My Cabbages!

Finished the main campaign of Hogwarts Legacy. It didn't quite deliver. There seems to be a thing, though, with main campaigns being considered the weakest part of a game (Fallout 4, take a bow). I'm not sure this is true. It is true that side quests can take more risks as they can afford to have the player disengage and not follow through. The main campaign has to be a bit blah because it has to appeal to everyone.

(There also seems to be a thing, for the last decade's AAA games at least, for the last part of the Main Campaign to feel rushed, like the developers ran out of time and money when it came to finishing the game properly. But that might be that, according to Steam data, less than a quarter of all players finish the main campaign in any game.)

In the case of Hogwarts Legacy, the whole Ancient Magic thing was a bit meh. It was okay for a Macguffin, and Isadore's story was interesting, but giving it to the player character was a little too Chosen One for my taste. That, and the combat and magic systems were robust and complex enough; adding Ancient Magic to the mix was a complexity (and power) that wasn't really needed.

(There's a basic problem with the shooter paradigm. In a movie or book you can have a realistic -- that is, small -- number of opponents. To give time for the player to fully experience the game, they have to engage with multiple enemies. Multiple enemies begs the question of how the player character is surviving. This pushes towards power-ups; the player character becomes The Batman or the Doom Marine, gets powered armor...or Ancient Magic.)

This also really isn't a game about meaningful choices, for the most part. You get almost the same ending regardless of what dialogue options you choose. So in M.I.C.E. parlance, this is primarily a Milieu story. You can customize your appearance and pick your house, but that's internal role-play that has almost no functional effect on the game itself. The story is also equally split between the Big Event and the character going through a fairly ordinary Hogwarts school year; so again the I, C, and E aren't really what you came for.

So anyhow.

I'd gotten a fair way in with Richard Turpin, my Slytherin. Hadn't intended to pick Slytherin but the game has no pause feature for the long cutscenes and I'd been Sorted before I got back from the bathroom. Well, to be as accessible as possible, your House doesn't really force anything on you. Slytherins in this game are basically the way I'd intended to play Dick in the first place; willing to do what was necessary to save the Wizarding World from the Ancient Magic, but smart about it; study is good because knowledge is power. Being friendly gets you help from people, and in any case it almost never hurts you to be kind. And of course he lies like a rug because why would you give away information if you didn't have to?

But then I realized just how powerful you could get with Herbology. So I saved that game and started "Henny" the Hufflepuff. Who was shy, helpful, self-effacing, and really into magical plants and creatures.

It worked out wonderfully. First on the practical; yeah, it is tough to really gather enough mandrakes, venomous tentaculars and chinese chomping cabbages until several hours into the game, where you get the Room of Requirement and your own potting tables. There's a few tricks, like an early errand for Professor Garlick (everyone's favorite witch), or stealing that one from the shop, but also, what really pushes the things up to unstoppable are Traits (which don't unlock until somewhere around the first Ancient Magic Trial), and the ability to weave charms into your own clothes.

Which doesn't get unlocked until you start keeping your own menagerie and more on that later.

With the vegetative stats I got up to, my cabbages could take out a troll in six chomps or less. The Rookwood boss fight was a a little annoying until I finally figured out Ashwinders (dark wizards) were going to infinitely apparate in until I knocked Rookwood's HP down. I was operating on the theory of clear the space of minor combatants first.

Was doing pretty well, but eventually slipped. Back from the last save, I prioritized him and it was over in two minutes.

Mostly because his second appearance, with even more Dark Wizards of even higher levels supporting him for what was going to be a properly epic fight, he zigged when he should have zagged and apparated right on top of four of my cabbages. The battle was over before he'd had a chance to make his opening speech. I had the same thing in the final dragon fight. Was getting my ass kicked -- I had not brought along nearly enough healing potion and there were too many mandatory/unavoidable damage cases -- until he finally LANDED.

