Hogwarts Legacy Review
The castle of your childhood imagination, rendered in loving detail — if only the open world around it were as inspired.
For anyone who grew up wanting to walk Hogwarts' halls, Hogwarts Legacy nails the part that matters most: the castle. It's the world beyond the gates that keeps a very good game from being a great one. Developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games under its Portkey Games label, it launched on February 10, 2023 and has since reached every major platform, including both Nintendo Switch consoles.
The castle is the star
Hogwarts is a genuine joy to explore — moving staircases, secret passages, paintings that chatter, a Room of Requirement you can shape to your taste. Set in the 1890s, a century before the events of the novels, it casts you as a new student who joins Hogwarts in their fifth year, gets sorted into one of the four houses and attends classes that gradually unlock the tools you need, from potions to broom flight.
The detail is what sells it. Each house has its own common room and exclusive quests, the Great Hall and grand staircases are a match for anything fans pictured, and the Room of Requirement becomes a proper home base, with brewing stations, planters and vivariums for the magical beasts you rescue. Avalanche clearly understood that just being here is the fantasy, and it built the whole castle around that idea.
Spellcraft that feels wizardly
Spell-based combat is the other highlight, letting you chain levitation, fire and force into flashy combos that feel suitably wizardly. Fights against goblins, dark wizards, poachers and trolls reward mixing control spells with damage and well-timed dodges, and a talent tree that opens up mid-game lets you sharpen the spells and abilities you favour.
It gets more inventive the further you go. Plants become weapons — a potted mandrake will stun a crowd — and the protagonist's rare command of ancient magic adds a surge of raw power that makes the bigger fights feel cinematic. It never reaches the depth of a dedicated action game, but it is consistently fun, and the variety of spells keeps it from going stale over a long campaign.
A familiar open world
Step into the surrounding Highlands and the spell breaks a little. The map fills with the usual icons: bandit camps, collectible hunts and repeatable puzzles that wouldn't feel out of place in any 2015 open world. It's competent and pleasant, just rarely surprising.
There are highs. Hogsmeade is a charming hub of shops such as Honeydukes and the Hog's Head, the Forbidden Forest is suitably unnerving, and flying a hippogriff or a broom over the Highlands is a treat. The Revelio spell and Floo Powder fast travel keep exploration friction-free. But too many of the side activities are copies of one another, and the further you get from the castle, the more the world feels like a template dressed in robes.
Story and characters
The main plot follows your mysterious gift for ancient magic, with Professor Eleazar Fig as mentor and a pair of antagonists in Ranrok, leader of a goblin rebellion, and Victor Rookwood, head of a band of dark wizards. Neither leaves much of a mark; Ranrok in particular is a villain defined by grievance and little else, and the finale leans on spectacle to cover for it.
The companions do far better. Natsai Onai, Poppy Sweeting, Sebastian Sallow and Ominis Gaunt each anchor their own relationship questlines, and the best of them — Sebastian's in particular — carry the darkest and most memorable writing in the game. The strong voice cast, including Simon Pegg as Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black, helps the castle feel lived in.
What's changed since launch
At release the game struggled with stutter, texture pop-in and inconsistent frame rates, including on PC. The PS4 and Xbox One versions followed on May 5, 2023, and the Nintendo Switch version on November 14, 2023. The biggest post-launch addition was the summer update on June 6, 2024, which added photo mode, talent point resets and new cosmetics, and brought the previously PlayStation-exclusive Haunted Hogsmeade Shop quest to every platform.
The #HogwartsLegacy Summer 2024 Updates will be available on all consoles June 6, 2024. Use #CaptureTheUnwritten to share your perspective with photo mode.
— Hogwarts Legacy (@HogwartsLegacy) June 4, 2024
PC players gained official mod support through the Hogwarts Legacy Creator Kit in January 2025, and a Nintendo Switch 2 version arrived on June 5, 2025. There is no story expansion, so what you buy today is the same adventure with more polish. The official Hogwarts Legacy site carries the latest news, the Nintendo eShop page covers the Switch release, and the game's Wikipedia entry tracks the full release history.
Official resources
- Hogwarts Legacy official site
- Warner Bros. Games
- Hogwarts Legacy on Steam
- Hogwarts Legacy on PlayStation
- Hogwarts Legacy on Nintendo Switch
- Hogwarts Legacy on Wikipedia
The verdict
The open-world busywork and a flat villain hold it back, but the fantasy of attending Hogwarts is delivered with real care. If you want an open world with sharper writing, our Witcher 3 review is the place to look.
What we loved
- Hogwarts itself is magical to explore
- Flashy, flexible spell-based combat
- Strong sense of place and fan service
- Satisfying room-of-requirement customisation
What held it back
- Open world leans on generic checklist tasks
- Repetitive side content and copy-paste camps
- Forgettable main villain
