Hogwarts Legacy

[Jophiel]

I think it should also be implied that we're talking about a certain style/genre of game. There's typically no death condition in a romance visual novel and any deaths that to happen are significant. There is death in Minesweeper and no respawning. I don't think either game really applies to the conversation here, though.

[Fyraltari]

That's not a question of quantity but of genres. Animal Crossing and Doom aren't comparable. Likewise with action movies and romantic comedies.

[pendell]

I think it should also be implied that we're talking about a certain style/genre of game. There's typically no death condition in a romance visual novel and any deaths that to happen are significant. There is death in Minesweeper and no respawning. I don't think either game really applies to the conversation here, though.

I'm not following your point, because this isn't either a romantic visual novel or minesweeper.

From my read this looks like a pretty standard quest adventure game. There's plenty of mobs and, no matter how many you light on fire with barrels, there will always be another poacher camp. So it looks to me as if either death is cheap, or this is Roger-rabbit style toon violence, where no one ever takes permanent damage even if you drop a safe on their head.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Jophiel]

I'm not following your point, because this isn't either a romantic visual novel or minesweeper.

From my read this looks like a pretty standard quest adventure game. There's plenty of mobs and, no matter how many you light on fire with barrels, there will always be another poacher camp. So it looks to me as if either death is cheap, or this is Roger-rabbit style toon violence, where no one ever takes permanent damage even if you drop a safe on their head.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

My point was in regards to the "most games don't have infinite respawns" style statements. Which I'm saying might be true when looking at everything from Candy Crush to Forza to Pokemon Red but isn't really relevant to this discussion.

[animorte]

About a year or two ago I actually watched a documentary on the progression of "death" in video games over the decades.

It sort of started out as a checkpoint, then they added collectible lives. Once you run out of those, then you start back at the checkpoint. Eventually we got to where we are now with periodic auto-save and manual save features. You never really die (whether there's a spot that tracks it or not).

Certainly we still have plenty representation for all these standard variations.

[Bohandas]

I tend to think of it as the meaning of violence in media depends on the context of that media. The hero shooting a goon in an action movie is cool, the protagonist getting killed in a war movie is sad, we all know this.

Videogames make this weird because killing people in gameplay seldom has any valence in the rest of the game. Its an explicitly meaningless act, just a thing you do to unlock the next area. On the flipside, killing people in cutscenes uses movie meaning rules, so it can be awesome, sad, or whatever else. HL makes this weird again by being set in a universe with actual metaphysics about killing people that the gameplay studiously ignores.

But this is only slightly weirder, because most videogame protagonists are barely acknowledged ridiculous murder machines. It's right up there with them all being uncontrolled kleptomaniacs and having extradimensional pockets. The requirements of gameplay force a lot of combat and looting, because killing things and taking their stuff to make the numbers go up is one of the only things we've figured out how to make fun and appealing to a broad audience. But it's impossible to structure a simple heroic story around Bob, who kills like 40 people every hour and strips every room he enters down to the studs. That's not a hero, or even a person, that's an eldritch horror in a skin suit.

This is one reason I don't think games work very well as story delivery vehicles. The story has to bend over backwards to deliver an endless tide of dudes for you to mulch, and even then the sheer scale of the violence is completely absurd if you think about it.

That thinking about it is generally called ludonarrative dissonance. Ten, fifteen years ago all the talk was how to fix it. I think that's the wrong approach, because you either end up with grotesquely contorted stories, or crippled, limited gameplay. Much better to just ignore it, the same way we ignore the dumb nonsense conventions of other fantasy media.

I remember having an issue with this sort of thing in some of the Fallout games. There's a cutscene but in one of the Fallout 3 DLCs where your character, who is basically a god of war and has just fought his way into a heavily fortified compound, randomly surrenders when jumped by like two guys with tiny handguns that wouldn't be able to pierce his power armor at point-blank range

Fantastic Beasts, the films, showed that while the Elixir of Life keeps you alive and healthy it doesn't stop you from aging, Nicholas Flamel is so old and frail that a handshake breaks his fingers.

Yeah, another fifty ears of that and I buy "yeah, I'm ready to go."

