how to change spells in hogwarts legacy ps5

Magic outside of combat is even more disappointing. Each one adheres more to the rules of action games than the Wizarding World. There’s a spell that allows players to instantly kill an enemy when sneaking up on them, a la backstabs in Wolfenstein, while Crucio may as well just be your typical poison attack. Several spells act as stand-ins for standard video game tropes, painting over basic mechanics with an extra flash of color. While I had fun levitating enemies up into the air and slamming them to the ground, I was surprised by how unmagical a lot of the magic feels. Abilities like that can create some exciting moments, though several of the game’s more fun spells don’t have any effect on larger foes and bosses - something that makes the back third of the game sag considerably. Depulso pushes enemies back to help players from getting overrun, while a transformation spell can turn smaller enemies into exploding barrels. Combat widens out as players learn new spells, some of which help to mask that thin core.

Early on, battles simply had me pulling my right trigger over and over again with no strategy or nuance. The core combat system, for instance, revolves around a single-button magic strike that essentially fires like a peashooter pistol. Magic in Hogwarts Legacy offers a bit of a mixed bag. Strictly coming in from that perspective, I was left cold.

I was curious to see how developer Avalanche Software could reinvent the open-world genre by replacing guns and swords with spells. Whether I’m personally connected to an IP or not, I come to every video game looking for a mechanically engaging experience. I’ve never read the books or seen the films, but that shouldn’t have influenced my thoughts on it much. When I played Hogwarts Legacy, I wasn’t coming at it as a Harry Potter fan. If the Harry Potter game is going to be lauded as a genre-defining work, then Forspoken deserves a cynicism-free revisit. For all its grating dialogue and scattered design decisions, Forspoken‘s creative approach to magic is miles ahead of Hogwarts Legacy. Each has different strengths and weaknesses, but the more I’ve had time to reflect on them, the more puzzled I am by the enormous gulf in public reception. Both are story-heavy, fantasy open-world games built around magic-based combat and exploration. The narrative behind those two releases couldn’t be more dissimilar, but the games themselves aren’t actually all that different.

How to change spells in hogwarts legacy ps5