Harry Potter Hogwarts Legacy game

Commentary: The open-world RPG game lets you explore an unseen era of the wizarding world, and it's a joy to explore.

The game encourages you to use every tool in your arsenal, instead getting comfortable with a few basic combos and relying on them to get through every battle. The world opens up in a big way once you finish your first flying lesson and get your own broom. Crucially, the flow of quests gives you time to get comfortable with each new ability before introducing another -- you'll attend a class and then use what you've learnt in a few story missions or side quests. These are varied and fun in terms of gameplay, exploration and puzzle-solving, but feel even more worthwhile since they present opportunities to learn more about the quest-givers and world. The development team's love for Harry Potter is apparent in every aspect of Hogwarts Legacy, but shines most brightly in the world and its characters. (It's frustrating that you can't pause during cutscenes though.) This characterisation is woven through the main story and its side quests, which range from investigating one of the castle's mysteries and sneakily grabbing potion ingredients to wandering into a dangerous cave. The house you end up in doesn't seem to change much beyond the common room, your uniform and some throwaway lines. After creating your character, you're whisked off on a brief opening adventure before reaching the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The customization options are a key element in living out your wizarding world fantasy, and they're a joy. This open-world action RPG game, developed by Avalanche Software, is designed to let us live out our fantasies of enrolling at the iconic School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as a new student. In 1998, my mum handed me a copy of Philosopher's Stone -- which had the less good name Sorcerer's Stone in the US -- and the mystery of that first chapter sucked me right into its magical universe. Rowling's inflammatory comments about transgender people](/culture/entertainment/daniel-radcliffe-responds-to-backlash-calling-j-k-rowling-transphobic/), sucked the remaining fun out of the franchise, and I figured it was time to move on.

Hogwarts Legacy lets players create their own wizards or witches, but which names fit the game?

In these, many Hogwarts students get their first and only mention, and as they are assigned houses, players might like to choose a descendant from the house they wish to play as. Due to the relatively small size of the wizarding population, it is actually more realistic for familiar family names to pop up in Hogwarts Legacy, than not. As some of these names are those of real historical figures and others of mythical heroes, players looking for a classical first name can trawl through a vast array of lists until they find the right fit. Although there aren't many names from the Harry Potter series that are inspired by Arthurian myths, Hogwarts Legacy certainly has a few more ties to the magical medieval period. Victorian or magical-sounding suffixes can be added to both first and last names, though this won't work in all cases. These names can then either be used or serve as a springboard for inspiration. Hogwarts Legacy is set in 1890 and so as a new 5th-year student, the main character will have been born in either 1874 or 1875. [muggle ones thankfully do](https://gamerant.com/harry-potter-underappreciated-muggles/), and as plenty of wizards and witches have muggle names, these will do just fine. Set a century before the events of the main series, players attend Hogwarts as a new 5th-year student of their own creation. The first step in creating a realistic character is choosing a great name. With hundreds of Examples of these include

When you can play quidditch in Hogwarts Legacy? Or learn the unforgivable curses? Or find the Deathly Hallows? Our FAQ addresses these queries and more.

If you stick to the main story quests, you’ll gain access to the Room of Requirement in just a few hours of gameplay. Hogwarts Legacy takes place in the 1800s, well before the time period the Harry Potter series takes place. Rowling is not involved in the creation of the game, and Hogwarts Legacy is not a new story from her. The Room of Requirement is also fully customizable. Rowling that Hogwarts Legacy is canon. There may be situations in quests where you can, but you can’t just casually cast Avada Kedavra on a student wandering the halls of Hogwarts. However, if you were to only do main story quests, you should be able to finish the game in 30 to 35 hours. If you rush through Sebastian’s quests as soon as you get them, I imagine you can learn them within 10 to 15 hours. As of this writing, I have around 35 hours in the game, and I haven’t completed the main story yet. As you progress through the main story line, you’ll meet a Slytherin student named Sebastian Sallow. As you explore Hogwarts, you’ll realize just how huge the school is, only to find out there is an expansive world outside of its gates. [Hogwarts Legacy](https://www.polygon.com/game/hogwarts-legacy/40703) brings you into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as a fifth-year transfer student at Hogwarts.

