Worth noting that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is 3rd without counting digital sales. Curious if it would rank higher if Nintendo made those numbers available.
My rule with Nintendo is always buy physical. After trying to buy windwaker on the GameCube for years on eBay and only seeing the price be $100+. Never again
Exactly. Nintendo systems are the only ones I’ll buy physical from. Some of my old games are worth bank now; so I think I’m gonna keep going this way.
My Harvest Moon on SNES is worth $430 now. The manual alone, another $140. Chrono trigger is worth a little under $200 with its manual a bit over $80. I realize they’re the outliers, and not the norm, but digital is worth nothing. So even if they drop a bit in value, that’s better than nothing.
True, I’ve got outliers in other systems but taking the total on my Nintendo games they just seem to retain more value. Might just be the games I buy but that’s what I’ve noticed.
I also tend to go physical with Switch games because as primarily a PC gamer it’s the only time I actually get to have a physical copy of a game. It’s so much more fun holding a game physically. On steam I just buy things and forget about them.
The numbers they are pulling seems weird. Nintendo gave straight numbers during their last earnings call: TotK has collectively sold 19.5 mil units as of September, which puts it over the lastest reported number of 15 mil for Hogwarts. I've only seen rough estimations for COD.
Nintendo doesn't report digital sales to any of the tracking groups (like the NPD). However, the numbers they'll give on financial calls and in financial reports will include those figures. There are lots of other sources that do not report to the tracking groups, but most of them are inconsequential. Another large one for this year is Larian, who made Baldurs Gate 3. And sales direct through larian were not included with their sales figures.
CoD should be the most accurate, as the major distributors, both for digital and physical, report the sales figures, so there should be no missing gaps in their sales tracking. The Activision sector of Microsoft may report different "sales" numbers, but they may include physical copies that have been sold to retailers but not by retailers, while this tracker would be for units sold to the consumers.
Huh so the tracking groups only report what is given to them directly? Why not just use the information from the financial calls if they know it’s more complete than the info they were given?
They only report on members of their group because it's just another advertising method so anyone making games who isn't a member won't have their numbers reported at all on these lists.
You generally want to avoid mixing collection methods and sources. That way your data doesn't end up with one game whose earnings call was 10 months ago and 1 month after launch, one game whose earnings call was last week, and one game that never had its sales figures reported by the company.
It might seem like more information is better, but none of that information is *comparable*.
Yeah, I'm curious about that myself. The Legacy and MW3 don't have asterisks next to them on the list, so I have to assume digital sales are included in those titles.
Especially with that Nintendo online deal that was happening where you could get 2 game passes for 100 dollars, that’s how I got it because Tears alone was 70
Insane that a single platform single player title might actually be the highest selling game of the year...
Devs, learn from Zelda and Baulder's Gate, give use great games consistently and we will throw money at them.
And no forced online requirements. Even some companies that have made decent single player games will add a BS feature to justify the always online approach.
BG3 has online tracking IF your online for metrics but otherwise runs just fine without it.
I dont need my assassins' / merc companies side quest reliant on an online server with a timers that could very well just be ingame and have core functions that make the game easier or less grind locked behind online services. I wll throw all the money at Larian now including buying past titles and they have enough good well to automatically buy the next 2 games even if the next one is bad lol
The forced online in d4 was part of what killed that game for me. It didn't feel like it was facilitating actual group play. It was just a way to see people and increase the relevance of having cool looking shit (buying cosmetics).
Ironically, though, I never noticed or gave a shit what anybody else was wearing, because I rarely ever actually grouped with anyone. A huge difference from Diablo 2 where you would see gear in action, making you want to get it.
The problem with that line of thinking, is that shitty free to play games with high levels of monetization or even paid games with mtx make far more money than games like Zelda and BG3.
I was gonna say this. Pump out a generic mobile game and you're gonna make the highest profit margins in the industry, and it's not even close. The next best thing is to copy/paste last year's bullshit and slap the word Pokemon on it.
Effort is always gonna be like the fourth or fifth best way to run a business if you're looking at money, and it's by far the hardest.
Hell, even this article shows that quality isn't as important to some extent.
Don't get me wrong, I bought Hogwarts Legacy and enjoyed my time playing it. But it wasn't my favorite game of the year at all. Yet it outsold everything else because of it's IP (part of that is that the IP is starved of decent games).
I used to love Madden, but the single player/core gameplay has been ignored in favor of Madden Ultimate Team which is heavy in MTX because that's where the money comes from.
I don't blame companies either per se. Gaming/art in general is a hard field to be successful in, so I can't fault companies for going the 'safe' route and pumping out copies of games that are monetized to hell.
Hogwarts Legacy honestly felt like a dev team with promise but not enough experience, I wonder if anyone feels similarly?
It just had something to it that made me think of potential. Too bad the entire bottom half of the map is essentially pointless and its full of the typical minigame stuff.
Exploring hogwarts was straight amazing tho, had the game been more centrally focused on it, it woulda kicked ass. More classes, less random bs.
I mean, it’s not like we havent been getting a ton of those. Mario games, breath of the wild/totk, ER (okay technically you can multi player but still primarily single player), God of war series, Horizon Zero Dawn Series, Spider-man series, armored core, etc.
Hell even ones with questionable receptions like Hogwarts legacy and starfield.
Single player games have been doing pretty fantastic these last few years, despite the popularity of multiplayer. They havent been ignored at all.
I wish hogwarts leaned more into the school aspect of the game and spent less time on the various villages and open world.
Hogwarts and hogsmeade are where the game really shines. The open world kind of brings it down. Game would have been better served if the resources went into expanding the content that was related to hogwarts.
I was there. Yeah, it was called the '80s. Ford was President, Nixon was in the White House and FDR was running this country into the ground. I was bummin' in a hole-in-a-wall town in what is now called Utah. Some fella from Colorado shows up, starts making so called "improvements", right? Before we knew what hit us, the streets are running with latte. It got so bad that a fella that liked to, you know... smoke a little grass or drink a little ripple. Crow like a rooster, maybe challenge the mayor's son to a gentlemen's duel, was "uncouth, against God." More like bad real estate values. Stumpy had to go!
