Recent reviews by Sir Roscoe J. Fluffington III.

This DLC is simply magnificent. Yes it is a lot harder than the base game, but if you spend time exploring the world, you will get a lot stronger and the foes in your path become a lot more manageable - just like in the main game.
FromSoft has once again taken what made the main game great, and elevated it in all regards.
The world is a lot more vertical with a bunch of hidden areas (and hidden areas within hidden areas) to find and conquer. You frequently stand at a cliff looking up or down, wondering how you might get to the place you see and hours later you will find a path that snaked through ravines and caves, underneath mountains only to end up in that place you saw all those hours ago. Its like they took the general approach to level design that made Dark Souls' map so memorable and implemented it in Elden Ring. Simply amazing stuff.
All of the bosses are memorable and challenging, just like they should be. Paired with the new weapons (and weapon types) the combat sandbox is enriched throughout. I urge everyone who plays this to ditch their tried and tested build from the main game and just go nuts with the new options.
FromSoft's approach to storytelling is a more straightforward in this DLC than the main game, which might be the biggest deviation from their formula since taking it open world 2 years prior. Following in the footsteps of Miquella along with the numerous NPCs, made for a much more engaging experience from a story perspective than previous Souls games. But they still maintain the mystique of their earlier titles so be sure to read item descriptions and notes to get the full picture.
And lastly, the scale of this DLC. It is massive. This could easily have been a normal game release. I finished the DLC after about 40 hours, which puts it on par with the Souls trilogy games in terms of sheer scope. It's insane what FromSoft has delivered here.
If you don't like Elden Ring, this DLC won't change that. But if you loved it and FromSoft's previous work, then this is a treasure trove of a game, waiting to be unearthed.

Damn masterpiece

wonderful little game.

very nice.

Fun game
Terrible exploitative monetization

Simply brilliant. Time hurts.

Best numbers go big game out there.

♥♥♥♥ JKR and everything she stands for.

The game itself is good. Solid 7/10 in my book.

It nails the atmosphere of being a student at Hogwarts with a wonderfully detailed castle and sorrounding areas, accompanied by a fantastic score that could be plucked straight from the movies. I was pleaseantly surprised to see a lot of details exclusive to the books I had almost forgotten about being incorporated into this game. Some more apparent than others. Thus it really sells the fantasy of being a wizard or witch in training.

Hogwarts Legacy keeps introducing more and more distractions up to the 3/4 mark through the main plot. While none of these are particularly fleshed out or mandatory to engage in, I feel like there will be something for most people to enjoy besides the core gameplay loop. Which should help in distracting from its shortcomings.

Much of your time in Hogwarts, if not exploring or engaging in minigames and side activities, is relegated to some very light environmental puzzles and a lot of spellslinging combat. You get to juggle enemies by executing spell combos while being mindful of their respective weaknesses and coulourcoded shields. It is all great fun if you can manage the mental gymnastics needed to remember all your hotkeys.

What drags this down though is that by the halfway point Hogwarts Legacy has shown you everything this loop has to offer. All enemy types have been introduced, your spell arsenal while still expanding, is large enough to populate most of your hotkeys already, and some new spells just feel like reskins of the ones you already have.

The only way to up the ante by that point is to just throw increasing numbers of foes at you, while inflating their HP pools to an infuriating amount. Combat remains demanding at all times, but in the last third it had become extremely repetitive. Introducing more enemy types or environmental hazards later into the game would have gone a long way to spruce it up a bit. Additionally the last third of main quests is mostly devoid of puzzles (apart from the collectibles), instead throwing more and more encounters at you. I think taking a note from the first 2 Harry Potter games and their more puzzle heavy design would have livened things up a bit.

The main plot is fun, if predictable. For me personally, the sideplots that weave in and out of the main quest were far more engaging (especially Sebastian Sallows story). While most quests are of the fetch or kill variety, these stories helped distract from that fact for most of my playtime.

And lastly a word on collectibles. I loathe games that litter their maps with random nonsense for you to collect without any rhyme or reason. While there is a lot of stuff on Legacy's map, it distracts from that fact by turning all types of collectibles into their own little minigame that reward you with XP, upgrades, cosmetics or lore. While not perfect it is definitely done better than in most AAA open world games.

This game feels and plays like the culmination of everything FromSoft has done up until now. It's essentially Dark Souls III taking lessons from Bloodborne and Sekiro, set in an open world that is stuffed to the brim with meaningful, hand crafted, and rewarding content.
Almost 90% of this game is technically side content. And all of it is as good as anything FromSoft has ever built for their previous, more closed world games. Some of the legacy dungeons even exceed previous games, due to the increased freedom of exploration and mobility.
I was doubtful about taking the souls genre open world, but after almost 100 hours for my first playthrough, I am astonished at how well they have adapted their formula.

Didn't stop playing until I got 100% completion.
Very simple game, but it nails what it sets out to do.
The price makes this a no brainer.