On Monday, a new character named Sirona Ryan was introduced in the Harry Potter series Hogwarts Legacy game.

Many people believed that purchasing anything from the Harry Potter franchise implies support for the author’s political views. Hogwarts Legacy’s creator, Portkey Games, revealed in an interview with IGN that Sirona Ryan was added for the following reasons: “The team felt that it was very important to create a game that is representative of the rich and diverse world of Harry Potter as well as the groups of people who play games, which includes the LGBTQIA+ community.” It is safe to assume, however, that J.K. Many people complained that the names were racist and that there were numerous cultural and linguistic errors. She is essential to all goblin-related missions. On Monday, a new character named Sirona Ryan was introduced in the Harry Potter series Hogwarts Legacy game.

In this week's newsletter: The big-budget Harry Potter spinoff should be an instant play for fans of the series, but for some author JK Rowling's statements ...

[what makes Nintendo, Nintendo for Saturday magazine](https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/feb/04/how-nintendo-keeps-levelling-up): a fun-first approach to game design, tireless enthusiasm for experimentation and a talent for making the most of modest technology. I remember, years ago, arriving at a screening of a Marvel movie and being told in no uncertain terms that I would not be able to understand it without having watched the seven other Marvel movies that preceded it. [This Saturday Night Live parody](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiIRlg4Xr5w&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive)of a prestige HBO interpretation of Mario Kart, featuring the stars of The Last of Us, has absolutely sent me. Hogwarts Legacy may not be Rowling’s game, but it is emblematic of how spending money on entertainment often makes us part, willingly or not, of a bigger conversation – and how our relationships with the culture that helped shape us as kids can cause us consternation as adults. [Harry Potter](https://www.theguardian.com/film/harrypotter) – it was a large part of my life right into my young adulthood. Social media has made it difficult to remain blissfully ignorant of the views and values of writers, artists and game developers, and how they might conflict with our own. “As someone with trans family and friends, this is an issue that I care deeply about, and I could never look them in the eye and say that I supported [Rowling] monetarily,” says Pat, a 31-year-old who found Potter’s veiled magical world captivating as a child. [reviewing Hogwarts Legacy](https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/feb/06/hogwarts-legacy-review-wizarding-wish-fulfilment-whose-magic-wears-off), an exercise in wizarding wish-fulfilment that would once have been a no-brainer purchase for anyone who grew up fantasising about walking the hallowed halls of that imaginary castle. [18% of millennials](https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/rainbow_britain_report.pdf) identify as LGBTQ+. But like the rest of the Wizarding World, including the [ailing Fantastic Beasts franchise](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/08/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-cancel-them-how-the-wizarding-world-lost-its-magic), Hogwarts Legacy has become caught up in the controversy surrounding JK Rowling’s statements about sex and gender. [consulted closely with her team](https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us/faq).) The discourse made it on to BBC Radio 4 last week, and has been covered by the Times, the Mail and Sky – another beat in the endless media culture war that trans people have been subjected to. One of the game’s actors, meanwhile – Sebastian Croft, who also plays a character in beloved LGBTQ+ Netflix teen drama, Heartstopper – has followed the example of the stars of the Potter movies and issued a statement distancing himself from Rowling’s comments.

The 'Harry Potter' video game is a top seller days before it's officially out.

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The boycott against the new Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy may not have kept it from becoming a hit, but it did change things.

