It's a neat little game, with some pros and cons. Voice acting is hit and miss. With the the lovely Amelia Gething doing a great job, but some of the side characters are either overacting or phoning it in. Graphics especially indoors are great, some of the long-distance shots I have seen better in games like Horizon Forbidden West. However, there is definitely a bug with the gamma and color correction. There is a green haze over the screen and a fair amount of shots are overlit. I'm sure its to do with the engine being both SDR and HDR capable and the profiles got messed up. I do think for the PC they could've revamped the spellbars a bit as well. Only having 4 spells on a keyboard with 104 buttons is just not ok. Same goes for the broomflight, having a button to go up or down feels like you're playing Twister on your keyboard. Storywise, I find most of the major sidequests to be quite fun and the sidecharacters dont feel like cardboard cutouts, but the mainstory so far seems to be a bit of a McGuffin. A lot of attention to detail was put into the game, from the students, to the assets, the characters and lore. It's probably the closest a game is going to get to put the player in hogwarts.

It is fun to combine spells and juggle opponents. Distract them with all sorts of potions and plants. A lot of variety and room to experiment. But it can become difficult sometimes to track enemies outside of FOV, which they then tried to fix with the symbols above your head, but not all attacks are telegraphed. (like the stone guardian jump).

However, I do think they went overboard with the collect-a-thons. Which is ok if its completionist stuff, but locking the lockpicking mechanic behind one is a bit cruel. You can get a little lost in the sidecontent, and I do think it hurts the pacing of the story. There is no sense of urgency anymore that way.

Performancewise its "OK", in towns and in Hogwarts it can microstutter a bit when quickly running or traversing. But in combat situations its never an issue. Was able to run it on 1440UW, no upscaling highest settings on modest hardware (5800X3D, 6800XT, 32GB RAM), and the fps mostly stayed above 60 in the most taxing scenes (towns at night). With upscaling around 80, but I really dont like upscaling. And ever since VRR came onto the market, having a fixation over fps seems pointless.

It's a neat little game, with some pros and cons. Voice acting is hit and miss. With the the lovely Amelia Gething doing a great job, but some of the side characters are either overacting or phoning it in. Graphics especially indoors are great, some of the long-distance shots I have seen better in games like Horizon Forbidden West. However, there is definitely a bug with the gamma and color correction. There is a green haze over the screen and a fair amount of shots are overlit. I'm sure its to do with the engine being both SDR and HDR capable and the profiles got messed up. I do think for the PC they could've revamped the spellbars a bit as well. Only having 4 spells on a keyboard with 104 buttons is just not ok. Same goes for the broomflight, having a button to go up or down feels like you're playing Twister on your keyboard. Storywise, I find most of the major sidequests to be quite fun and the sidecharacters dont feel like cardboard cutouts, but the mainstory so far seems to be a bit of a McGuffin. A lot of attention to detail was put into the game, from the students, to the assets, the characters and lore. It's probably the closest a game is going to get to put the player in hogwarts. It is fun to combine spells and juggle opponents. Distract them with all sorts of potions and plants. A lot of variety and room to experiment. But it can become difficult sometimes to track enemies outside of FOV, which they then tried to fix with the symbols above your head, but not all attacks are telegraphed. (like the stone guardian jump). However, I do think they went overboard with the collect-a-thons. Which is ok if its completionist stuff, but locking the lockpicking mechanic behind one is a bit cruel. You can get a little lost in the sidecontent, and I do think it hurts the pacing of the story. There is no sense of urgency anymore that way. Performancewise its "OK", in towns and in Hogwarts it can microstutter a bit when quickly running or traversing. But in combat situations its never an issue. Was able to run it on 1440UW, no upscaling highest settings on modest hardware (5800X3D, 6800XT, 32GB RAM), and the fps mostly stayed above 60 in the most taxing scenes (towns at night). With upscaling around 80, but I really dont like upscaling. And ever since VRR came onto the market, having a fixation over fps seems pointless.