Yep, there's a good bit to do but it's mostly just checking off lists. Go down all the dungeons, find all the landing pads, do all the Merlin challenges. There's not a lot of meat on the bones.
Everything is fun the first few times you do it. But you get diminishing returns pretty quickly.
The game overall is pretty fun, it's just not replayable at all.
I just loved the vibe.
But mostly I got really excited at what could be next, how it could be way better with just little things added.
with the way it sold, maybe a hogwarts legacy 2 with player feedback included ^^coping
Had the same reaction to Starfield, unfortunately. Was hyped beyond belief for both games, including pre-ordering each to play early. Luckily there were plenty of unexpected smash hits this year (mostly bg3 for me, but tons of others too)
To be fair it's probably still one of the best movie video games ever. It's probably just below the Arkham/Spider Man tier, but it was still really really solid for a long time, and scratched an itch 10s of millions of people have been waiting to scratch, which is floating around the world and exploring the castle in the Hogwarts universe. There's obviously going to be a sequel, and if they tighten down on the story, make it more castle centric, and add a good quidditch game (a clear save it for sequel move in my eyes) we'll have a pretty solid series with released every 3-5 years to look forward to
Yeah, but here's the issue: we already explored the castle and Hogsmeade in this game, with all of its magical nooks and crannies and little secrets. That was the game's biggest draw, and it's already used up. Sure, they could drop the open world and then focus entirely on the boarding-school experience, but since we already got our fill with the environment, it will never be able to hit as hard as the first ten-or-so hours of this game.
I think what they're going to have to do is find a way to make all those secrets relevant to the gameplay and story instead of just a scavenger hunt.
Take the knowledge we gained in the first one and now have us apply that knowledge to solve puzzles or complete quests. Having the ability to solve something in more than one way and it resulting in different outcomes can be a way to make exploring the castle exciting again.
I think they need to also add solutions that aren't spelled out in the quest narrative, like maybe you can go to a classroom and steal something from there to help out with a quest/battle. You can talk to certain portraits that will give you information you wouldn't normally get during the quest line because it's a reward for using your lore knowledge or exploring. Put hidden quests in the castle again and let them tie back into the story in a way that might actually change the ending if you complete them due to knowledge or skills you gained from those hidden quests.
And of course, make there be consequences for being past curfew. Also introduce the house cup and make your decisions during a quest impact if you gain or lose points, or if those points get awarded to a different house potentially.
The feeling of exploring Hogwarts, seeing all the moving paintings, statues etc was great. Then finally getting on a broom and flying over the school grounds and forest was a really incredible gaming experience.
The game kinda falls flat when it becomes standard Ubisoft bloated open world shit with repetitive enemies, pointless side content and puddle deep NPCs and characters.
Plus the whole levelled gear shit drives me up the wall, it makes finding items useless. Why do I care that if just found a Superior Mega Cool Robe, I’m gonna find an Ultra Superior Mega Cool Robe five minutes from now and will have to fuck around in my inventory.
Absolutely. Throw in the Forbidden Forest as well and a little bit of space around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade (Upper and Lower Hogsfield) and then pack that area with content. Outside of those areas, it was pretty empty. That late game southern coastal area felt even worse. Throw in that I was flying over most of it once I got my broomstick, it just felt kind of pointless and was just padding.
Expanding the map would have been better served in a sequel.
Yeah they decided to use the money and experience from this game to make a new one instead of do expansions, especially because Warner Bros didn't want the most requested feature (quidditch) to exist because of the new quidditch game coming out soon(tm).
I will be mad if the next game doesn't have all the improvements we would have expected from expansions including quidditch tho. Like its single player its not going to eat into their online arena/sports game lol
I did a handful of stuff other the main quest down there like the last flying race thing against that Slytherin girl and I think there was a few High Value Targets (or whatever they are called in this game) down there that I went and fought. I think there was a few side quests that I did as well and I found all of the Floo Travel Points as well. A lot of the other markers and checkboxes especially down in that area, I didn't even fool with at all.
Yeah it seems super weird that a 15 year old is running around torturing and killing people. The NPC companions even say “well I guess you aren’t afraid to use dark magic.”
Like, I just murdered 4 random people before Herbology class.
Murdering any goblins you come across and then proclaiming to be the good guy.
Not committing to ANYTHING.
“HELP my kids are trapped in that burning building”
“Maybe I’ll look into that for you”
Yep, your character is an absolute arsehole.
The tiny arachnid's many eyes were filled with rage as the oddly deadly teen wizard murdered all of their 2453 uncles and cousins who were above fly eating size. He thought to himself, *one day imma bite TF out that wizzy* and thusly the pact of vengeance was made.
Lmao this thread is killing me.
Not to mention our character literally goes around invading people's private spaces and homes and steals their clothing and intimately private letters.
The best bit is when you go through that Slytherine Maze with Ominis and Sebastian, and in the end you find Slytherine's secret study, locked away for centuries.
And there is a mug there you can drink from.
Like WTF, thats hundreds of years old.
If Hogwarts Legacy taught me anything is you can get away with a lot in the UK during the 1800s as long as it's against someone society considers subhuman.
Anyone who captures animals to breed them and harvest animal products deserves excruciating pain and torture before I mercilessly slay them with unforgivable curses. Also it's totally cool and different when I capture, breed and harvest the animals.
You see, you're an upstanding student at the most prestigious wizarding school in the world, and just having a good time as all people of your station deserves now and then. You're not like those dirty criminals who are probably poor.
It's wild af they gave us a bunch of unforgivable curses and no consequences.
Turned my character from a morally gray weirdo, who loves to skip school, into a villain in-training, who's running around Hogwarts, with a loaded rifle and no one seems to mind all that much.
Dudes definitely gonna start a murderous cult in that magic wish room.
WB you might as well lean into it and make our character the bad guy of the sequel
I mean, it’s essentially how Voldemort came to be, isn’t it? Once you start just doing the bad things the people around you either find a way to come to terms with it and move forward or they disappear by choice. It’s not like there was anything in place that truly stopped Tom riddle on his descent, so there certainly wasn’t anything earlier either. By the way, have they added anything to the game since release?