[arguing](https://www.nme.com/news/film/hogwarts-legacy-introduces-first-transgender-character-in-harry-potter-franchise-3393983) that the name “Sirona Ryan” is itself a swipe at trans people, as you could shorten it to “Sir Ryan,” which sounds masculine. [remember](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/05/10-facts-about-americans-and-twitter/) that barely a fifth of adults in the U.S. Games made sure to [say](https://winteriscoming.net/2020/09/18/jk-rowling-not-directly-involved-new-harry-potter-game-warner-bros/) that Rowling “is not directly involved in the creation of the game,” although it’s obviously based on her work. [Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels](https://www.amazon.com/b/?rh=i:instant-video,n:2858778011&ie=UTF8&filterId=OFFER_FILTER=SUBSCRIPTIONS&node=2858778011&ref_=assoc_tag_ph_1465430649312&_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=pf4&tag=fs-livedrops1-20&linkId=90b2815fb79ba0e403137c68e139db16%E2%80%9D) may doom the franchise without any outside help if it keeps making uninspired movies like the Fantastic Beasts trilogy.) as But those activists, if they’re loud and persistent enough, can get a say in what kinds of Harry Potter content we get going forward, and maybe even who (and who doesn’t) get to be involved. “We have a diverse cast of characters that players will encounter throughout the game.” Again, it’s hard to prove whether there’s a direct link between the Rowling backlash and the inclusion of Sirona Ryan, but I have a very time believing it wasn’t a major factor. They’re people who remembered Harry Potter from their childhoods and wanted to visit Hogwarts, they’re parents who bought the game for their kids, or they’re someone who just thought it looked neat. But honestly, I suspect that the biggest reason is that most people either don’t care very much about the controversy or haven’t even heard of it. Is this partially due to reactionary fans buying extra copies of the game so they can “own the libs” or whatever? What makes Rowling especially pernicious is that, unlike a lot of transphobes, she’s rich, famous and influential enough to sway public opinion, which is dangerous when her goal is to stop trans people from getting more rights or to roll back the ones they have. It’s a long story, but to summarize, it started when Rowling started to say some dicey things on Twitter a few years back, and reached its zenith in 2020 when she published [Harry Potter](https://winteriscoming.net/fantasy-series/harry-potter/) universe, aka the Wizarding World.

Warner Bros. Discovery launches Hogwarts Legacy this week, as reviewers conflicted over J.K. Rowling's politics either apologize for liking it or avoid it.

In this sense the controversy over Hogwarts Legacy is just one stone in a much larger mosaic. Even a harmless cartoon from the 1970s like Scooby-Doo is currently the subject of “It’s extremely worrying that the biggest outlet in the world thinks our job is ‘game fun’ yes/no,” she wrote, appearing to scrupulously avoid mentioning Hogwarts Legacy by name. But thanks to media executives increasingly fearful of taking a large financial risk on anything that isn’t an [on Monday](https://twitter.com/SophNar0747/status/1622761525919330304?s=20&t=eRtLpO2xdQh9vR7PdTeuzw) in response to the game’s imminent debut. Ironically Cyberpunk 2077, from the same studio behind the hugely influential Witcher series, received similar harsh criticism several years ago from some media sites—first, for a [YouTube](https://fortune.com/company/youtube/) gaming channel, labeled the controversy over the Harry Potter game “a silly hill to die on” and called out her own community for doing more harm than good to its cause. [Speaking to Axios](https://www.axios.com/2022/08/25/warner-bros-games-discovery-david-haddad) in August, however, the head of the unit backed Avalanche for doing a “great job” and said the game was targeted at everyone who loved the world of Harry Potter. For that, Rowling has been condemned as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF. [Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/hogwarts-legacy), while 92% of professional video game testers recommend it, [according to OpenCritic](https://opencritic.com/game/13898/hogwarts-legacy). [climbed to the very top](https://entertainment.ie/gaming/hogwarts-legacy-tops-steam-charts-ahead-of-release-550386/) of the [Steam weekly global sales charts](https://steamdb.info/topsellers/2023W05/) last week. [user tags](https://steamcommunity.com/app/990080/discussions/0/3761101693165768416/) attached to the title’s virtual storefront window by critics who sought to brand it a “ [genocide simulator](https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/hogwarts-legacy-tagged-as-transphobic-on-steam/)” in a bid to scare would-be consumers away.

Fans of "Harry Potter" are looking forward to a new game release from that franchise. But there have been calls for a boycott as author J. K. Rowling is accused ...

