Hogwarts Legacywaits quite a while to introduce legitimate combat after players encounter Pensieve guards with Professor Eleazar Fig and are taught how to duel in Professor Dinah Hecate’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Essentially, though, players are fully free to begin casting spells against various mobs as soon as they’re able to freely wanderHogwarts Legacy’s Scottish Highlands, whether it be dark wizards, poachers, goblins, spiders, trolls, dugbogs, inferi, or mongrels.
Humans and goblins (Ashwinders, poachers, or Ranrok’s Loyalists) are more dynamic as enemy types since they can cast colored shield bubbles around themselves, while other enemies can be cut down swiftly via creative spellcasting combinations. Unfortunately, despite how thrilling combat can be against any enemy, there is one element thatHogwarts Legacywas great to include even if it did come out a bit undercooked in terms of its uniqueness; Infamous Foes are no different than an ordinary enemy of their type besides having an actual name over their health bar.
Infamous Foes is an Idea Hogwarts Legacy Should Have Ran with
Hogwarts Legacy’s Infamous Foesare simply regular enemies with a bit of lore ascribed to them and, sadly, they have no moves to distinguish themselves. That’s why, despite there being a ton of Infamous Foes with the potential for exhilarating, optional boss fights, Infamous Foes ultimately feel as though they are an extension of the severe bloatHogwarts Legacy’s open world contains as a part of its collections catalog.
Pensieve Protectors and Ranrok Dragon are clearly the mostunique bosses inHogwarts Legacy, though they also suffer from the same repetition between one another; meanwhile, Victor Rookwood and Theophilus Harlow are only unique due to the fact that players engage in Priori Incantatem tug-of-war matches with them.
Some Infamous Foes are fun Easter eggs—players get toencounter and slayHarry Potter’s Grim, a wolf whose visage is famously interpreted as an omen of death in the wizarding world, for example, even if it is little more than a reskinned mongrel. Likewise, some Infamous Foes are associated with intriguing side quests.
Having these foes is a terrific idea on paper, and yet players can easily fell many of them and not even realize that they were bosses if they hadn’t happened to notice a health bar and name at the top of the screen. None of these Infamous Foes are more difficult to defeat than their ordinary counterparts, either (not that making them much tankier would’ve actually added authentic difficulty to their encounters).
Infamous Foes Leans Too Much Away from Hogwarts Legacy’s Student Fantasy
Hogwarts Legacy’s protagonistis no mild-mannered student and instead has a lot more on their plate than coursework to tend to. Nonetheless, it’s a bit wild that the protagonist, who is only now learning magic and how to defend themselves, would be tasked with dispatching so many notable and terrifying adversaries while other Hogwarts students’ tribulations are wildly trivial in comparison.
Optional Infamous Foes in the open world are easily located via the overworld Highlands map and marked by a skull symbol.
Either aHogwarts Legacy 2or some semblance of a successor is certainly on its way after Warner Bros. has admitted multiple times now to the fact thatHarry Potteris one of its priorities going forward. Thus, in a sequel, it would be terrific if the premise behind Infamous Foes returned with substantial boss fights.
It would also be warmly welcomed if a sequel could offer more of a logical explanation as to why players may be seeking out such dangers, and yetHogwarts Legacyprovides no narrative reason for players to be flying through a series of balloons, activating landing platforms, or solving Merlin Trials beyond them being included as challenges in the player’s Field Guide. The only reason why Infamous Foes may be egregious, then, is that they often lack substance and memorability outside the quests they belong to.