Speaking of power armor, I'm like 80% sure there was at least one set of animated armor in that book series. Couldn't Flamel have jusf comissi9ned a protective powered exoskeleton?

[Trafalgar]

Back in the early 2000s, JK Rowling met with Disney about adding a Harry Potter themed attraction to Disney Land. But JKR wanted a train ride like the Hogwarts Express to take visitors to that area. Disney felt that between the monorail and the other rides that there were too many trains on the park already. The talks fell apart and JK Rowling went to Universal Studios instead.

So Disney was one of the first to butt heads with JK Rowling over Trains Rights.

BaDumBum

[Saintheart]

I remember having an issue with this sort of thing in some of the Fallout games. There's a cutscene but in one of the Fallout 3 DLCs where your character, who is basically a god of war and has just fought his way into a heavily fortified compound, randomly surrenders when jumped by like two guys with tiny handguns that wouldn't be able to pierce his power armor at point-blank range.

That's just good old Cutscene Incompetence (be warned, site links to the Black Hole of the Internet) with a pinch of The Battle Didn't Count.

[tyckspoon]

That's just good old Cutscene Incompetence (be warned, site links to the Black Hole of the Internet) with a pinch of The Battle Didn't Count.

Also a fine Fallout 3 tradition carrying on from the original game ending, which insisted your character must sacrifice themselves to go activate a MacGuffin in an zone with unsurvivable radiation. Which would be a perfectly fine heroic sacrifice if it weren't ignoring that by that point in the game you almost certainly have some mix of..

- Carrying literally hundreds of doses of radiation resistance and radiation removal medicines
- Through stats, perks, and equipment are nearly radiation immune
- have a companion with you who is explicitly radiation immune who could trivially go do the thing for you in safety

.. which could be used to handle the situation long enough to go throw the damn switch and come back out pretty much ok, but no, You Die. The companion option is especially egregious.

.. later patches at least let you ask your Ghoul or Super Mutant buddy to go do it, because that was really really dumb.

[The Glyphstone]

And then they turn right around and shame you for being a coward, don't they?

[pendell]

Back in the early 2000s, JK Rowling met with Disney about adding a Harry Potter themed attraction to Disney Land. But JKR wanted a train ride like the Hogwarts Express to take visitors to that area. Disney felt that between the monorail and the other rides that there were too many trains on the park already. The talks fell apart and JK Rowling went to Universal Studios instead.

So Disney was one of the first to butt heads with JK Rowling over Trains Rights.

BaDumBum

Ow ow ow ow ow. That was .. while not literally physical painful, definitely d6 damage to my soul and sanity

Tongue-in-cheek ,

Brian P.

[GloatingSwine]

And then they turn right around and shame you for being a coward, don't they?

And play the "evil" ending where you selfishly don't sacrifice your life to turn on the stupid water purifier that will help exactly nobody.

[Trafalgar]

Ow ow ow ow ow. That was .. while not literally physical painful, definitely d6 damage to my soul and sanity

Tongue-in-cheek ,

Brian P.

The only way to make the pain go away is to share the joke with someone else.

[Ionathus]

.. later patches at least let you ask your Ghoul or Super Mutant buddy to go do it, because that was really really dumb.

Though if memory serves, I believe they still call you a "coward" or similar for not wanting to do it yourself. Ugh.

About a year or two ago I actually watched a documentary on the progression of "death" in video games over the decades.

It sort of started out as a checkpoint, then they added collectible lives. Once you run out of those, then you start back at the checkpoint. Eventually we got to where we are now with periodic auto-save and manual save features. You never really die (whether there's a spot that tracks it or not).

Certainly we still have plenty representation for all these standard variations.

I want one of two things from death mechanics in video games. Either:

1. It's incorporated into the narrative - dying and coming back is an actual thing that the game world is aware of.
2. Recovery is as seamless as possible. Sometimes this means having an autosave, or it can be a respawn point. But I don't want it to disrupt "the flow."

Both Hades and Undertale used the first approach to great effect for me. I think roguelikes and souls-likes (Hollow Knight, etc) also fall in this category but with a much lighter touch.