But it's clear that the boycott efforts have failed. Portkey also appears to be further distancing itself from Rowling by adding the franchise's first transgender character, Sirona Ryan. The games developer, Portkey Games, has been careful to point out that although "Hogwarts Legacy" is an officially licensed game, J. Trans people, especially trans women of color, continue to be the targets of often deadly violence. Still, she will have received money from licensing her intellectual property to the developers. Rowling herself was not involved in developing the story in the game. That employee has since resigned. (Though no definition of the term "purethink" can be found on the internet, Rowling is presumably referring to an intolerant ideology that would not allow any other opinion to exist.) Some have said they would try to buy the game second-hand, or even acquire a pirated copy. Set in the late 1800s, it provides players with the virtual experience of attending a wizarding school, including riding brooms, mixing potions, and casting spells. [anti-trans sentiment in the UK](https://www.dw.com/en/british-government-to-block-scotland-transgender-law/a-64417072) has caused a political rift between [Scotland](https://www.dw.com/en/scotland-reviews-transgender-prisoners-policy-after-outcry/a-64550411)and England. [anti-trans ideology](https://www.dw.com/en/harry-potter-fan-sites-distance-themselves-from-jk-rowling-after-transphobic-comments/a-54034539), which she has expressed in [tweets](https://www.dw.com/en/jk-rowling-causes-furor-with-transphobic-tweets/a-53715708), [blog posts](https://www.dw.com/en/bbc-nominates-jk-rowlings-controversial-essay-on-trans-rights-for-award/a-56014673), and her non-Harry Potter novels.

The Hogwarts Legacy review scores are in! Is this trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as magical as advertised?

Hogwarts Legacy is worth the price point and is a well polished addition to the wizarding world.” It is, however, not a definite buy for everyone, as it does not really break any glass ceilings or elevate the gaming industry to any new heights: it’s just a good game that you’ll get a good time from. Some critics also found Hogwarts Legacy to be just another open-world game that is dressed up with a Harry Potter skin. [3 out of 5 stars review score](https://www.nme.com/reviews/game-reviews/hogwarts-legacy-review-3392991) as well, saying: “Hogwarts Legacy is fun and manages to get a lot of things right, but it already feels somewhat dated, no doubt a hangover from the six-year development cycle. As such, many have called for the boycott of the game in support of the transgender community, asking players to pass on the title as Rowling has previously made anti-transgender comments and has a As a game coming from the Harry Potter franchise, series creator JK Rowling received payment for the use of her intellectual property, and will continue to receive royalties from the sales of the game.

Some fans on social media are calling for the game to be boycotted. Others argue that buying the game doesn't mean they're endorsing Rowling's views.

I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. In fact, Warner Bros was so concerned about the potential for a fan boycott that it issued a statement in September 2020 making it clear the Scottish author "is not directly involved in the creation of the game". There have been calls for a boycott of the game due to JK Rowling's support of anti-transgender rhetoric and her notoriety as an anti-trans figure. Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world role-playing game that lets players experience life as a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the 1800s — almost 200 years before the events in the Harry Potter novels. With the release of the highly anticipated video game Hogwarts Legacy, this week was set to be a time of excitement for fans of Harry Potter.

The video game is the latest battleground over the “Harry Potter” author's controversial comments on transgender issues, with fans and gamers divided over ...

