This is MY Hogwarts Legacy.
After a poor attempt of introducing players to Harry Potter, you are thrust into Diagon Alley with Hagrid as you go get yourself ready for Hogwarts. And here you'll learn to detect random encounters, and how to battle them. Not too long afterwards, the game sticks closely to the source material, as Hagrid and Harry must walk to Harry's Gringott's Vault, but, much like the movie itself, Harry trips and must now find the vault by himself, and then fight the GIANT rat that guards. The rest of the game is pretty similar in that regard, but it also skips many important scenes, and quidditch isn't even mentioned.
One of the most peculiar thing about the game is it's peculiar art-style, which I think it's actually rather endearing, as this is a Hogwarts that doesn't take after the movies. It's a seven-floor building, and each floor has weird things. There are very weird, cartoonish statues, and there's even a floor with sphinxes. It sounds so alien and wacky, but... keeping in mind how the original book was a children's book... it doesn't feel so out of place. It's a very weird take on Hogwarts, and that makes it endearing. It also has a weird sense of humor? A NPC claims that muggle clothes makes their butt look big, for example, and trying every vault in Gringotts gives a different flavored text. It's weird, endearingly so. On the other hand, character portraits are ugly in an off-brand anime kind of way. You can collect Famous Wizards cards, and each card has flavored text, which once again, charmingly weird, and they come with their own ugly off-brand anime portraits.
The game is a JRPG-lite, you only play as Harry Potter, and the game's world is reduced to Hogwarts. The gameplay can sometimes be a bit obtuse as well. The very first quest is finding Gryffindor's room, so you go from floor to floor talking with NPCs who give such helpful hints as "Look up, not down", or "It's above this floor". Well, it's on the seventh, and final, floor, which sounds very easy, but when you don't know where anything is, it's not as obvious. Plus, if you explore every nook and cranny, like me, you might take a one-way shortcut below, so now you have to climb back up some floors. But whatever, you get to the seventh floor.... but now you need the door's password, so back to talking with NPCs. Hopefully you didn't take the shortcut to floor 1, because you actually need to get to floor 6 and speak with Gryffindor's ghost who now tasks you... with going back to floor 1. Weirdly enough, the next quest can be tackled in any order, and it's about attending to different classes, but it's a bit more fun this time around. Still, not gonna lie, the game is about 10 hours long, but by hour 7 or so I was getting a bit tired of going up and down through Hogwarts' many floors. It's also weird 'cause few parts of the game actually have fighting, so you are oftentimes encouraged to go out of your way to grind for XP and money and then return to going to-and-fro through Hogwarts.
Combat is decent and a bit mysterious. For instance, there's no description of what each spell does. To be fair, pretty much every spell is damage oriented, but there's a hidden weakness element, as certain enemies only take damage from specific spells. It doesn't make much sense because it's not like spells have elements, except Incendium which is fire-based, but why turtles only take damage from "Vermilious" doesn't make much sense, but it's how it works, so part of combat is learning how to damage enemies and remembering it. The famous Wizards cards can also be used as "Card Combinations" that may help you in battle... or not. What each combination does is not explained, so you have to try them out and hope for the best... or not. I finished the game without ever using the system since I never cared to gamble!
The game is not without its issues too. There are plenty of small graphical glitches here and there, but worst of all, one time I got soft-locked in combat. Seems I was mashing A or something, and... the enemies stopped attacking and the combat menu disappeared. At another time, when going into the forbidden forest, if you walk too far from where Hagrid is waiting for you, Harry torpedoes towards the upper right corner of the screen and the game soft locks itself!
Harry Potter 1 on the Gameboy Color is alright. It offers an interesting look at Harry Potter without the movie's influences on the artstyle, and that alone makes it a neat curiosity, but there's no denying that the game can get a bit dull at times, and I felt it wasn't paced very well. But hey, it's not horrible. I'm hoping that the sequel, which also follows the JRPG format, manages to improve upon it.
5.0
No comments:
Post a Comment