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Disappointing and Shallow - A Missed Opportunity for a Great Wizarding World Game I was excited for Hogwarts Legacy, hoping it would deliver an immersive and engaging RPG experience. Unfortunately, it falls short in so many areas, especially when it comes to its story, characters, and lack of player agency. First and foremost, the story feels underdeveloped and lacking in substance. What you get is a promising plot that ultimately leaves you unsatisfied. The central mystery of your character’s connection to the magical events around you never feels impactful, and by the end, you’re left with more questions than answers. The game's narrative feels like it was rushed or never fully fleshed out—nothing about it is particularly memorable. The side characters are just as disappointing. They’re flat, uninspired, and never manage to evoke any real emotion or connection. While you’re given the opportunity to interact with them, they never feel like real people with depth or backstory, making it hard to care about their struggles or quests. You end up going through the motions just to get through the game. Another major issue is the lack of meaningful choice in how you shape your character’s journey. You may be in the magical world, but you have very little influence over your own fate. Despite the game's open-world design, you’re ultimately stuck following a set path, with little room to make decisions that feel impactful. You can’t forge your own destiny in a world that should be built on freedom and possibilities. Perhaps the biggest flaw, though, is the fact that you never really understand who your character is or how they fit into the larger narrative. No clear explanation of your background or your connection to the bigger story, you are just playing with an empty vessel. At no point do you feel like you’re truly discovering or growing with your character, you’re just going through the motions of a storyline that’s been done better elsewhere. Overall, Hogwarts Legacy is a missed opportunity. It could’ve been a truly groundbreaking RPG set in one of the most beloved universes, but instead, it offers a shallow, uninspired experience that leaves you feeling disconnected from both the story and the world around you. If you’re looking for depth, meaningful choice, and engaging characters, look elsewhere.

Spoiler alerts!! :) One of the best Netflix releases of the year. The movie brilliantly plays with power dynamics between men and women, making us realise how subtle those dynamics can be, and how they’re not always what we expect. The movie is never trying to make the main character Emily a feminist martyr, a symbol or a hero (she’s actually a really flawed character). As it’s not trying to make every men look like sexist bad guys. She is just a woman, who has equal work opportunities as men and is given a promotion for her talent rather than anything else. Just like Luke, Emily navigates a difficult work environment, however she doesn’t let anything or anyone bring her down. For me the real female empowerment comes from the fact that she’s not scared of working in a male dominated environment, she’s assimilated it and knows which cards to play in order to climb the ladder. The real threat turns out to be Emily’s fiancé, Luke, who we slowly watch falling into some sort of man “emasculation” trap after Emily gets the promotion. The actor does a great job at depicting the symptoms. His resentment is subtle and comes slowly, then escalates until it reaches a sad point. It raises some interesting questions about a man’s fragility and how they can feel. The story ends in the worst possible way: Luke trying to change the power dynamics back to him by assaulting Emily, as a result Emily threatening him with a knife. With all the tension, it couldn’t have gone any other way. At least the closing scene is a positive one: there’s a genuine apology from Luke. It’s not about revenge. It’s about making him acknowledge his responsibility for his actions and confront his failures. Emily can finally let go once he’s done that. This is a good thing as he’ll probably have learned from his mistakes and we can only hope he’ll live his life thinking differently after that. And that’s all we need to know in the end. P.S.: It really makes movies like Barbie look like a joke lol!!