As for the "seamless as possible" thing, I can't name games that do it well (because I think the goal is to not notice) but I can name one game that fell short: The Last Of Us. I didn't usually mind dying, but there would be some parts during a setpiece battle where I was really in "the zone." And then I died for a stupid reason and it reset, and trudging back through the whole cinematic boss fight was kind of aggravating. The game tries so hard to be a movie and succeeds a little too well, to the point where replaying bits of it felt like rewatching a 5-minute movie scene. I don't mind restarting a boss fight in Dark Souls, but these scenes didn't feel "designed" to be repeated in the same ways, if that makes sense. They were basically cutscenes with long-form quicktime events, and every time I died I felt reminded that I was watching a movie rather than playing a game.

[Cespenar]

To be frank and nitpicky, Hades and some other soulslikes fit their own game themes into an existing common death mechanic.

While even that is more than what the average game does, what I'd really like to see is if a game invents an original death/loss mechanic and fits it into their own game theme.

[warty goblin]

Hogwarts Legacy has moved 12 million copies in its first two weeks, putting it right on par with where Elden Ring was a year ago. WB Games are saying that it's their bestselling game to date, and has made about $850 million dollars in gross revenue.

(I'd link, but links are hard to do on a phone and I'm lazy)


Got to the animal taming bit this morning. This gives the gear system some reason to exist, but I still don't care a ton. Also here we hit my first actual criticism of the game's art design, the batch of magical creatures I went and vacuumed into my creature bag look bad.

The real standout for bad design is the mooncalf, which is described as dancing under trees by moonlight. You'd expect something beautiful or dignified or maybe a touch whimsical, maybe a sort of mythologized cow or something.

What you get looks like walking male genetalia with a pair of way too big eyeballs up top at the business end. Its a one eyed Willie by way of a low budget mobile game that inexplicably has two eyes, looks you right in the face, and makes cute little woobie noises. I hate it and it's woobie noises.

Anyway, now I've got some overly kawaii man bits walking around my Room of Requirement. I'd much rather have giant spiders. Can I tame some nice giant man eating spiders, then feed feed my plush doll peepees to them? Please?


But that's a small gripe. Everything else remains excellent.

[Sapphire Guard]

The thing I have found with Bloodborne and Sekiro is they build their premise on this immortality mechanic... and then drop it for the final fight.

(Don't know re Dark Souls as I haven't finished it yet)

Spoiler: Sekiro/Bloodborne

Show

The story is built on the fact that the lead is indestructible, but Gehrman and Genichiro are thinking' I am fully aware that this person is indestructible, but I suddenly believe I can take them for some reason'. Genichiro supposedly has a sword that cancels my immortality, but it obviously doesn't work in gameplay. Also the plots seem pretty similar (decaying world, immortality is possible but at the cost of a wasting disease.

I was fond of the Legacy of Kain death mechanics, because both of the leads are nearly indestructible, but the main villains all factor that fact into their plans and do something smarter than trying to take them directly. There are still stakes, because the tension comes from 'will they figure out the scheme in time' rather than 'will they lose the fight.'

[Jophiel]

The whole animal taming thing is a bit of a mess. Fortunately, you don't really have to interact with it much.
-- You start with one area that can hold up to four species total. I think it holds 12-16 critters but you can only have four flavors in an area. This means there's no sense in rushing out to Catch 'Em All because you'll just wind up selling them. You eventually get more biomes/areas which I think is plot based progression.
-- Critters are only worth 150g (no matter the species) so catching them to sell is a waste of time.
-- There's "Shiny" critters but they don't actually look different, act different or produce more materials. They just have a little star next to their name to give you something else to obsess about.
-- You can later breed animals but the babies don't grow up and are just smaller versions of their parents, acting and producing the same as adults.
-- There's a bunch of new "room" decorations that only exist for the vivariums in case you want to build your own ruins and landscaping. I'm sure this is of interest to someone but not to me.
-- Getting upgrade materials is a time waster of feeding/brushing critters and harvesting the feathers/fur/etc on a 25min timer. But the actual item upgrade system isn't really important enough to warrant putting that time into it.