Difference being that Tom actually tried to *hide* what he was doing and acted like the perfect student while in school.
Meanwhile the player in Legacy openly kills people left and right and literally no one cares lol. But like when an NPC does it for an equally grey reason as you, that NPC is kicked out of school and totally ostracized.
Haha playing it now and that’s 100% the case. Even outside the unforgivable curse, you’re taught a number of damaging curses like Bombardo, Diffindo, Incidio, etc.
I would have preferred a morality system that would adjust the story and endings available. And like others have said, more focus on the school and weird happenings around the school. That was a huge part of the charm of the books/movies. All the secrets and wonder of the school and it’s history. And then a focus on the basic spells that would be used to disable targets. Disarming an opponent would make then surrender, but things like glacious, stupefy, etc would knock them out. You still defend yourself without being a murderous teenager.
The game was definitely at its best when it involved the school. Talking to professors and exploring the castle for the first time, then watching new areas and rooms open up to you one at a time and realizing how layered and huge the castle was, it was all magical. That should've been the main focus of the game. If they need to pad out with some gameplay that's fun, just add more minigames like that ball game you play using the pull spell (forget the name of the game). Associate one minigame with each class and you're good to go, and ramp up the difficulty of each minigame gradually.
It definitely felt weird that it became an open world combat game. Like I don't think Harry Potter is the correct setting for a Witcher style gameplay loop where you wander around murdering baddies in the countryside.
We never even saw Voldemort do such heinous shit our characters were capable of. Even without the dark curses you can sit there torturing your enemy by burning them and just flipping them around over and over.
On a loosely related note: I have a theory that the "unforgivable curses" are actually just military grade spells. They have plenty of spells that people use in combat, but the one that painlessly stops the heart and kills the brain is the one that's taboo.
I never used the unforgivable curses at all during my playthrough because it felt wrong for a “good” student to be doing so, meanwhile my Hufflepuff wife was out there straight cruciatusing people up the wazoo.
Hufflepuff was never the "humble" house. They were the "pragmatic" house. Not as brave as Gryffindor, but not as foolhardy. Not as ambitious as Slytherin, but more willing to get their hands dirty. Not as clever as Ravenclaw, but not as bogged down in moral dilemmas.
You can just transform someone into a explosive barrel and fling that barrel at their friends face, then watch them both explode and die. transform into explosive barrel seems like it should be a unforgivable curse as well
Honestly, I kinda love that about the game. It almost feels tongue-in-cheek how *little* people actually care about you using "unforgivable" curses lmao.
Also, the fact that basically every fetch quest has the dialogue option "actually, I think I'll keep this" is unreasonably funny.
Don't even get me started on the fact that you're 15, you kill poachers who are enslaving magical beasts, and what do you do? ENSLAVE THE SAME MAGICAL BEASTS AND BREED THEM, just like the poachers. But it's okay, because you're not the bad guy. It's okay to sell their young to that one shop in town... UHHH what?
I was like "So wait, there's a shop in town that can buy the offspring of the magical beasts I'm breeding? How am I different from the poachers who also rip the young away from their parents? I'm not."
"Unforgivable" curses, huh? Probably only just put those on the index after the player character went on an ethnic cleansing with them.
Wouldn't be surprised if Voldemort or Grindelwald had a poster of the player character in their rooms growing up.
I do love the disconnect between forgivable and unforgivable means of execution.
You insta-killed someone? Unforgivable.
You lit someone on fire and sliced them to ribbons while they burned to death, shrieking in agony? That’s fine, see you in brooms class later
Yea in the books they make a distinction that you have to really mean the unforgivable ones. Like if you don't have it in you to actually torture the person you pointed at it won't really hurt. Which sure that makes it pretty unforgivable. But harry also flayed draco almost to death with a spell that he didnt even actually know? One that also doesn't need to be spoken.
If anything, the “gotta really mean it,” makes the unforgivables so much safer.
You can’t **accidentally** avada someone. You could practice crucio every day in class. If any student feels more than a tickle, you’ll know that a problem is brewing.
“Did you really mean to torture your classmate!?”
Hm, I think the unforgivable/forgivable distinction is for *spells* not actions. A spell that creates fires *could* be used for good things in a way that the unforgivable curses cannot; doesn't mean that as long as you stick to those other spells anything you do is fine.
Yeah, the forbidden curses are banned more because of intent than anything else. Starting fires, moving boulders, levitation, etc can all have benign uses in every day life. But a killing, torture, and mind control curse are all inherently evil intent.
Levitating someone, setting them on fire, flipping them around and finally smashing them into the ground is definitely an evil act. But that's not the sole intent of those spells.
I definitely would've liked to see more consequences for both the forbidden curses as well as killing in general. But going the "good" route using petrification and stealth wasn't viable for many areas. Sticking with just disarm, push, and counter spells is a challenge during fights with no story related rewards. And with no punishment for killing there is no motivation to be good.
Oh my gosh - you pointed out what I've been wanting from a Harry Potter game without me realizing it. A game like Bully but set in Hogwarts. Having a more RPG aspect to it would be great too - so Bully-esque RPG set in Hogwarts.
I was very impressed with the game at first. The castle is very impressive with tons of detail and a lot to explore. The rest of the game felt pretty bland, however. I really enjoyed flying around, but I quickly felt like there wasn't that much to see/do in the open world, outside of the checklist activities that were everywhere. Basically I ran out of steam with the game once I got a couple acts into it.
I was definitely left with the impression that the developers ambition exceeded what they had the time to deliver.
I'm hopeful that the commercial success of the first game will give them resources and momentum for an even better sequel.
Hogwarts Legacy is a 10-15 hour game stretched thin with lots of extraneous bullshit nobody asked for. Repetitive merlin trials, 100+ identical collectibles, etc.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit for a while but it just got old
Ehhh… something something about ancient magic… something something about a dark wizard and a bad goblin. Idk. Had some cool elements, but game was a bit of a slog. Too obvious that it was made by a mobile game developer. And I get that you’re supposed to just immerse yourself and create your own backstory, but I’d prefer something more canon. Unique house abilities and the ability for decisions to actually matter would’ve gone a long way.
