Topic: Hogwarts Legacy

@Th3solution I'm still making my way through it as well. The menu tells me I'm about 75% completion now but I don't think that takes into account all the collectables, of which there are many I don't think I've got yet. I started to try and put a dent into the Daedalian keys and Demiguise statues at the weekend having realised that I'd not really done many. At least the Demiguise statues lead to something in terms of being able to get into more places but so far I'm not really sure what the house tokens are going to get me. I also thought I'd done all the Merlin Trials as I'd maxed out the rewards available for those but the trophy completion said just 55% which is when I realised there's a massive section of map that I've not even visited yet. This game is way bigger than I appreciated.

Quests wise I've also enjoyed the Sebastian Swallow storyline. It's had it's fair share of action so far and I've still got a few things left to do on that easily which I'll try and get stuck into this week. Like you say though it does seem to have reached that point where you are throwing unforgivable curses around with reckless abandon and the only person that has an issue with that is Sebastian's uncle. I suppose the Ashwinders aren't going to go and report you to the ministry of magic anyway so I guess that might be how it's fine in the game. I've just been going along without thinking too much about it for the same reason you have really, it's just a fun game to play.

I also did the PS exclusive quest in Hogsmead, the haunted shop. It was quite good actually and probably took me about 40 minutes to an hour to complete and was a good mix of puzzles and action. I think they've generally struck a good balance with the additional content in the game and I've enjoyed most things. Probably the only thing I'd happily get rid of is those Depulso puzzle rooms which started off ok but got a bit annoying. At the rate I'm going though I'm likely to not finish this for weeks yet 😅

@render The Depulso puzzle rooms are tough. I think I’ve done 3 and the third one I just had to use YouTube. It’s a bit like 3-dimensional Tetris.

I’ve maxed out the Demiguise rewards (at least as far as I can tell) and have Alohomora level 3. Yet there are still quite a few statues out there, and I guess the only perk would be the associated trophy for finding them all. Sounds like the Merlin Trials are the same, but I still have yet to reach the final level of inventory space reward there.

It’s good to hear about the haunted shop quest, I hadn’t yet even uploaded the code that came with my copy. I need to try it. Not that the game is short on content otherwise.

Are you spending much time with the beasts? I have quite a farming a ranching center going in my room of requirement. I’m swimming in most of the beast and plant supplies. I have yet to unlock access to the phoenixes and maybe a couple others.

And how are you finding the performance? I have had more glitches lately, the further into the game I get. Nothing on the order of a Bethesda game, mind, but I have had some items that I can’t pick up, some glitches with puzzles (in fact the Depulso puzzle I was stuck on had a glitch making it unsolvable because a block didn’t show up. So after I saw the solution on YouTube I realized that and was able to exit the game and reload and the area loaded properly after that), and some audio niggles where chattering NPC voices cut in or out from time to time.

@Th3solution I've been reading quite a few complaints similar to yours but I'm assuming that there will be some more performance patches and bug fixes incoming once the last gen versions have shipped.

@LN78 Yeah, it’s been surprisingly solid for most of my playthrough, but with more and more areas, spells, and concurrent activities opened up it has also introduced a few of these minor issues (well, an unsolvable puzzle isn’t exactly minor, but it was fixable with a reboot). You mention a good point about the last gen versions probably taking priority right now, so PS5 patches might be forthcoming later on. I can’t imagine how they are going to get this thing running on Switch.

@Th3solution I've done a little bit of the beast farming but not nearly enough. I think that's one good thing about the way the gear upgrades work in that at least there's an easy way to get the materials you need. Otherwise I'd be stuck in the same quandary as I normally am with Souls games where you don't want to upgrade stuff too soon in case you find a better armour set and you've then locked yourself out of upgrading it.

I finally got enough Demiguise statues to unlock Alohomora level 3. I've not used it a great deal but I guess most of the level 3 will more likely contain better gear than they would more Demiguise statues although like you say there are still more of those to collect so I'll probably end up doing them anyway. I'm going to go back to doing some quests now as the last few times I've played I've just been fixated on clearing some things off the map.

