then do basically nothing with it.
Yes. Furthest parts of the map come too late and you have 0 incentive to do anything there. Pacing issue. More student and proff interactions were mandatory and they missed it.
A bit south would work: Everything down to where Sebastian comes from is solidly designed: but that's only like... half the map? I have no freaking clue why they felt the need to add in that offshoot. There's nothing there that couldn't have been moved to the northern half.
And i definitely disagree: the school and castle is clearly the part they spent the most time on: so many details and easter eggs added in; they really thought about what to place and where to an absurd degree. It's just annoying the castle: the literal centerpiece of he game basically never gets used.
@@MikeMozzaro exactly. Hogwarts is great, but they don't do anything with it. Sounds like we very much agree lol.
That final tinnitus joke 🤣 I don't think I've ever laughed that hard before while sober
Raya Lucaria was cooler than Hogwarts, and Ranni would beat the shit out of Hermione.
Based as fuck.
With two arms tied behind her back, even.
Ranni doesn't fk around, if you betray her she can instakill you without moving.
As someone who loved the Harry Potter PC games as a kid, I remember getting a sinking feeling from the first Hogwarts Legacy trailer that this was just going to be another "Jimmeny Cockthroat," and it's a shame that turned out to be the case.
I was alright with the equipment crafting. It definitely didn’t feel required since they're just upgrades and materials for it can be found raising animals (although you do have to wait in unpaused,in-game for them to drop). The mounts bothered me though. Your broom is your main, but you get two more. One is a hippogriff which isn’t as good as your broom since it can’t be upgraded. The other is gained in the second to last story mission and it’s a ground mount so there’s no reason to use it.
As an American I can't help but look at a game that gives school children literal boom-sticks and says "okay go nuts!" and wonder if there isn't some barely lampshaded statement that would have been more appropriately made if the setting were a country other than England. One plagued by school shootings. You know the one.
@@voomvoom4522 because she didn't write to have school shootings in her books???? hogwarts isn't a real place?????????? are you ok
rhymes with Smamerica?
@@voomvoom4522 if we are going by the principle of it then there is a ton of gang violence at Hogwarts that involves deadly weapons, much more frequently and of much greater intensity than other schools
@@voomvoom4522 if Voldemort and the death eaters didn't have wands and the Wizarding World was a somewhat functioning society then the dark lord wouldn't have been able to do shit
@@voomvoom4522 maybe in a universe where wizards shit their pants instead of going to the bathroom, that would be for the best
Really have to commend Yahtzee for still being able to always giving me a good laugh even after a decade of this shit.
Yahtzee starting the video by stating that Rowling is a ****** is the best way to start a review of this game. Wish more reviewers would do it!
He really has developed a hatred of jimminycockthroats, hasn't he. I remember when he said that all AAA games should be making this kind of game.
Well okay but that was kinda before theyd all made this kind of game twelve times already.
There is some truth in that stuff of this kind of scale is one of the few things AAA games are capable of delivering on in a way most indies just cant, but if its all they keep pumping out...
I mean, I've gotten tired of open worlds, and I've not had to play anywhere near the amount of em he has.
Did he?
I remember something similar way back in the day regarding open world spectacles like Just Cause 2, where the budget went primarily for having a really fun sense of chaos
Honestly I find it understandable. I'm a big fan of a lot of jiminy cockthroat games but even I've recently gotten pretty sick of them. Too much of anything will put you off of it.
@@TheSpeep Fun Fact: This game was made by the same company that made Tak and the Power of Juju games.
He said this in his Skyrim review... a game that came out in 2011... 12 YEARS AGO
Reading the comments, it kind of reminds me of the hazards of demanding that the thing you liked as a kid grow up with you.
When you were ten you loved it because, "OOOH! Harry goes to a school that's 100 times cooler than the school I have to go to. He learns to do MAGIC at that school and gets to have adventures and saves the day from an evil wizard! That's awesome!"
Now that you're older you start asking questions that would not occur to 10 year old you to ask or care about. How is a spell that insta-kills someone wrong but a spell that sets them on fire okay? What's the deal with the house elves?
As for the whole child endangerment thing... We have all seen the scene where the young protagonist wants to help fight the villains. Only their parent or mentor says no and that it's too dangerous. When you're a kid you're on the side of the young hero. Stupid grownups underestimating you and trying to keep you from having adventures! You're officially an adult when you find yourself agreeing with the parent of the protagonist.
I actually thought the male Mc was trying to sound like Danial Radcliff's Harry.
Tonally at least. The accent seemed a directorial decision.
he probably was.
I didn’t care that much about the Harry Potter franchise before this game came out. Why is there hate for J.K Rowling?
She's actively anti-trans. She's written articles for anti-trans publications and donated substantial amounts of money to foundations that only exist to make life harder for trans folk.
There's an extensive informative article linked in the video information.
@ErrantPathfinder She also is against Scottish/Irish independence.
@@ErrantPathfinder Because being a bigot is bad.
@@ErrantPathfinder According to every bigoted creep throughout history, yes. Of course you'd think it's an "appeal to sanity", you're not going to case yourself as the bad guy. "The idea of women voting is insane.", "Black people being equal to whites is insane.", "Gays marrying is insane". It's all the same song and everyone's tired of hearing it. Times will happily change without you. Get out of the way or get trampled. Your choice.
Finally, a review that actually reviews the gameplay and isn't just praising it for being Harry Potter.
Nah, just another review that can't actually talk about the game without having to put J.K. and TERF in the same sentence more then once and thinks they're the first and most clever to do it.
@@humbleheathen69 the vast majority of this review is about criticizing the game itself while ignoring Rowling.
Rowling is only briefly mentioned at the start and end.
Thanks for confirming that Worst Witch actually existed because I almost never hear it mentioned and sometimes I wonder if I just imagined it.
I just wanted basically magic Bully but noooo
''Hey we have all this Warner Brothers Potter money, maybe we can use it to make really interesting quests and content!''
''What? Fuck no, crafting, collectibles and a giant open world where you follow a breadcrumb trail anyway.''
It’s funny that the game boils down to farcry with a building that sort of looks like one from a movie. It should have been a VR game. Or not exist at all. Setting it 200 years in the past was definitely the worst decision. If it was in the 70s during the wizard civil war they could have used some known characters or something. The world building is so undercooked in HP that how could anyone give a shit?
Lmao that exploding spell joke was exactly what I was waiting to be talkies about 😂😂😂