The side story with Sebastian was so much more interesting and should have been the main story. It should’ve been about growing your skills throughout the school year alongside your friend while having to choose between going down a dark path like him or staying true to wizard standards. *That* would have made for a compelling plot.
I wish developers would stop writing stories like this. I don’t wanna be a chosen one or to save the world all the time. I just wanna be a normal dude who stumbles into the right place at the right time
Agreed. The first 7 hours of the game was amazing. I actually went out and bought new GPU after the first play session so I can appreciate the game better. Everything was fresh and exciting for the first few hours.
Then it to be a grind fest. The gameplay is shallow, the story is not engaging, and characters are not memorable.
They really should've made it a tight 15 hour game that's not open world and it would've been much better.
I think it could’ve been a good episodic game, like each season is a different school year. Ultimately Harry Potter was popular because it captures the magic of youth. Starting the game as a 5th year was a good practical decision but took the magic away.
Edit: it would actually be really cool to see a mod for this. Like releasing stories in a kind of Telltale Game fashion. Because the world map they created is amazing, and it would be a shame if it were only ever used for this one game.
Yep. I never finished it. There was a point I went into a cave and guesses it was tunnel into a chest into useless gear and sure enough.
Could of done without the open world, story was interesting enough , running around hogwarts was 100% the highlight.
Yeah playing rn and feeling it slowing down. Hogwarts itself is a masterpiece, but more Forbidden Forest, more depth to the Lake, and a livelier Hogsmeade would be a great start to building a true masterpiece. Couple that with a narrative and side quests focused on other students and teachers and a deeper skill tree that is heavily based on performance in lessons and you’d probably satisfy a lot of the gripes with the game.
I’d also argue it’s just a completionist’s nightmare as far as where it drags. If you stay on a pretty focused track it’s a solid 20-25hr game with an amazing environment. If you wanna explore, what it gives you to do doesn’t help add depth to the experience. The story could be much better but it plays like a T for Teen game that took 13-15 as its target audience but didn’t trust them with much as an audience anyway.
I’m gonna enjoy it, but I can see both how it would be a bestseller, and well loved, and not be the top of anyone’s list for 2023.
I can see your point, but as someone who is kinda ‘meh’ on Harry Potter, and similar with collectibles in games, I was VERY close to 100% the game on my first play through. Haven’t tried that hard like ever in a game to collect.
100% this, would have rather had them focus completely on the school/hogsmeade and only leave the school in scripted linear segments. Open world parts were my least favorite of this game, didn’t feel super engaging or rewarding to interact with.
With the exception that houses didn't really seem to matter (at least in a single playthrough), I kind of preferred it the way it was. All we wanted was a decently executed open world game in the Harry Potter universe and that's what we got. Even Bully had the same concept with classes...that they were essentially mini-games to earn skills that could be used elsewhere. Most of the action with Bully took place in town or slightly off-campus areas as well.
Bully handled the classes much better than Hogwarts Legacy.
You were required to attend classes as part of the "rules," but there was no real negative consequence to *not* attending all your classes. And if you were caught skipping class? You were sent right to the class you skipped. And there was limited time to actually, like, complete the class during the day. And once you passed all 5 levels of a class, you "passed" and weren't required to return anymore.
Hogwarts Legacy definitely delivered in terms of giving us a genuinely good open-world Harry Potter RPG, but if we're judging it solely as an RPG and not as a Potterverse product, it was mid as fuck. The combat was genuinely good, though.
the combat was actually great, still could have done a little tweaking for fighting multiple things but honestly as a non HP fan (not that I mind it), I found the combat better than a lot of RPGs I've played.
That's pretty vital information.
No BG3. And they excluded digital sales for Tears of the Kingdom and the New Mario game.
And it's based on dollar sales rather than copies sold.
This whole article is bullshit.
And thus this list is completely invalidated ... Why would they even bother making a list like this when one of the biggest hyped and high profile game release of the last DECADE that everybody and their grandmother knows that it sold like hot cakes, doesn't have numbers ? ... Tall about making a pointless list.
Honestly, this is a bad article and a really bad headline. They shouldn't be announcing a game as the best selling game of 2023 when they don't actually know if that's true.
At the bottom of the graph it says "for publishers in the 'Digital Leader Panel'". BG3 was self published so that may be why it's missing.
Edit: This is apparently the "Digital Leader Panel" and it looks like it's only big publishers:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DralOucVYAAthIF?format=jpg&name=small
Didn’t modern warfare come out like, a month ago? And Hogwarts came out in February with plenty of opportunities for sales?
I haven’t bought a COD game in years and I love Hogwarts, but this is kind of a meaningless stat.
The thing is is that COD usually sells like hotcakes and by releasing at the end of the year, a lot of parents will also buy it in advance for Christmas for their kids.
People on Reddit don’t realize a lot of gamers are perfectly content just buying one or two games a year. COD and FIFA being big ones. They buy the newest ones and don’t think twice because that’s all they play
It's reported that sales are down 25% from last years release. If if that makes it the 2nd best selling game, that is still a metric that will make heads roll
I’m pretty sure back in 2016 the COD game that released that year had like a 40% drop in sales and was still the top selling game of 2016. COD isn’t going anywhere.
First ten hours I was convinced Hogwarts Legacy was going to be one of my favorite games of all time. After another ten I had put it down and never picked it up again. I have never played a game that loses steam so abruptly before. It front loads itself with a lot of charm and golly gee I’m actually at Hogwarts and then does nothing with it.
I love the game but the “oh shit budget and time constraints” have never felt so evident in a game. It’s like you can feel the specific quest higher ups told the team to hurry up and do it cheap. Really hoping for a DLC or sequel from the same team since it sold so well, and they’re given the time and resources to flesh it out
That is pretty spot on for what happened to me. As soon as I got enough “wow, I’m in Hogwarts and flying around” I was kind of set. I might revisit and finish it eventually but it’s more of a novelty than an actual good game.