Performance wise I've not had many bugs. I had a similar one to you where one of the Depulso puzzle rooms glitched and there were too many walls. The movable blocks could go through them but I wasn't able to actually see the exit as it was covered up. I didn't know it was glitched at the time but it seemed strange enough for me to reboot the game and realised that's what had happened as it was fine from then on. I also got stuck in a rocky outcrop whilst on foot and even rebooting the game wouldn't fix that as it had saved it. I can't remember what I did to get out but I eventually managed it so at least it didn't mean having to start again which would have been brutal 😅

Apart from that though the game has been pretty solid but someone told me that the trophies for the collectibles are bugged so that might prove annoying down the line if the platinum was something you had in mind. I know you need to replay the game as each house up to a certain point for that so it might be something that I get the kids to do for me as they often don't mind things like that 😛

@render Yeah, the replay of the first section with each house is enough to keep me away from chasing the platinum. And some of the collectibles are also probably going to be more than my attention will allow. We’ll see where I end up in trophy percentage and if I’m close I might change my mind, but otherwise I’ll just be happy with whatever trophies I can get by playing my normal “thorough and obsessive, but not quite completionist” style.

@render As a follow up to prior discussion — I finally did the PS exclusive haunted shop quest “Minding your own Business” in Hogsmeade and it was brilliant! Probably the best quest in the game so far. It reminded me of the Ashtray Maze, which is amongst my favorite gaming moments of all time.

@Th3solution Haha I thought exactly the same, and yes I agree the best quest in the game. It had a good mix of everything as well, concluding with a pretty good boss fight. Even though some of the voice acting in the game isn't the best they really have done well with the characters in general I think, although some of them are actually more memorable because of the voices. The guy from Spintwiches, the sporting goods shop, makes me laugh as he reminds me of an impression a British comedian did back in the 90s. Simon Peg's Phineas Black is also really good even though he's not been featured as much as I was hoping - yet at least.

The last couple of nights I've spent my time clearing up stuff around the map and I've been enjoying it even though it's quite samey. I've done all the balloons and ancient magic spots and only have a few merlin trials and field guide pages left to find. I've also popped the trophies for using ancient magic on all enemies which was probably a given seeing as I've maxed out my ancient magic bars and can use it quite a bit now.

It terms of going for the platinum I'm not sure what to think about it. I'd like to do it but like you said there's the trophies where you have to play through as each house until you reach a certain point. That's 2 hours each house so an extra 6 hours in all for not a great deal. I am thinking I might be able to talk my kids into doing that for me though as they love the game so much and even though they've now got their own play through going on I'm sure I can negotiate some help in return for solving some of the puzzles for them 😂

@render 😂 You’re running a regular trophy indentured labor camp there! “No dessert for you until you get me that bronze, and collect at least 10 more field guide pages!” 🤣

But I agree on the voice acting. I actually find it pretty good, all around. It was one of the major complaints in the Push Square review, but it’s been mostly good. There’s the occasional stiff performance (Natty comes to mind) and also the classic recycled voice actor playing several minor NPC’s that I’ve noticed and can be off-putting, but it’s definitely passable.

@Th3solution I like your thinking, I just need to make sure they don't blab on me or I'll be doing some time for this gig 🤣

Finished the game last night. I have to say it was an epic ending and there were so many great quests in the run up to the final moments. Even the side quests ended on a high. One of my favourites was getting into the headmasters office, just brilliantly done and very funny. The final boss fight was brilliant too. It did seem to stretch on for a long old time and wasn’t perfect, but still felt like a very fitting end to the game.

Collectibles wise I’ve got most things but still a long way short of 100% which will mean having to earn lots of money. Looks like this can be done by beast and gear farming but is going to take a while. I’ll see about just dipping in and out of this whilst playing something else and just see how it goes.

Overall a very very good game and an amazing open world that I could happily recommend to anyone.

@render Good job with finishing! Hopefully I’ll be close behind you. I’m glad to hear the ending didn’t disappoint.