Cue the cabbages.

The biggest problem I had with them is that once I cleared a room full of spiders by rolling a few down the ramp that is supposed to dump you into the middle of the combat arena. Something bugged out in the game and it kept insisting I had to defeat the enemies before moving on to the dialogue. Had to restart from a save point. Take out most of the spiders from safely outside the arena, then drop down to do the last few personally so the game would accept that I'd won the battle.

But combat aside; this was totally the Hogwarts experience I wanted. The Hufflepuff dorm was lovely, and I went straight for the various Beasts quests. Poppy Sweeting is even more fun than Natsai Onai, and I found her side quest more entertaining. The most graceful lovely bit of a game that really goes out of its way to give you those lovely bits (and the Hufflepuff common room is darling) is the vivariums you get. Magical pocket dimensions where your creatures can frolic safe from poachers and everything else. So really this plays very well as a Magical Creatures game, where you pay a lot more attention to petting nifflers and hanging out in a potting shed than you do to whatever the goblins are getting up to.

(I basically ignored the Sebastian side quests. Henny felt sorry for him and his sister, but he -- like the Weasley kid -- came on too strong with the charm and the bad-boy vibe and she found it off-putting.)

And my little Hufflepuff ended up with a character arc. She didn't want combat and she didn't trust or like Ancient Magic, but she was loyal and helpful and that put her in situations where she had to shoot fireballs at people (or chomp them with cabbages). And she discovered she was surprisingly good at it, and (due to the Gear system of the game) even started dressing the part as an Adventurer.

After finally stopping Rangok and sealing up the Ancient Magic, she consciously got back into quiet, un self-assuming student robes, hung out with friends in the Hufflepuff common room, and basically tried to get back to the Hogwarts year she'd been expecting and wanting. Not fighting goblins in underground caverns, but learning herbs.

So on last analysis, the game was worth the money, and there's some replay potential. There's a base-building mechanic (because of course there is) but the functionality is too limited without a lot of questing after random side errands. So, technically, you can spend time dressing up your Room of requirement and the attached vivariums, or picking your outfit (there is an entire system for wand handles. Which have no effect in play and are basically invisible for most of the game).

For role playing, you can play a little more towards the unhelpful and mercenary side but the former just closes you off from potentially lucrative side quests, and the latter makes no functional difference in how people treat you.

(Example; if you are sent to retrieve a diary, come back and chose the lower dialogue option of "I'm gonna keep it unless you fork up more cash" the quest-giver will just say, "But of course! You've earned it!" and be the same thankful person. You can throw classmates across the room, brazenly break into locked chests and steal everything -- RPG standard there -- and even use the Unforgivable Curses without the slightest change in how anyone looks at you.)

There are a couple of different options at the ends of quests you can explore, and there is specific material for each House in just one spot; how you find the Map Room. For a Hufflepuff, that mission takes you to...Azkaban!

And as my cabbage play-through showed, you can concentrate your combat skills in one area or another. Since you can't progress through the main quest without learning everything (with the exception of the Unforgivable Curses, which are a Sebastian Sallow side quest or three) this boils down to what you actually do in combat -- and in what Traits you weave into your clothing. Which are also random drops, but since this part of the crafting system is mostly optional, you don't have to follow it.

(The Cabbage-Wielder build; at least two items with Herbology or Fangs trait, plus Medium potting tables and fertilizer. Spend the rest on Protego and Ederus potion to keep yourself alive while the cabbages get to work. And the double-cabbages Talent is in the Room of Requirement pool -- level 16, if I'm not mistaken, and given how long it is before you get the loom, you are basically at level 16 and through at least the first Ancient Magic Trial before you can really go to town with this build).

I will duck in long enough to watch the final cut scenes, and maybe take my graphorn out for a run, but I'm pretty much satisfied with my buck. I don't care to listen through un-skippable dialogue a third time and it is probably back to Satisfactory for me.