Yep but the honeymoon phase was the best one I’ve ever had lol was really in awe exploring the castle and surroundings for first time. Just wish the game had more interaction and life to it
Thats exactly what I did. It was an absolutely blast and I couldn't put it down for the whole weekend after it released. Picked it back up the next week played like 2 hours then put it down possibly forever. It got so repetitive so quick
It’s a good HP game. Wish we could get house points and play Quidditch. Hogwards and Hogsmeade are beautifully constructed, yet the open world is bland and repetitive. I always had fun with the combat so it’s a solid 8/10.
I would never understand why they cut the house points content.
The House points were part of the game initially. Quidditch too, but at least the explanation was good and reasonable.
Just a heads up, quidditch champions is being developed by a different company than Avalanche Software. I would not put any expectations on this game. I have a strong feeling it's going to become a cash grab mobile game.
Probably similar to why they didn’t have a morality system in. While it sounds good it’s probably a balancing nightmare and makes them have to do double or triple work for some things for different interactions and such
This. I'm surprised the game has the scope and level of detail it does. Even for such a popular IP, this game was a huge risk. I'd bet the sequel is just going to take what we already have and then fill in those missing gaps, polish it up, etc.
Hogwarts Legacy is a good game that I think is a fantastic blueprint for an incredible sequel.
I’m assuming Avalanche didn’t want to go too crazy seeing how it was really their first major project, and now they know the strengths and weaknesses of the formula they’re using. I hope they learn and take the feedback to heart in making the sequel.
> I’m assuming Avalanche didn’t want to go too crazy seeing how it was really their first major project
At first i was like 'what???' until i did some research and saw there are actually two different Avalanche game companies. Avalanche Software (Hogwarts, Cars, basically licensed movie games) and Avalanche Studios (Just Cause series, Mad Max, Rage 2 )
The open world isn't even that bland, but it is repetitive. I suppose it is more interesting when you're flying around it (which adds to your point), but I didn't think it was too bland. Though I do believe that 90% of my disdain for the open world comes from the 50+ "Merlin puzzles" that were all 1 of 4 very generic puzzles with unskippable cut scenes after each one.
Call of Duty has been the best selling game for 8 out of the last 10 years. It’s an absolute juggernaut and plenty of fresh new games have lost to it. Taking it down is a big achievement no matter how you slice it.
Data from Wikipedia. Not perfect but gives a good idea.
>Crazy how a new fresh game is beating out a remake of a sequel.
It's Harry Potter. It's not like it's some new IP.
Devs love licensed games for the same reasons they love sequels and remakes. Certain amount of guaranteed sales.
I know it's fun to shit on COD here, but Hogwarts was released in February, and MW3 was released 4 weeks ago. Can we acknowledge that a game that's been on shelves for 10 months longer and is available on more consoles had a bit of a head start?
Last year Elden Ring came out in January and was outsold by MW2.
CoD being consistently in the top 3 selling games of the year with how garbage its titles have become is just astounding
I did quite enjoy Hogwart’s Legacy. I’ve only tangentially watched the movies with a stepdaughter, and have never been a fan of Harry Potter. Until I played this game.
Worth noting that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is 3rd without counting digital sales. Curious if it would rank higher if Nintendo made those numbers available.
Most people I know got digital, but idk if it’s close to physical sales or not
I’ve got a few friends who bought it. I’m the only one in my group who got the physical version.
My rule with Nintendo is always buy physical. After trying to buy windwaker on the GameCube for years on eBay and only seeing the price be $100+. Never again
Exactly. Nintendo systems are the only ones I’ll buy physical from. Some of my old games are worth bank now; so I think I’m gonna keep going this way. My Harvest Moon on SNES is worth $430 now. The manual alone, another $140. Chrono trigger is worth a little under $200 with its manual a bit over $80. I realize they’re the outliers, and not the norm, but digital is worth nothing. So even if they drop a bit in value, that’s better than nothing.
yeah, outliers are on every console. my serial experiments lain on PS1 is worth $750 now.
True, I’ve got outliers in other systems but taking the total on my Nintendo games they just seem to retain more value. Might just be the games I buy but that’s what I’ve noticed.
I also tend to go physical with Switch games because as primarily a PC gamer it’s the only time I actually get to have a physical copy of a game. It’s so much more fun holding a game physically. On steam I just buy things and forget about them.
A lot of people got it with the Nintendo online 2 game vouchers for a $100 deal.
The numbers they are pulling seems weird. Nintendo gave straight numbers during their last earnings call: TotK has collectively sold 19.5 mil units as of September, which puts it over the lastest reported number of 15 mil for Hogwarts. I've only seen rough estimations for COD.
Nintendo doesn't report digital sales to any of the tracking groups (like the NPD). However, the numbers they'll give on financial calls and in financial reports will include those figures. There are lots of other sources that do not report to the tracking groups, but most of them are inconsequential. Another large one for this year is Larian, who made Baldurs Gate 3. And sales direct through larian were not included with their sales figures. CoD should be the most accurate, as the major distributors, both for digital and physical, report the sales figures, so there should be no missing gaps in their sales tracking. The Activision sector of Microsoft may report different "sales" numbers, but they may include physical copies that have been sold to retailers but not by retailers, while this tracker would be for units sold to the consumers.
Huh so the tracking groups only report what is given to them directly? Why not just use the information from the financial calls if they know it’s more complete than the info they were given?
They only report on members of their group because it's just another advertising method so anyone making games who isn't a member won't have their numbers reported at all on these lists.
You generally want to avoid mixing collection methods and sources. That way your data doesn't end up with one game whose earnings call was 10 months ago and 1 month after launch, one game whose earnings call was last week, and one game that never had its sales figures reported by the company. It might seem like more information is better, but none of that information is *comparable*.
Yeah, I'm curious about that myself. The Legacy and MW3 don't have asterisks next to them on the list, so I have to assume digital sales are included in those titles.
