In a world filled with both magic and mischief, players take control of a fifth-year witch/wizard at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1899, nearly a century before the events of the Harry Potter novels unfold. Gaining and wielding a variety of magical abilities as the story progresses, players are tasked with facing increasingly difficult puzzles and enemies as they uncover a truth shrouded in mystery. The main questline is estimated to take an approximate 30 to 35 hours to complete, with the full game taking closer to 70-75 hours with side quests included. For the achievement and trophy hunters out there, this one will take over 100 hours and include a partial playthrough with a character in all four houses to achieve the platinum/100%.
Hogwarts Legacy is off to quite the magical start, taking over the top spot on Twitch with nearly 1.3 million peak concurrent viewers this past Thursday (ahead of its official launch the next day) and hosting a massive 800k+ concurrent players on Steam over the weekend. In addition to its incredibly strong concurrent player and viewership numbers, Hogwarts Legacy has also managed to snag 4 of the top 5 spots on the Steam sales chart this week with the digital deluxe edition claiming spots 1 and 4 & the regular edition taking spots 2 and 3 (preorders are counted as separate SKUs on Steam). It’s probably safe to expect an announcement on the total sales numbers from WB Games in the week ahead.
Not everything has been a pleasant wave of the sales wand though. Amid its success, Hogwarts Legacy has been cloaked in controversy, encountering quite a bit of resentment and hatred from the transgender community. A number of transgender gamers have called for players to boycott the game in hopes of not further lining the pockets of franchise creator J.K. Rowling after her comments on transgenderism. While initially this seemed to be a peaceful protest, things have escalated to the point that a website was setup to track streamers playing the game to encourage others to harass them in chat while they were streaming (this website has since been taken down) and game spoilers have been posted all over social media to further dissuade purchases. Regardless of if you support transgenderism or not, harassment is not the answer.
For those looking to play the game, it is now available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. It is set to arrive on past-gen consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) on April 4, 2023 and the Nintendo Switch on July 25, 2023.
Image from: Avalanche Software/WB Games
