This data does not include digital sales, so it’s essentially useless. Not saying MW3 is likely or deserves to be higher, but this article is misleading.
Because MW3 is just… garbage. It’s a cookie that was made with a cookie cutter. It doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of gameplay, or truly novel developments in the game universe.
HL, despite the Rowling-oriented issues with the franchise, frankly knocked it out of the park, and moreover pretty squarely addressed the Feminist/Trans kerfluffle Rowling kicked up - the gender selection during character creation is “witch” or “wizard”, and it simply determines whether or not you can go into one half of your dorm area, and all the lines that refer to your character use “they” - never a gendered pronoun. The second part was a deliciously holistic “fuck your bigotry” move, and it was very obviously directed at Rowling.
Is it good? I heard the gameplay was pretty bland, though serviceable for HP fans. I’m not a big HP fan, but I know my kids would love watching my play it. I have plenty of games that fit that, so I’m only really interested if the gameplay is interesting.
I enjoyed it very much.
I found the stories to be extremely wholesome,
The puzzles to be a fun break from combat,
The combat to be wildly satisfying,
And overall I just thoroughly enjoyed existing in the world.Note that I’m not a huge HP fan. A little bit, sure, but not much.
Cool, I’ll have to pick it up then. Thanks!
I agree with the other poster, I’ve really enjoyed Hogwarts Legacy.
And I find the gameplay to be pretty good; the combat can be approached in multiple ways due to spell variety, there are a decent variety of puzzles to do (though some only become accessible fairly late in the game), and I enjoy the different side stories throughout the game. Also Hogwarts castle is gorgeous, and lots of fun to explore.
The enemy variety is mediocre, but there aren’t that many 3D games with compelling magic combat, and Hogwarts does a decent job of it. I would have liked to see a little more variety in the spells/upgrades and the gear, but the decisions they made do fit the theme and work pretty well.
Good. I was definitely worried about magic, I didn’t want it to just be a button mash fest.
It’s pretty fast. I play on hard for most games, and here that means you’re reasonably lethal and enemies hit hard. There are encounters i’ve failed where I had to have an explicit plan to deal with the enemies prior to engaging (though I was probably also slightly under leveled) because of how fast the combat can be. It’s not a perfect game, but they capture the Harry Potter “fencing duel” aesthetic of wand combat pretty well.
Overall, while I’m not a crazy Harry Potter fan (I’ve read all the books, but was older than most when I did, and have never actually sat down and watched any of the movies completely), the charm of the setting really shines through across the board. The writing, the implementation of Hogwarts and some of the other locations, the gear (while I wish it was more RPG-feeling in terms of stats and perks, it nails the look), the combat, everything from top to bottom. It’s pretty clear the people who worked on the game are either big fans of the source material (movies, specifically) or at least did their research, because it completely nails the feel of the IP.
The downside is that that crazy densely packed setting is really demanding to implement, so there’s a lot of loading (it tries to do it transparently, but if your hardware can’t keep up you get spinning circle delays on opening doors) that has to happen. I didn’t think it was bad overall in my 30 hours on steam deck (though traversing Hogwarts with 3-5 second door loads a couple times in quick succession can be frustrating), but tolerance for performance varies.
lot of loading
Awesome, shouldn’t be an issue then. When they announced the Switch version, I thought about getting it, but then saw the issues with loading times and noped out. So I’ll either play on my Steam Deck or PC, and both have fast SSDs and capable enough HW.
I only get those minor delays if I’m literally sprinting through the castle on my PC, and never at night in-game.
The game is absolutely gorgeous and my one main disappointment for it is there’s no photo mode.
Honestly, the vistas and scenery in the game are beautiful. There’s nothing quite like flying over a hilltop at night on your broom and seeing the castle looking over everything, lit up like Christmas lights.
And then you get to Christmas in-game.
I got bored pretty quick, but I’ve never had any interest in the franchise either.
Oh so good. The combat was amazing for someone who was concerned how dueling would be integrated into a video game. The puzzles great. Story great. Cut scenes great. Flying on the broom with absolutely beautiful views. But I like Harry potter. But the game is it’s own beauty. I put in around 200 hours before beating it almost 100%.
And it’s funny you mentioned kids, I played this with my 5 year old daughter and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much because she enjoyed it. It’s not really a pg game, but I tried to keep it friendly for her when she watched.
Yeah, my kids are 7 and 9, and this is definitely in the “hard game” category for them. They like playing Minecraft (mostly on creative), Pokemon, etc, and they like watching me play games like Zelda, Ori, and Furi. I’ve even played scarier games with them, but I’m careful about what I let them see (I’ll sometimes look up spoilers, pause/skip cutscenes, etc).