I agree that mooncalves look dumb. So do the fur puff things. The rest are okay, I guess. Unicorns and griffs and death horses are pretty cool.

Anyway, despite all my complaints about the animal system, I'm 100% positive that someone out there is building whole Barbie Dream Houses for their little platypus friends and enjoys watching them chase a ball or get their bellies brushed. So, cool. The only reason you really NEED to interact with it is for upgrade materials and you barely need to upgrade anything so people like me can put minimal effort into it.

[Forum Explorer]

The thing I have found with Bloodborne and Sekiro is they build their premise on this immortality mechanic... and then drop it for the final fight.

(Don't know re Dark Souls as I haven't finished it yet)

Spoiler: Sekiro/Bloodborne

Show

The story is built on the fact that the lead is indestructible, but Gehrman and Genichiro are thinking' I am fully aware that this person is indestructible, but I suddenly believe I can take them for some reason'. Genichiro supposedly has a sword that cancels my immortality, but it obviously doesn't work in gameplay. Also the plots seem pretty similar (decaying world, immortality is possible but at the cost of a wasting disease.

I was fond of the Legacy of Kain death mechanics, because both of the leads are nearly indestructible, but the main villains all factor that fact into their plans and do something smarter than trying to take them directly. There are still stakes, because the tension comes from 'will they figure out the scheme in time' rather than 'will they lose the fight.'

Spoiler: Bloodborne/Sekiro

Show

It sounds like in both of those cases if you fail there you should just fully die if you die, and it's gameplay that means you don't.

Like for Bloodborne, if you don't fight Gehrman, he just kills you, and you get the Awaken ending. I think in universe if you resist and he kills you, that should just force you into the Awaken ending. But I guess only giving you one try on a boss is a little too difficult, even for FromSoft to do.

I haven't played Sekiro but it sounds like the same thing.

[Spacewolf]

Spoiler: Bloodborne/Sekiro

Show

It sounds like in both of those cases if you fail there you should just fully die if you die, and it's gameplay that means you don't.

Like for Bloodborne, if you don't fight Gehrman, he just kills you, and you get the Awaken ending. I think in universe if you resist and he kills you, that should just force you into the Awaken ending. But I guess only giving you one try on a boss is a little too difficult, even for FromSoft to do.

I haven't played Sekiro but it sounds like the same thing.

Spoiler: Bloodborne

Show

I think Gehrmans makes sense, he can't force you out of the dream. So what he's doing is killing you until you give up and accept your awakening, really it's the moon presence that should force an ending on you if you fail to kill it. But I do think Bloodborne keeps the Fromsoft message of as long as you have will power you can get up again.

Spoiler: Sekiro

Show

Sekiro yea Isshin should probably end you if you lose since he's even using a mortal blade and has Kuro at his mercy.

The whole animal taming thing is a bit of a mess. Fortunately, you don't really have to interact with it much.
-- You start with one area that can hold up to four species total. I think it holds 12-16 critters but you can only have four flavors in an area. This means there's no sense in rushing out to Catch 'Em All because you'll just wind up selling them. You eventually get more biomes/areas which I think is plot based progression.
-- Critters are only worth 150g (no matter the species) so catching them to sell is a waste of time.
-- There's "Shiny" critters but they don't actually look different, act different or produce more materials. They just have a little star next to their name to give you something else to obsess about.
-- You can later breed animals but the babies don't grow up and are just smaller versions of their parents, acting and producing the same as adults.
-- There's a bunch of new "room" decorations that only exist for the vivariums in case you want to build your own ruins and landscaping. I'm sure this is of interest to someone but not to me.
-- Getting upgrade materials is a time waster of feeding/brushing critters and harvesting the feathers/fur/etc on a 25min timer. But the actual item upgrade system isn't really important enough to warrant putting that time into it.

I agree that mooncalves look dumb. So do the fur puff things. The rest are okay, I guess. Unicorns and griffs and death horses are pretty cool.

Anyway, despite all my complaints about the animal system, I'm 100% positive that someone out there is building whole Barbie Dream Houses for their little platypus friends and enjoys watching them chase a ball or get their bellies brushed. So, cool. The only reason you really NEED to interact with it is for upgrade materials and you barely need to upgrade anything so people like me can put minimal effort into it.