“This is a game about delivering to the fans that wizarding world experience that you always wanted to have when you were reading the books or watching the films. [said on Casilio’s channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DASsZCAoWDU) last year that he was a lead designer and senior producer on the game for three years before leaving Avalanche in 2021. [she posted a tweet](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1619686515092897800) likening a meme in which a character holding a gun threatens a TERF, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, to an illustration of a 20th-century suffragist being tortured. “Cursed Child,” the play Rowling is credited on, is running in six countries. [In an interview with IGN](https://www.ign.com/articles/hogwarts-legacy-developers-respond-to-controversy), an entertainment website, Alan Tew, the game’s director, addressed questions about Rowling by saying, “When we bumped into those challenges, we went back and refocused on the stuff that we really care about.” “Whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question.” In December, after Jessie Earl, a transgender gaming commentator, tweeted that it was “harmful” to support Hogwarts Legacy, Rowling [a list of frequently asked questions](https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us/faq). “It’s a game that got very popular very fast, and most people aren’t into the controversy.” Some pledged to cease spending money on the franchise, which includes a theatrical production and the “Fantastic Beasts” movies. Rowling, however we have collaborated closely with her team on all aspects of the game to ensure it remains in line with the magical experiences fans expect.” Still, the disagreements over whether to engage with the newest entry in the wizarding world have sowed chaos on internet forums.

The world of Harry Potter is getting new life. Hogwarts Legacy – the new open-world video game by Avalanche and Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent company ...

“Perhaps making it into this big production video game allows the franchise to kind of save itself a little bit from the drag it’s been experiencing culturally.” Rowling is not involved in the Hogwarts Legacy game. Though the Hogwarts Legacy character Sirona Ryan does not explicitly say she is trans, dialogue in a scene suggests it: “[It] took them a second to realize I was actually a witch, not a wizard,” the character said. Not every game was a blockbuster hit, despite the fandom around the Harry Potter franchise. Part of the game’s expectation is based on controversy surrounding Harry Potter’s creator — J.K. “Open world style games are a really a big deal in the games industry,” said Joost van Dreunen, an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business who was formerly CEO of games market research firm Super Data Research.

The rave reviews come amid calls for a boycott of the game.

Rowling denied she was a 'Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist'.](https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/10/jk-rowling-breaks-silence-transphobic-accusations-reveals-shes-domestic-abuse-survivor-12834271/) She said: "I want trans women to be safe. That is the simple truth." Actor Sebastian Croft, who provides one of the voices in the game, has said he did not know about Rowling’s views when he accepted the role. One Canadian outlet, The Gamer, is refusing to review the game and create online guides for it. IGN Portugal gave the game a perfect 10/10, while its US counterpart opted for a near-perfect 9/10. VGC – who gave the game 4/5 – said: “It’s hard to argue against it being the strongest piece of Wizarding World media since the films concluded over a decade ago. Despite calls for a boycott over comments made by Potter author JK Rowling, Hogwarts Legacy has been topping the pre-order charts for weeks. XboxEra – 9/10 IGN Portugal – 10/10 IGN – 9/10 The open-world video game – set within the world of Harry Potter – is available on PC and consoles from Friday, February 10. It appears that after months of anticipation among gamers and Harry Potter fans, the game does in fact live up to its hype.

Some fans are struggling to reconcile the author's comments with a desire to immerse themselves in the best-reviewed Harry Potter game ever.

Rowling, the author of the original book series, have [cast a shadow](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-09/hogwarts-legacy-video-game-adds-inclusivity-after-jk-rowling-controversy) over the launch and left some longtime fans wondering whether they’ll even play it. [pre-orders](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/16/hogwarts-legacy-is-already-the-1-selling-game-on-steam-and-ps5-2-on-xbox/?sh=a6ac5eb71e1c) are any indication, it will likely be one of the most profitable, too. The game is one of the most highly anticipated of 2023 and if

After five years in the making, Hogwarts Legacy - the newest Harry Potter video game - is already breaking records: on Twitch it became the most-watched ...

Now playing- Source: CNN Business [Hogwarts Legacy](http://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/entertainment/harry-potter-legacy-trans-character-cec/index.html)- the newest Harry Potter video game - is already breaking records: on Twitch it became the most-watched single-player game, played by streamers who got the game ahead of its official release. Now playing- Source:

The Harry Potter brand, and all its baggage, gets fed into the big-budget video game woodchipper.