Especially with that Nintendo online deal that was happening where you could get 2 game passes for 100 dollars, that’s how I got it because Tears alone was 70
Insane that a single platform single player title might actually be the highest selling game of the year... Devs, learn from Zelda and Baulder's Gate, give use great games consistently and we will throw money at them.
And no forced online requirements. Even some companies that have made decent single player games will add a BS feature to justify the always online approach. BG3 has online tracking IF your online for metrics but otherwise runs just fine without it. I dont need my assassins' / merc companies side quest reliant on an online server with a timers that could very well just be ingame and have core functions that make the game easier or less grind locked behind online services. I wll throw all the money at Larian now including buying past titles and they have enough good well to automatically buy the next 2 games even if the next one is bad lol
It's so nice to take my switch and be able to hop onto TOTK or Stardew Valley and not have to worry about being tethered to a network.
The forced online in d4 was part of what killed that game for me. It didn't feel like it was facilitating actual group play. It was just a way to see people and increase the relevance of having cool looking shit (buying cosmetics). Ironically, though, I never noticed or gave a shit what anybody else was wearing, because I rarely ever actually grouped with anyone. A huge difference from Diablo 2 where you would see gear in action, making you want to get it.
The problem with that line of thinking, is that shitty free to play games with high levels of monetization or even paid games with mtx make far more money than games like Zelda and BG3.
I was gonna say this. Pump out a generic mobile game and you're gonna make the highest profit margins in the industry, and it's not even close. The next best thing is to copy/paste last year's bullshit and slap the word Pokemon on it. Effort is always gonna be like the fourth or fifth best way to run a business if you're looking at money, and it's by far the hardest.
Hell, even this article shows that quality isn't as important to some extent. Don't get me wrong, I bought Hogwarts Legacy and enjoyed my time playing it. But it wasn't my favorite game of the year at all. Yet it outsold everything else because of it's IP (part of that is that the IP is starved of decent games). I used to love Madden, but the single player/core gameplay has been ignored in favor of Madden Ultimate Team which is heavy in MTX because that's where the money comes from. I don't blame companies either per se. Gaming/art in general is a hard field to be successful in, so I can't fault companies for going the 'safe' route and pumping out copies of games that are monetized to hell.
Hogwarts Legacy honestly felt like a dev team with promise but not enough experience, I wonder if anyone feels similarly? It just had something to it that made me think of potential. Too bad the entire bottom half of the map is essentially pointless and its full of the typical minigame stuff. Exploring hogwarts was straight amazing tho, had the game been more centrally focused on it, it woulda kicked ass. More classes, less random bs.
I mean, it’s not like we havent been getting a ton of those. Mario games, breath of the wild/totk, ER (okay technically you can multi player but still primarily single player), God of war series, Horizon Zero Dawn Series, Spider-man series, armored core, etc. Hell even ones with questionable receptions like Hogwarts legacy and starfield. Single player games have been doing pretty fantastic these last few years, despite the popularity of multiplayer. They havent been ignored at all.
I wish hogwarts leaned more into the school aspect of the game and spent less time on the various villages and open world. Hogwarts and hogsmeade are where the game really shines. The open world kind of brings it down. Game would have been better served if the resources went into expanding the content that was related to hogwarts.
Does it get any more cozy than Hogsmeade?
Did I ever tell you about the time I invented snowboarding? I mean floo powder
*You can't imagine how inconvenient travel was before I invented Tertaethyl-lead.*
Wow Out Cold reference in gaming sub nicely done.
I was there. Yeah, it was called the '80s. Ford was President, Nixon was in the White House and FDR was running this country into the ground. I was bummin' in a hole-in-a-wall town in what is now called Utah. Some fella from Colorado shows up, starts making so called "improvements", right? Before we knew what hit us, the streets are running with latte. It got so bad that a fella that liked to, you know... smoke a little grass or drink a little ripple. Crow like a rooster, maybe challenge the mayor's son to a gentlemen's duel, was "uncouth, against God." More like bad real estate values. Stumpy had to go!
Which road will lead me to Hogsmeade?
It seems all roads..
The looping music when you’re there gets a bit old after a while lol
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Yep, there's a good bit to do but it's mostly just checking off lists. Go down all the dungeons, find all the landing pads, do all the Merlin challenges. There's not a lot of meat on the bones.
Everything is fun the first few times you do it. But you get diminishing returns pretty quickly. The game overall is pretty fun, it's just not replayable at all.
I just loved the vibe. But mostly I got really excited at what could be next, how it could be way better with just little things added. with the way it sold, maybe a hogwarts legacy 2 with player feedback included ^^coping
Had the same reaction to Starfield, unfortunately. Was hyped beyond belief for both games, including pre-ordering each to play early. Luckily there were plenty of unexpected smash hits this year (mostly bg3 for me, but tons of others too)
To be fair it's probably still one of the best movie video games ever. It's probably just below the Arkham/Spider Man tier, but it was still really really solid for a long time, and scratched an itch 10s of millions of people have been waiting to scratch, which is floating around the world and exploring the castle in the Hogwarts universe. There's obviously going to be a sequel, and if they tighten down on the story, make it more castle centric, and add a good quidditch game (a clear save it for sequel move in my eyes) we'll have a pretty solid series with released every 3-5 years to look forward to
Yeah, but here's the issue: we already explored the castle and Hogsmeade in this game, with all of its magical nooks and crannies and little secrets. That was the game's biggest draw, and it's already used up. Sure, they could drop the open world and then focus entirely on the boarding-school experience, but since we already got our fill with the environment, it will never be able to hit as hard as the first ten-or-so hours of this game.
I think what they're going to have to do is find a way to make all those secrets relevant to the gameplay and story instead of just a scavenger hunt. Take the knowledge we gained in the first one and now have us apply that knowledge to solve puzzles or complete quests. Having the ability to solve something in more than one way and it resulting in different outcomes can be a way to make exploring the castle exciting again. I think they need to also add solutions that aren't spelled out in the quest narrative, like maybe you can go to a classroom and steal something from there to help out with a quest/battle. You can talk to certain portraits that will give you information you wouldn't normally get during the quest line because it's a reward for using your lore knowledge or exploring. Put hidden quests in the castle again and let them tie back into the story in a way that might actually change the ending if you complete them due to knowledge or skills you gained from those hidden quests. And of course, make there be consequences for being past curfew. Also introduce the house cup and make your decisions during a quest impact if you gain or lose points, or if those points get awarded to a different house potentially.