@Th3solution I managed to pop the Collector's Edition trophy last night. I was actually way closer to it than I'd imagined. I just spent about 30 minutes farming beasts around the map and selling them in order to buy all the brooms and items from Tomes and Scrolls that I hadn't yet got and then did a quick sweep to make sure I'd got all the 15 butterfly locations as well as the last 7 revelio pages I needed around Hogwarts. The last collectible I needed was a chest I'd missed in one of my Vivariums. All in I think it was about 1.5 hours worth of effort. No bad really. Unfortunately I've got the last 3 partial play throughs still to do but at least I know the deal.

@render That’s good to know. I think it’ll still be difficult for me to commit to but when I hit the end game I will see where I am. I think I’m around 65% completion on the menu. I figure that by the end I would only be around 80%, just guessing. I’ll see. Props for making it that close to the platinum though. Now, just need to shackle your little servants to the console to mop up this last 3 partial playthroughs!

@Th3solution Popped the platinum over lunch today. It was good to do those last 3 partial playthroughs as I got to see that part of the quest to find the missing pages was different for every house. It's a shame they hadn't split quests like this more often as that might have made it more interesting to do multiple playthroughs. That bought me round to thinking that actually there wasn't much involving the common room except for the initial quest where you meet your roomies. These don't take away from what was otherwise a great game but they really would have added to you feeling like there was a reason to select a specific house.

P.S. Whilst I did get the kids started on that task it ended up being a pretty lousy idea as they couldn't help themselves but get distracted by other things like collecting pages or accepting side quests 😂

@render Haha! In fairness, I usually play an open world game just like your kids do — easily distracted by something at every turn. It’s why I’m so far into this and have yet to finish! 😅

I’ve encountered a bug while playing Hogwarts Legacy and I was wondering if anybody has had a similar problem with the game. Once, while I was changing the appearance of my gloves, it suddenly started showing all the gloves as looking completely different than they originally had looked when I equipped them. Even when I completely remove the gloves it still appears as if my character is wearing black gloves. I believe what has happened is that a pair of gloves got stuck on and now when I try on a different pair the game kind of mixes them together, and the results come out looking weird! It’s not a big deal and it doesn’t affect the gameplay or character stats in any way but I was curious to see if anyone else has had a similar experience?

@Engineblow You know, I played Hogwarts Legacy for 80 hours and don’t think I ever noticed this bug. But I honestly paid little attention to the gloves. I was very active about changing my hat, glasses, cloak, suit, and scarf however. But the gloves I never worried to change the appearance of and just used whatever gloves had the best stats and didn’t really pay attention to how they looked. I think I would have noticed if there was a bug that was just stacking different gloves on top of each other though. 😅

I wonder if you take the gloves off and then take your character to the Hogsmeade salon and completely change the character’s appearance if maybe it will “reset” the appearance of the hands too and get rid of the black gloves that are “stuck on”?

I’m glad you haven’t encountered any issues with the game. Really, considering everything you can do in the game and how outstanding everything from the graphics to the voice acting are, this really is no big deal. In fact, the only other bug I’ve seen in the game is a few times where an item you’re suppose to be able to interact with, like a coin pouch, is stuck inside of something like a rock. Hogwarts Legacy is the first game I’ve played on the PS5 and I’ve been very impressed with pretty much every aspect of both! Oh, and I tried your idea of “resetting” the character’s appearance in Hogsmeade. Unfortunately, it didn’t work but it was a good idea that I hadn’t thought of!

@Engineblow Ah well — too bad it didn’t work.

But yeah, it’s a remarkably well developed game for as large as it is. I actually did have a few small bugs, like the coin pouches you mentioned that occasionally were spawned inside or behind an indestructible object and could not be picked up. I talked about it elsewhere but one of the worst bugs was one of the Depulso puzzles that didn’t work right and a section of the room didn’t shift correctly therefore making the puzzle unsolvable. Exiting and then reloading fixed the issue though.

I really loved this game. If it didn’t have a million other games to get to then I would have pushed for the platinum. As is, I have about 4 or 5 trophies left (outside of the 3 other trophies for getting through the opening section with each house) but I just need to move on.

How far along are you? My favorite part was the 3rd trial. The change in art design just blew my mind. That was spectacular.