Yea I'd say I'm glad the beast taming is in the game but there's not much to it even if I'm sure there's plenty of people who will enjoy it. I feel like it'd be a hit with kids in particular. It feels like the house system, the swimming system and every other system in that it could easily be alot deeper but as always with Open world games they just toss a bunch of shallow systems to try and keep you interested. Honestly I was shocked when they said they weren't planning to do DLC for this because I could think of at least three, House dlc with house specific quests and a house points system, Animal DLC with more animals deeper animal care and other animal related stuff and an underwater DLC where you explore the great lake.

[warty goblin]

Yea I'd say I'm glad the beast taming is in the game but there's not much to it even if I'm sure there's plenty of people who will enjoy it. I feel like it'd be a hit with kids in particular. It feels like the house system, the swimming system and every other system in that it could easily be alot deeper but as always with Open world games they just toss a bunch of shallow systems to try and keep you interested. Honestly I was shocked when they said they weren't planning to do DLC for this because I could think of at least three, House dlc with house specific quests and a house points system, Animal DLC with more animals deeper animal care and other animal related stuff and an underwater DLC where you explore the great lake.

I think a lot of the fun of the game for me is actually that most of the systems aren't that deep, or at least aren't deep in the sense of needing to dump a ton of points into an upgrade tree and get this one specific item to make the build work. Instead I can just go... do things. And most of them are quite fun. I don't have to have a plan, I can just boot up the game and play around with fun stuff. Go do a quest, get distracted, go exploring, or whatever. I'm not really punished or excessively rewarded for any particular course of action, so they're all equally valid ways to engage with the game.

Now one could also say that Skyrim has a bunch of not super deep systems. The difference is that every single one of Skyrim's systems aren't only shallow, they are also genuinely not good. In HL the systems are generally simple, but they control well and generally are enjoyable to interact with. Even something like beast taming or screwing around in the Room of Requirement is done competently, if not with a huge number of gameplay systems attached to it.

[animorte]

In HL the systems are generally simple, but they control well and generally are enjoyable to interact with. Even something like beast taming or screwing around in the Room of Requirement is done competently, if not with a huge number of gameplay systems attached to it.

Still haven't played it, but this is important to an overall experience for mein most games. I would prefer simpler mechanics that function reliably, instead of extremely in-depth mechanics with unrefined outcomes.

[Sapphire Guard]

It sounds like in both of those cases if you fail there you should just fully die if you die, and it's gameplay that means you don't.

Yeah, pretty much. Obviously they have to do it, but when your central premise is the gameplay deaths are canon, it's unfortunate when they have to drop that for the final battle.

[warty goblin]

Still haven't played it, but this is important to an overall experience for mein most games. I would prefer simpler mechanics that function reliably, instead of extremely in-depth mechanics with unrefined outcomes.

That's a good way of putting it, stuff in HL just kinda works out of the box. The broom is just fine from the word go. You get a spell of each type pretty quickly, at which point combat just works. Stuff like crafting and large-scale potion brewing take a while to be available, but the game is perfectly playable without them. There isn't really character builds or anything, it's just very open to letting you play how you want, and if five minutes later you want something different it lets you do that without much bother.

Where there is a lot of depth is the spell effects in combat. Different spells not only have different effects, they have different effects on different enemies and at different points in an animation. Simple example, there's a sort of frog monster that is normally immune to levitation by dint of being too big. But if you hit one just as it's about to do its tongue attack, you can levitate its tongue, which temporarily disables the thing while being extremely funny. And the game is full of these things, which let you do super cool dynamics stuff. But you don't need it, the frog monsters are completely beatable without any tongue levitation. So it feels like a rich system that rewards cleverness and good timing rather than mandatory gimmick fight.

[Bohandas]

]I want one of two things from death mechanics in video games. Either:
[LIST=1][*]It's incorporated into the narrative - dying and coming back is an actual thing that the game world is aware of.
...

Note that that's a seperate thing from the save mechanics. Examples: Kingmaker and Temple of Elemental Evil, which both have both.