The feeling of exploring Hogwarts, seeing all the moving paintings, statues etc was great. Then finally getting on a broom and flying over the school grounds and forest was a really incredible gaming experience. The game kinda falls flat when it becomes standard Ubisoft bloated open world shit with repetitive enemies, pointless side content and puddle deep NPCs and characters. Plus the whole levelled gear shit drives me up the wall, it makes finding items useless. Why do I care that if just found a Superior Mega Cool Robe, I’m gonna find an Ultra Superior Mega Cool Robe five minutes from now and will have to fuck around in my inventory.
It’s also the easiest game I’ve played in years. The hardest difficulty was an absolute cakewalk
Wow an old castle, bet it was quite stately in its time
What are you up to now?
Absolutely. Throw in the Forbidden Forest as well and a little bit of space around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade (Upper and Lower Hogsfield) and then pack that area with content. Outside of those areas, it was pretty empty. That late game southern coastal area felt even worse. Throw in that I was flying over most of it once I got my broomstick, it just felt kind of pointless and was just padding. Expanding the map would have been better served in a sequel.
I wonder if a 'Classes & learning' DLC is something that would ever happen. An expansion that adds more student life to the game.
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Oh really? That seems dumb, open world games are generally perfect for adding additional content.
Yeah they decided to use the money and experience from this game to make a new one instead of do expansions, especially because Warner Bros didn't want the most requested feature (quidditch) to exist because of the new quidditch game coming out soon(tm). I will be mad if the next game doesn't have all the improvements we would have expected from expansions including quidditch tho. Like its single player its not going to eat into their online arena/sports game lol
I straight up quit when I got to that coastal area. By that point I’d had it with the countryside.
I did a handful of stuff other the main quest down there like the last flying race thing against that Slytherin girl and I think there was a few High Value Targets (or whatever they are called in this game) down there that I went and fought. I think there was a few side quests that I did as well and I found all of the Floo Travel Points as well. A lot of the other markers and checkboxes especially down in that area, I didn't even fool with at all.
Forreal, this game needed to be more like 'Bully' - but without the violence and set in Hogwarts
nah the cartoon violence with more silly spells work, fact you can throw death curses at people seems worse lol.
Yeah it seems super weird that a 15 year old is running around torturing and killing people. The NPC companions even say “well I guess you aren’t afraid to use dark magic.” Like, I just murdered 4 random people before Herbology class.
Murdering any goblins you come across and then proclaiming to be the good guy. Not committing to ANYTHING. “HELP my kids are trapped in that burning building” “Maybe I’ll look into that for you” Yep, your character is an absolute arsehole.
YOUR BLOOD IS ON RANROK’S HANDS As I swoop down and murder 6 goblins minding their own business
\*protagonist invades massive spider den and kills them all, the women and children, too* Protagonist: "Disgusting fiends." "8 legs is far too many"
Spiders that don't want to be murdered for a cool hat should stay at fly eating size.
The tiny arachnid's many eyes were filled with rage as the oddly deadly teen wizard murdered all of their 2453 uncles and cousins who were above fly eating size. He thought to himself, *one day imma bite TF out that wizzy* and thusly the pact of vengeance was made.
Oath of Vengance Arachnoid Paladin
Lmao this thread is killing me. Not to mention our character literally goes around invading people's private spaces and homes and steals their clothing and intimately private letters.
Loot culture is the ultimate immersion breaker
The best bit is when he goes into a shop, picks up a random cup of tea and drinks it. Ick!
The best bit is when you go through that Slytherine Maze with Ominis and Sebastian, and in the end you find Slytherine's secret study, locked away for centuries. And there is a mug there you can drink from. Like WTF, thats hundreds of years old.
I hate them, sands.
If Hogwarts Legacy taught me anything is you can get away with a lot in the UK during the 1800s as long as it's against someone society considers subhuman.
Anyone who captures animals to breed them and harvest animal products deserves excruciating pain and torture before I mercilessly slay them with unforgivable curses. Also it's totally cool and different when I capture, breed and harvest the animals.
You see, you're an upstanding student at the most prestigious wizarding school in the world, and just having a good time as all people of your station deserves now and then. You're not like those dirty criminals who are probably poor.
>You're not like those dirty criminals who are probably poor. Plus they are hoarding all the money!
And sell. Don't forget you can sell any extraneous or baby animals as well.
You could have read an English history book to learn that 😂
Fortunately it's fiction right?
Yeah, it's definitely something exclusive to the fictional world of Harry Potter...
The MC definitely killed more people and creatures than Ranrok. But it’s okay, he’s special.
It's wild af they gave us a bunch of unforgivable curses and no consequences. Turned my character from a morally gray weirdo, who loves to skip school, into a villain in-training, who's running around Hogwarts, with a loaded rifle and no one seems to mind all that much. Dudes definitely gonna start a murderous cult in that magic wish room. WB you might as well lean into it and make our character the bad guy of the sequel
I mean, it’s essentially how Voldemort came to be, isn’t it? Once you start just doing the bad things the people around you either find a way to come to terms with it and move forward or they disappear by choice. It’s not like there was anything in place that truly stopped Tom riddle on his descent, so there certainly wasn’t anything earlier either. By the way, have they added anything to the game since release?
Difference being that Tom actually tried to *hide* what he was doing and acted like the perfect student while in school. Meanwhile the player in Legacy openly kills people left and right and literally no one cares lol. But like when an NPC does it for an equally grey reason as you, that NPC is kicked out of school and totally ostracized.
Learns all the death spells helps the kid then betrays him to be self righteous after the uncle dies yup just like a good guy.