And here’s the best we can do with that ugly query: If you’re the kind of person bound and determined to ignore, or even celebrate, “vocal opponent of trans rights” parts of those descriptors, then you’ll probably receive exactly what you were hoping to get from it. We will note that the game at least acknowledges that a decent chunk of Wizarding Britain—and not just the Slytherins—is blatantly racist against non-humans and Muggles alike, rather than just blithely ignoring it, or mocking efforts for change. The game’s script, in the time we spent with it, neither tries to obscure the fact that Sirona is trans, or draw unwarranted attention to it; it’s simply presented as a fact about her, the same as any other. To extend some measure of fairness to those devs, they have attempted to reckon with some of the issues inherent in playing in the author’s sandbox: This is easily the most diverse Hogwarts has ever looked, including, as many outlets have pointed out, the existence of a canonically trans character named Sirona Ryan who appears periodically in the game’s story. The intriguing nature of the combat is hampered, though, by the single worst design decision in the entire game: The inclusion of a loot system, in the form of various pieces of equipment that you’re constantly gruffling out of Hogwarts’ various chests or off the corpses of all the bad people you’ve killed. (More on which, in a second.) The goal is a steady trickle of stuff to do—fights to wage, puzzles to solve, loot to schlorp up—with a little more always glimmering over the next horizon, ensuring you stay trapped in its world for pleasant (if slightly numb) hours. Clever touches abound—like a moment in the opening cutscene when a dragon devours a man right in front of your character, causing the death-sensitive thestrals pulling your carriage to suddenly pop into visibility—as does a rock-solid dedication to the series’ tone. The real frustration, though, is the inventory into which all that stuff goes, which starts out incredibly limited, and can only be expanded through doing lots of little puzzles scattered around the game world. The actual play of Hogwarts Legacy will be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time with the latter-day Assassins Creed games, with a hint of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild thrown in: A big map full of ostensible incident or little upgrades that will improve your stats or expand your painfully tiny inventory. Portkey Games has tried to build something moderately robust out of Rowling’s library of pidgin Latin spells, tasking the player with dipping, dodging, and Diffindo-ing their way through waves of dark wizards and hostile fauna (a veritable menagerie of fantastic beasts and where you murder them). (Why, in the name of god, would you put lateral movement on one stick, and up-and-down movement on the other? The answer, as it turns out, is “yes, a bit more than you might expect.” Hogwarts Legacy has clearly been created by people who love Rowling’s franchise—people desperate to give players a full version of not just its titular Scottish castle (recreated in elaborate, and sometimes confounding, detail here), but the villages and Wizarding World it exists within.

"Hogwarts Legacy" is set within the Harry Potter universe, created by J.K. Rowling, and adheres to its lore despite Rowling's non-involvement.

According to the game's official website, "Hogwarts Legacy" is set at the titular school in the 1800s. There are other familiar names, such as Professor Matilda Weasley, who shares a surname with one of the most iconic wizarding families from the main series. Rowling's original vision." Rowling](https://www.insider.com/jk-rowling-harry-potter-stars-transphobic-comments-reactions-2020-6) and the subsequent [shadow cast on the franchise as a whole](https://www.insider.com/hogwarts-legacy-sirona-ryan-transgender-character-jk-rowling-harry-potter-2023-2), amid a broader context of [violence against transgender people](https://www.insider.com/transgender-violence-deaths-database-murder-cases-2017-2021) and [legislation targeting trans people and gender-affirming healthcare.](https://www.insider.com/states-considering-bills-ban-gender-affirming-healthcare-transgender-youth-2023-1) Simon Pegg voices Hogwarts headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black, who is an ancestor of Sirius Black. - "Hogwarts Legacy" is a video game set in the Harry Potter universe in the 1800s.

Hogwarts Legacy might bring some warm nostalgia for Harry Potter fans, but a lack of imagination holds back an otherwise boilerplate open-world adventure.