[Jophiel]

Completed the game today and am keeping my initial impressions: Fun game, nice combat system (some might find it too easy), a ton of systems which all pretty much work but few you need to seriously engage in if they don't interest you, tons of short-term things to do around every corner, charming world and a story that works well enough. At the same time, there's a lot to critique which mainly boils down to the game being fairly shallow: limited enemies you'll face, the gear system is basically "Pick whatever has the best numbers", most of the puzzles are trivial, limited NPC interaction, etc. It's worth noting that this isn't really an RPG; it's a plot-based open-world adventure game. You'll go up in levels and assign some talent points but you're not making major plot choices at a crossroads or building relationships with other characters based on your conversation choices (or how many trinkets you hand them for +status). You get conversation choices but they're almost entirely fluff and just a way to interact with the story and sort of make your character your own. Sometimes it might make a trivial change to a reward and only once does it have what I'd consider a meaningful impact on the game/story.

I've said it a couple of times but I think it really is the best description that Hogwarts is a game with a lot of little legitimate flaws that manages to surpass them and be more than the sum of its parts. At the same time, it's a good game to get on sale if you weren't inspired to get it at launch. It's not a life or genre changing game, it's a solid fun and pleasant experience.

In fairness, I'll note that I wasn't a big fan of the final fight. Then again, I'm rarely a fan of final fights because developers always feel they need to make the Big Boss Fight into a timing based puzzle (hide behind the wall and shoot the robot's glowing point with the spawning rocket launchers!) so this was more of the same. Also, I had to laugh out loud at the people who were petty-posting spoilers about the game since the spoilers actually made the moment sound more momentous than it was in game. Is it possible to be disappointed in a spoiler for being a let-down?

[Zevox]

I've gotten started on this now. So far, so good. I must say, as someone not experienced with the franchise, what hit me immediately was just how extremely British everything is. Not that I didn't know that in theory of course, but it's quite the thing to suddenly be immersed in when I've not otherwise touched the franchise and virtually no other video games are like that.

Anyway, so far, so good. Combat's definitely enjoyable thus far. Oddly, it feels just a bit reminiscent of the Batman: Arkham games, due to the warning icon for incoming attacks appearing over your character's head, and there being a block/counter move that is usually your preferred defensive option, despite dodging existing, which is also mapped to the same button of a Playstation controller as Batman's counter. The overall tempo and pace of fights feels kind of like those games too. All good things, but just a slightly surprising. I look forward to getting a greater variety of spells that work in combat, though I kind of wish they had a second set of shortcuts for them, as only having four equipped at once looks like it'll feel pretty limiting eventually.

They definitely went all-out on making everything in Hogwarts magical. Aside from the floor, there's not much that doesn't move in there, and there's so many puzzles the place may as well have been designed by the Riddler. Still, I'm enjoying those thus far - although I do wish some of them weren't made such that once you've solved one, you've basically solved them all (the hidden doors puzzles, for instance, are trivial once you figure out what the symbols mean). As a non-fan I can't speak to fan expectations, but I feel like if (as I suspect) the atmosphere of the setting is supposed to be that everything is magical and/or mysterious, they nailed it.

Story so far is fine. Bit of mystery, thuggish villains, big old Dragon scaring the crap out me at the start when I didn't even know Harry Potter had those. I will say that as someone not familiar with the setting, it's not really explained well what exactly Ragnar and his Goblins are rebelling against, though perhaps I'm just too early to have gotten that explanation yet. I can't say I'm instantly loving any of the characters, but I'm not hating or annoyed by anyone either, and the few I'm spending more than a scene or two with could be interesting as things move on, depending on how things go.

I've only got a couple of criticisms so far, mostly on the minor side. One is that I can immediately tell the game was designed with PCs in mind first, because even on console I'm stuck navigating the menus with an awkward mouse-esque cursor, rather than snapping between menu options like console games normally do. Wish there was an option to change that, but if there is I haven't been able to locate it. Second is the map, specifically of Hogwarts - it showing the outside of the castle is uniquely unhelpful. I kind of get it, it's a big castle with a complicated layout, so it could legitimately be hard to provide a good map for, but that'd still be quite appreciated.

