eh, i found the game to be hollow and boring past the first handful of hours… but I didn’t get much out of the “explore the castle” experience. like, there wasn’t really anything to find. just the same boxes and puzzles but in different spots. like, imagine if instead of a little card to read about the whomping willow, instead you just get pulled into a fight if you wander too close.
the flying, one of the most important aspects of a harry potter open world game imo, wasn’t just bad, it had no thought or effort put into it at all. i made exactly as complex of a flight mechanic in 7th grade using a teaching program called Alice in like 2009.
like, every tool and mechanic in the game felt lazy or unfinished. bad puzzles lifted out of other games, all of the school rules get handwaved away because a rule and punishment system would’ve been actual gameplay and they didn’t want to spend time on that when they had models to build and marketing to do.
that’s really my issue. it feels like a game that spent 40% on building an environment, 50% on marketing, and the 10% that was left went into slapping a game into it. it’s really frustrating too, because no one is willing to talk about the game beyond the Rowling controversy. it felt like a blatant low effort cash grab to me, but everyone else either “didn’t care cause fuck rowling” or “idk, i liked it” is the most they’ve given it thought.