In one mission, I use it to track a set of footprints, as I’ve done in almost every open-world game released in the past decade. That repetition is exacerbated by the fact that there are only a handful of enemy types in the game, which are repeated up until the final few bosses. By the end of my adventure, I have access to an impressively long list of spells that can be used to battle enemies and navigate the world. It’s the only time I really feel like I’m connected to my surroundings, discovering the natural mysteries of nature with my own wit. Elsewhere, I’m able to fully customize my Room of Requirement as if it’s my Animal Crossing home, but a lack of multiplayer means I have no one to show it off to. It’s an endless labyrinth loaded with genuine mystery and tons of fan service that almost transforms it into a digital museum for the wider series. There’s little I can point to that makes Hogwarts Legacy stand out aside from the IP attached to it. The issue, however, is its lack of a “hero” feature. It’s the first clue that Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t have a lot of ideas about how to make Harry Potter feel special in a video game. Moments like that are indicative of the entire story, a flat adventure punctuated with convoluted contradictions. [author with a history of making transphobic comments and](https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy) who stands to profit from the game’s success, comes into play. In reality, there’s not much to get heated about; the story and its characters are too thin to warrant a fuss.

The controversy revolves around Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, who has become infamous for her views on transgender people, having gone from a vocal gay ...

recognize that this is about engagement on twitter, a feeling of helplessness and nothing else.” Hogwarts Legacy became a fiery beacon for the culture war, with boycotters arguing that the game is symbolically important, and that trans allies should reject any product that enriches and empowers Rowling. y’all are talking about a video game that i’m not even playing. Twitch streamer Jessie Gender, who is also transgender, recommended that trans allies should promote a game made by a trans person, instead of using Hogwarts Legacy for publicity, writing: “Don’t use oppressors tools to fight the oppressor.” Transphobes seem to agree, viewing the game as a symbol of defiance, a way to “trigger the libs.” The culture war around the newly released Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy, has already boiled Twitter and Twitch into a frenzy, as boycotters and fans clash over the ethics of playing a game about going to wizard school.

Hogwarts Legacy seems to be a step in the right direction to build a gaming universe within the Wizarding World.

But as soon as you step outside Hogwarts, the game becomes like any other action role-playing game. Hogwarts Legacy is set in the late 1800s, roughly a century before the events of the Harry Potter series. The character creator is quite exhaustive and helps you create your dream avatar. You get to create a whole new character from scratch (yes, the sorting hat will choose which house you belong in). So, finally, we have a game that transports us into the endearing-and-adventurous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If the Persona series could make high school fun with a groundbreaking roleplaying game, why have we not seen a Harry Potter game in a long time?

Commentary: The open-world RPG game lets you explore a previously unseen era of the wizarding world, and it's a joy.

The game encourages you to use every tool in your arsenal, instead getting comfortable with a few basic combos and relying on them to get through every battle. The world opens up in a big way once you finish your first flying lesson and get your own broom. Crucially, the flow of quests gives you time to get comfortable with each new ability before introducing another -- you'll attend a class and then use what you've learnt in a few story missions or side quests. These are varied and fun in terms of gameplay, exploration and puzzle-solving, but feel even more worthwhile since they present opportunities to learn more about the quest-givers and world. The development team's love for Harry Potter is apparent in every aspect of Hogwarts Legacy, but shines most brightly in the world and its characters. (It's frustrating that you can't pause during cutscenes though.) This characterisation is woven through the main story and its side quests, which range from investigating one of the castle's mysteries and sneakily grabbing potion ingredients to wandering into a dangerous cave. The house you end up in doesn't seem to change much beyond the common room, your uniform and some throwaway lines. After creating your character, you're whisked off on a brief opening adventure before reaching the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The customization options are a key element in living out your wizarding world fantasy, and they're a joy. This open-world action RPG game, developed by Avalanche Software, is designed to let us live out our fantasies of enrolling at the iconic School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as a new student. In 1998, my mum handed me a copy of opening novel Philosopher's Stone -- published under the lesser name Sorcerer's Stone in the US -- and the mystery of that first chapter sucked me right into its magical universe. Rowling's inflammatory comments about transgender people](/culture/entertainment/daniel-radcliffe-responds-to-backlash-calling-j-k-rowling-transphobic/), sucked the remaining fun out of the franchise, and I figured it was time to move on.