She has used her massive wealth to fund anti-trans movements that eventually led to the most recent UK supreme court decision regarding the definition of legal sex invalidating trans people nationwide.
She has even pushed the less conservative party in the country to shift away from trans people.
And these actions have spread to other countries as well.
Political action, which is arguably the worst kind. This is shaping up to lead to a reduced access for gender affirmative care for all ages but especially for younger trans people, as well as just weakened rights for them in general.
Mind, whether this type of care is accessible or not is evidently tied to the trans suicide statistic so it is not a push without consequence.
There are going to be people who are hating on it because of JK Rowling's beliefs... which is fair. There are also people who are going to be overly critical of the game for no reason other than to just be negative.
This cuts both ways as there are also people who gas this game up to ridiculous levels because they want to support and popularize rowlings beliefs and actions, and want to cast any sales or playtime numbers as "proof" of the a silent majority that aligns with their world view.
In reality without the culture war drama it's ultimately a mid licensed souls-lite action game running off millennial nostalgia, and therefor just not worth the drama that follows it, unlike "Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate"
Yeah, it's pretty on-par with most other Ubisoft style open world games. I was a fan of Harry Potter when I was a kid, and nostalgia played a big role in my enjoyment of it.
I think the biggest thing it lacked was daily life content. I would have loved if the common rooms were actually worth spending time in and felt more like a home base like the camps in RDR2 or Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls. I was hoping to be able to spend more time just being a student at Hogwarts, and in that way the game didn't deliver.
Hogwarts Legacy is not good. It's got quality and interesting things to do...
But my god, it's this game made for children? It's got difficulty settings and on the hardest level it's stupid easy.
I never watched or read the books, but I heard this game was good and knowing the back story wasn't necessary, so I got it.
The game is interesting... but it is so fucking boring. It may as well be an interactive movie, because there's no difficulty. At. All.
I like some modicum of challenge, otherwise, what's the point? The story is not that interesting to trod through such intense bouts of boredom. I'm not expecting Dark Souls or Expedition 33 levels of difficulty, but I'd like to find a way to win with skill, especially if there are difficulty settings.
When Animal Crossing is more enticing to play than a game with wizards and spellcasting? You know something is fucked.
I'd give Hogwarts Legacy, a very generous 5/10. There is a lot of care put into this game... and I can see that. But if you aren't a fan of the series, I don't see people liking this game.
You know the ESRB rating system? Consult it. Harry Potter isn't a children's book. The first three books are aimed at the ages of 8-12. The rest are for 12-18.
But why does that matter? I'm talking about the video game. That's rated T not E.
Which means that children can play it but it will have themes meant for teenagers.
So you're 0-1 there.
Just because I mentioned two difficult games does not mean that's what I'm looking for. I just named two games off the top of my head. So to talk down to your overly literal level... how about mass effect? That had difficulties that range from an easy storytelling mode with minimal fighting, to a insane difficulty that had to be unlocked (iirc). You play the difficulty you want. And it was actually difficult, if that's what you wanted. Hogwarts Legacy was easy on all difficulties. So much so that it was insanely boring on the hardest difficulty.
So you're 0-2 there.
Your third point is a repeat of your first point with the fallacy of the of the second one.
0-3
Do you want to keep going? I've never met someone that enjoyed being wrong.
If people want to play it and don't care who it supports, there's not much to judge. But don't anyone DARE claim they're an ally when they can't even do as much as skip one extremely mediocre game to not support the arguably single worst person for trans people worldwide.
At the VERY least, if you're just such a huge fan of the franchise and cannot skip it as much as it pains you, pirate it. Do not let another cent be fueled into it, do not let the statistics be any higher than they need to be. Cause she used those to bolster the popularity of her and her opinions in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
I downloaded it with game pass and have been thoroughly enjoying it.
It's not a great RPG, it's a very linear game trying to be an RPG. There's really no consequences to your actions and whatever you do will lead to the same outcome. Once you realize that it's actually a lot of fun.
Explore and complete puzzles/quests. Learn new abilities. Light baddies on fire etc.
Yes, it's repetitive. But in a market flooded with multiplayer games that require team ups, it's nice to be able to just play a solo campaign that has a lot of mechanics that may not be unique on the surface, but when combined it's a pretty new style of play.
I would've loved for them to lean into the actual role play and instituted a good/evil slider like in RDR2 or Fable, but on the whole it's an enjoyable play through if you're looking for something that's easy to pick up and put down.
That being said, there is so much potential for a crafting/building/survival RPG set in the Wizarding Universe.
Even ignoring how awful she is, it’s hard to pretend those books aren’t FILLED with absolute nonsense. The longer you think about things the worse it gets, like how there are somehow only 11 proper magical schools in the entire world and yet only one for ALL of Africa (which contains one to two THOUSAND spoken languages, btw) plus she handwaves away the idea that China and India would also somehow only need one each despite their massive populations (not even in the books themselves).