They love HP, though we’ve only let them watch the first four movies (we’re making the older one read the books first). Buying it wouldn’t be for them, but for me, and they’d watch, and since I’m not as into HP as they are, I need to game to stand on its own, otherwise I’d just wait until they’re ready to play on their own.
I’ll tell you, there’s no blood in the game other than on the environment in some scripted parts of the game. The only other creepy or scary thing in the game would be the zombies.
Eh, my kids survived the first half of
Little Nightmares, I think they’ll be fine. :)
Is this like saying Gollum beat Kong?
Precisely
Both are so high because they are well known properties with long term fans.
Popularity sells.
And it works on linux. Using Lemmy btw
That’s awesome. I use Lemmy too. Small world, huh?
what’s lemmy?
Is this surprising?
Especially considering platform availability. I think it says more about ToTK being 3rd on a single platform vs the other two being available on multiple platforms.
I mean, Mario Kart 8 has become one of the best selling video games of all time. Even if you remove the WiiU version, the sales numbers of the Switch version rival Red Dead 2.
The Switch has been an absolute sales machine for Nintendo IP
Call of Duty has been a sales juggernaut for the past two decades, despite it’s annual release nature. At one point it used to absolutely smoke any and all competitors.
It being beat out by a licensed game and being closely followed by a Zelda game (which is only available on one platform) is VERY surprising.
Hey the game wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t too good either. Hope their next iteration does better.
Yeah, I’m on the fence about it. If they release a good sequel, I’ll probably buy both, but the gameplay so far looks mediocre.
I personally really like the gameplay, and the story and world are very interesting to explore.
I do like a fairly wide variety of games including Soulsbourne, metroidvanias, 4x, sims, shooters, even sports games. So maybe I just like everything.
I literally never hear anything about hogwarts legacy except for how well it’s sold. None of my friends who are into the series ever even mention it. I realize all I really have to go off of is a personal anecdote, but I would not be surprised in the slightest if those numbers ended up being heavily inflated.
As for modern warfare, I’ve never played it and I’ve never been a fan of cod. I’m just surprised the series is still going, I thought people would be burnt out on it by now.
I bought Hogwarts Legacy when it releases. The magic combat is pretty fun and can get pretty tricky to handle very quickly. The “puzzles” are probably one of the weakest aspects of the game, which kinda sucks because they make up so much of the side content (like about 80%). The story is fine, but it kinda falls apart towards the ending. Some of the pacing for some of the mechanics seems a little off as well.
The main draws to the game are the exploration, customization, and the world. Getting to explore every nook and cranny of Hogwarts was honestly an actual dream come true ever since I watched the movies as a kid (I never read the books), and the rest of the game world is massive. Flying around on a broom is actually really fun in-game, too. The customization options in the game are pretty robust; there are hundreds of different clothing and accessory items to find throughout the game world, and customizing the Room of Requirement can be a good time sink similarly to settlement building in Fallout 4.
Aside from some QoL things that probably should be in the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. Just treat it as Harry Potter RPG Lite.
anti-Semitism is so hot right now.
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Works beautifully on my desktop on Ultra settings. What hardware are you running?
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Could be crossfire.
I have a Ryzen 5 5600X, Radeon 5700 XT, 32 GB RAM, and run it off an SSD.
The game runs great on ultra on my system, and I didn’t do anything but install the latest Radeon driver.
Also I still run windows 10, so could be different operating systems.
What is your load when running?
I’ve never used Crossfire. I’m not sure if that causes problems .
It’s definitely better than my PC so not sure what’s wrong.
Works fine on consoles.
It’s probably denuvo.
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I got it working fine too and my PC was not a beast 4 years ago when I made it.
I have a problem with XMP in Bios for a lot of games that are ported. Maybe it’s that for you? Something just doesn’t work right outside stock memory Ryzen.
Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Sackboy all required me to turn off XMP.
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What are your specs?
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Worked great on a humble ps5. Might be the way to go for this title.
Game has a really cool castle but once you get over that it kinda falls into repetitive open world stuff.
I would have liked more of a focus on class stuff, though to be fair I’m not sure if that would have been fun long term. Outside the class missions is doesn’t feel enough like a school. Sneaking around at night doesn’t have the same tenseness as the novels if there is no one looking for you.
I would be interested in a sequel if they can figure that out.
They should’ve made it more like Magic Bully, but I still enjoyed the game.