The one bigger one is that they definitely give you way too few inventory slots for how much gear they throw at you. And I know you can expand those, I just picked up the firsts such expansion, but it's still just silly how few there are. Honestly I'd prefer they throw a lot less gear at me in general, so I don't need to be switching to something that I picked up that has +1-2 to a stat over my current gear (and changing the appearance back to my preferred version) so often. Unfortunately they need to give us something for all the puzzles and side-quests I guess, but boy do I wish those rewards could be more varied and require less inventory management. Still, it's not too bad I suppose - nothing compared to, say, Gotham Knights, which I played not long ago.

That said though, definitely enjoyable thus far on the whole. And it's a nice change of pace to be playing something that feels like it's living up to expectations after going through several that were disappointing recently (Gotham Knights, Forspoken, Crisis Core Reunion).

[Zevox]

I finished up the game today. I didn't 100% it, but finished the main story, all the side-quests, and like 90+% of the field guide's challenges, so a pretty solid majority of the game.

All in, it's very good. Easily the best game I've played since the new year - which, yeah, I've had several disappointments since then, but still means it's beating out some pretty good ones (Midnight Suns and Fire Emblem: Engage most notably). It starts out pretty good, and just gets better the more you play it, really. Combat becomes especially fun and engaging as you unlock all of the spells, to the point where I think I will probably replay it sometime in order to try it on hard. (And also to use the curses, which I opted not to learn since I was playing my character as a complete goody two-shoes type.) And I loved all the little unique interactions you can get from casting the right spell on the right enemy at the right time. Heck, even as you level up, it feels like the game does a pretty good job of keeping things scaled to your power level, up until the very top levels - I think it was only after I sprang for the full set of upgrades to my equipment set at level 37 or 38 that I started to feel like I was just OP and beating enemies easily.

It also does something that I feel like no game since old 3D platformers has done and makes me want to explore, and enjoy just doing that. The world is legitimately so riddled with secrets to find, and they're so much fun just to experience the process of finding them, that it doesn't even much matter that most of the rewards for them are crappy equipment I'll just sell (though if that could be dealt with, hey, game would be even better). Flying makes getting around very quick and convenient - though it is odd that the broom is better at it than the Hippogriffs, who handle a bit worse and seem to fly slower (probably because they don't get the upgrades that the broom does). You would think they'd want the flying method you get later to be the better one, but eh, still a cool option to have. Heck, they even avoid some of the usual pitfalls of open-world games: none of the side-quests even so much as re-use map assets, so those all feel unique and worth doing, and even the more fillery options either have enough variety to them not to get old too fast (Merlin Trials) or are simple enough and have good enough rewards that you're happy doing them anyway (Ancient Magic Hotspots, collecting Demiguise Moons). Which isn't to say there aren't cut-and-paste, fillery "content" things in there (landing platforms, balloons, astronomy tables), but even those are at least very quick and easy to do when you run across them, to the point where you just kind of shrug and go "why not?"

The only real weaknesses the game has are the equipment issue I mentioned in my last post (seriously, this sort of equipment system where you're constantly getting stuff that's slightly better, especially with the equipment itself having levels and requiring you to be at the same level to use it, needs to stop being a thing) and that the story and overall writing is just kind of okay. It serves its purpose, but doesn't really amount to anything special. On the main plot, it definitely could've stood to better explain the actual relationship between Wizards and Goblins in this world - especially since, after talking with some friends who are Harry Potter fans, that's apparently not something the books or films ever really touched either - but it does eventually give you enough to get the gist of what's going on and why. Outside of the main plot, Sebastian's is the only major side-quest that has some real meat to it, and even that gets a bit too predictable. There's no characters I'll remember for long here, but nothing that drags the game down either. And fortunately, the gameplay is more than up for carrying the ho-hum writing.

Very glad I decided to play this despite never having touched the franchise before, it's just a really good, fun game.

[noob]

The franchise did talk a slight bit of goblin rebellions: sorcerers does not wants goblins to use wands and there have been a lot of wars between goblins and sorcerers.
The details are lacking however.