zanbar lee

The 1 stars are fat liars, but the fives are too. Story: 3/5 The story is alright, and they don't shy away from getting pretty dark. People die, people get tortured, and you do a bit of all of that. It's nice to see that they were willing to embrace a bit of violence instead of playing it safe. However, while you can do a lot of illegal things, none of it really feels illegal. I used every unforgivable curse in front of my friends and my mentor, and none of them cared in the slightest. I was as evil as I could've been, worse than the main villain, and the ending still made me the hero. It just feels a bit off that they'd go so far to give you these evil options without taking that final step and making it all mean something. Combat: 4/5 You can throw people, pull people, float them up, and slam them down. Spells have IMPACT, and I mean it. When you curse someone, it feels like you just cursed someone, and that's important to making this kind of combat work. It's extremely fun, and I'm very picky about combat in videogames like this. Unfortunately, the real challenge was trying not to off myself in real life because of the spell organization instead of trying to keep my character alive in the game. It isn't enough to take away from the above average score, but it is enough to annoy my partner with how much I complained about it while playing. You've got four slots for four spells each, and you need to organize your spells both for the shield system and your build. When I'm more worried about finding my spell than figuring out how to apply it in the fight, there's a problem. Also, replay-ability is down the drain. You'll have every spell you want by the end and every upgrade too. There isn't any: "I can't wait to play this through as a transfiguration master next time!", and that's really sad considering so much of the universe is built around skillsets that make for an EASY class system. There are literal subjects that define classes, and it's not utilized in the slightest. Exploration: 4/5 The world is beautiful, undeniably. Nothing gives you a better view of Hogwarts than this game. I loved it, and you'll love it too. Unfortunately, for all of the charm, it's kept from perfection by low intractability and copy-paste objectives. You've got the same bandit camps placed in different areas, different collectibles that all require you to do the same stuff, and a bunch of characters that you can't interact with or talk to. The world looks AMAZING, enough for an above-average on its own, but it'll end up being something you fast travel through or fly over to get to your next quest instead of being a legitimate part of the experience after you've had your share of the view.