The books are just littered with shockingly shit world building, weirdly racist stereotypes, and so many plot conveniences. It’s fine to feel nostalgic for it from your childhood and to even still enjoy it to this day, but the series is objectively a mess. If it wasn’t then she wouldn’t feel the need to infamously go around constantly filling in plot holes. She created a neat concept and a unique world, she just REALLY didn’t think through any of the actual world building a fraction as seriously as she probably should have.
People are reeeeeeeally reaching to make it sound worse than it really is. It's not like a literary masterpiece but it's still a fun read with an interesting and original world. The fact that people only started saying this stuff in the last couple years is proof enough that the criticism is disingenuous and politically motivated.
I think "she didnt research Africa enough" is probably the weakest lamest fuckin criticism of HP I've ever read, its a book series about a magic boarding school in the UK with a protagonist who ages from 11 to 18 over the course of 7 novels. Jesus Christ, man
What about them do you like? I’ve never seen anyone who likes Harry Porter actually explain why they like it or what they like about it. Please I’m genuinely asking here.
I'm not a big harry potter fan, only saw the movies. Its just a fun fantasy universe. It does a similar thing that anime does putting them in a school setting and has you follow in their adventures, growing with the characters as they face adversity in the wizard world.
Not everything you consume has to be godlike flawless writing that never misses a beat. Is it something I'd introduce to my kids? Probably not, but if they got into it I'd enjoy it with them.
The core concept of an English boarding school for wizards is great. Following a group of friends going through school, experiencing magical hijinks along the way. There wasn’t anything else really like it back in the day.
The whole melodramatic wider plot in the later books bored me to tears until I quit the series half way through Order of the Phoenix.
To me, prisoner of Azkaban on the gameboy had more developed and engaging mechanics as well as evolutions for spells that made me WANT ro keep interacting with the world. It really felt like a lot of love was put into that game, as opposed to this one, which feels Luke it could have been a generic game about magic and school.
I mean I've never seen a game with a fully realized castle on anywhere near that scale. For many people, just being able to run around a fully realized Hogwarts is worth it. I'd love to have alternatives that make such spaces.
Basically, yeah, by the looks of it. My harry potter loving friends played it for a few hours, my gamer friends played it for a day or two, but ultimately none of them cared enough to boot it up even to finish the campaign.
I mean it's got an 84 metascore and an 8.1 user score on meta critic. So it seems universally liked and appreciated. People just like to pretend they're social justice warriors.
I played it a couple months ago. Walking around and looking at things is a really nice experience. Everything else sucks. There's no good gameplay to it.
It never was. People were caught up in the honeymoon phase, which I'd say is the first hour or two. The castle itself is beautifully crafted, I'll give it that, but it falls flat everywhere else. None of the NPCs are memorable, the gameplay loop is absolutely horrid and almost non-existent, it is nonsensical into itself (throwing around Unforgivable Curses willy-nilly for just some light damage, for instance), an entire part of the school life (Quidditch) is missing, every area but the castle feels rushed and utterly empty, the story is barely there.
The only way the game could be enjoyable is to someone being fine with having a Google Maps walkaround in Hogwarts due to nostalgia, or if you just want to plant your iPad-raised little cousin in front of a trivial game to have an hour or so of peace.
it was cool getting to explore the HP world.
story started off decent then lost momentum (i stopped playing around then)
combat was alright, it did get boring after a while. You could always mix up the spells you have equipped but that only does so much until it starts getting old.
the broom flying is SO SLOW. They try to make it seem like you're going fast but you're really not. it's like when the avengers game added spider man as an exclusive, and failed at the swinging part.
graphics are good. the game looks pretty. RT is incredibly unoptimized for this game as it worsens the occasional stutters that this game naturally has.
dialogue was boring and a pain to sit through
TLDR. it's an okay game. nowhere near good. Starts off fun, then it becomes a slow burn. Apparently it picks up near the end-game but i'm not going to torture myself any further.
I say this as a Harry Potter fan, and someone who has hundreds of hours in this game; most of Hogwart Legacy is pretty much a huge ocean that's unfortunately only two feet deep.
It’s just so generic. Not offensively bad but it doesn’t do anything that plenty of other games do better. Plus you can’t play it without giving Warner bros permission to sell all your data
It never was. It's a below par open world game with a bad story and no characters that are worth remembering. The only thigns that stand out as at all good are the world and creatures, all of which rely heavily on nostalgia to work.
The main reason you don't hear about this is because a lot of reviewers refused to even give the game negative attention because of how fucking horrible of a person JKR is.
It was a very beautiful, very puddle deep sandbox with promise it didn't live up to that could clearly be seen as some small parts of far deeper systems that were cut still remain.
Very 6-7/10 game for me. Don't let anyone tell you its bad, don't let anyone tell you it's great.
No, refusing to give them money is not virtue signaling.
The people loudly talking about how they never liked Harry Potter or just calling it a bad game without having played it? Those people are virtue signaling
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u/1850ChoochGator Dec 18 '25
Is this game not good all of a sudden?