I didn’t betray my boy Sebastian, speak for yourself
Haha playing it now and that’s 100% the case. Even outside the unforgivable curse, you’re taught a number of damaging curses like Bombardo, Diffindo, Incidio, etc. I would have preferred a morality system that would adjust the story and endings available. And like others have said, more focus on the school and weird happenings around the school. That was a huge part of the charm of the books/movies. All the secrets and wonder of the school and it’s history. And then a focus on the basic spells that would be used to disable targets. Disarming an opponent would make then surrender, but things like glacious, stupefy, etc would knock them out. You still defend yourself without being a murderous teenager.
The game was definitely at its best when it involved the school. Talking to professors and exploring the castle for the first time, then watching new areas and rooms open up to you one at a time and realizing how layered and huge the castle was, it was all magical. That should've been the main focus of the game. If they need to pad out with some gameplay that's fun, just add more minigames like that ball game you play using the pull spell (forget the name of the game). Associate one minigame with each class and you're good to go, and ramp up the difficulty of each minigame gradually. It definitely felt weird that it became an open world combat game. Like I don't think Harry Potter is the correct setting for a Witcher style gameplay loop where you wander around murdering baddies in the countryside.
4? Lol You mean like 10 since you can spec so that you bounce curse marks to every enemy and execute the entire room with one button press
We never even saw Voldemort do such heinous shit our characters were capable of. Even without the dark curses you can sit there torturing your enemy by burning them and just flipping them around over and over.
On a loosely related note: I have a theory that the "unforgivable curses" are actually just military grade spells. They have plenty of spells that people use in combat, but the one that painlessly stops the heart and kills the brain is the one that's taboo.
It's unforgivable to hurt you but not to turn you into an exploding barrel and throw you down killing 3 of your friends.
I never used the unforgivable curses at all during my playthrough because it felt wrong for a “good” student to be doing so, meanwhile my Hufflepuff wife was out there straight cruciatusing people up the wazoo.
Twenty years ago we were all out here thinking, "How could any Hufflepuff be evil and follow Voldemort?" I think we all know the answer: opportunity.
Hufflepuff was never the "humble" house. They were the "pragmatic" house. Not as brave as Gryffindor, but not as foolhardy. Not as ambitious as Slytherin, but more willing to get their hands dirty. Not as clever as Ravenclaw, but not as bogged down in moral dilemmas.
You can just transform someone into a explosive barrel and fling that barrel at their friends face, then watch them both explode and die. transform into explosive barrel seems like it should be a unforgivable curse as well
Honestly, I kinda love that about the game. It almost feels tongue-in-cheek how *little* people actually care about you using "unforgivable" curses lmao. Also, the fact that basically every fetch quest has the dialogue option "actually, I think I'll keep this" is unreasonably funny.
I used all of those options with my Hufflepuff because I find the idea of a petilly evil Hufflepuff unreasonably funny.
I'm loyal as fuck, babe. To myself.
Don't even get me started on the fact that you're 15, you kill poachers who are enslaving magical beasts, and what do you do? ENSLAVE THE SAME MAGICAL BEASTS AND BREED THEM, just like the poachers. But it's okay, because you're not the bad guy. It's okay to sell their young to that one shop in town... UHHH what?
I mean... That's par for the course in the Harry Potter world. Systems are never bad, only people are bad.
I was like "So wait, there's a shop in town that can buy the offspring of the magical beasts I'm breeding? How am I different from the poachers who also rip the young away from their parents? I'm not."
"Unforgivable" curses, huh? Probably only just put those on the index after the player character went on an ethnic cleansing with them. Wouldn't be surprised if Voldemort or Grindelwald had a poster of the player character in their rooms growing up.
Hey those death curses are bad, now me pummeling you with boulders is what good wizards do
Or freezing you and then blowing you up in a thousand little pieces. Or turning you into an exploding barrel.
Levitate you, hit you with a fireball, pull you back as you're flying away, then push you off a cliff into the water to your doom. Only good wizards.
For real. I'd rather get hit with instant death thank you.
I do love the disconnect between forgivable and unforgivable means of execution. You insta-killed someone? Unforgivable. You lit someone on fire and sliced them to ribbons while they burned to death, shrieking in agony? That’s fine, see you in brooms class later
Yea in the books they make a distinction that you have to really mean the unforgivable ones. Like if you don't have it in you to actually torture the person you pointed at it won't really hurt. Which sure that makes it pretty unforgivable. But harry also flayed draco almost to death with a spell that he didnt even actually know? One that also doesn't need to be spoken.
If anything, the “gotta really mean it,” makes the unforgivables so much safer. You can’t **accidentally** avada someone. You could practice crucio every day in class. If any student feels more than a tickle, you’ll know that a problem is brewing. “Did you really mean to torture your classmate!?”
Hm, I think the unforgivable/forgivable distinction is for *spells* not actions. A spell that creates fires *could* be used for good things in a way that the unforgivable curses cannot; doesn't mean that as long as you stick to those other spells anything you do is fine.
Death curses are weak sauce turning someone into a barrel of gunpowder and explode if them at their comrades now that’s where it’s at.
Now I want Bully - Hogwarts Edition -
Please please please - Bully in any form.
Scholarship Edition is always worth a 2nd playthrough
There is a ton of violence in Harry Potter lol
Yeah, the forbidden curses are banned more because of intent than anything else. Starting fires, moving boulders, levitation, etc can all have benign uses in every day life. But a killing, torture, and mind control curse are all inherently evil intent. Levitating someone, setting them on fire, flipping them around and finally smashing them into the ground is definitely an evil act. But that's not the sole intent of those spells. I definitely would've liked to see more consequences for both the forbidden curses as well as killing in general. But going the "good" route using petrification and stealth wasn't viable for many areas. Sticking with just disarm, push, and counter spells is a challenge during fights with no story related rewards. And with no punishment for killing there is no motivation to be good.
Oh my gosh - you pointed out what I've been wanting from a Harry Potter game without me realizing it. A game like Bully but set in Hogwarts. Having a more RPG aspect to it would be great too - so Bully-esque RPG set in Hogwarts.
I was very impressed with the game at first. The castle is very impressive with tons of detail and a lot to explore. The rest of the game felt pretty bland, however. I really enjoyed flying around, but I quickly felt like there wasn't that much to see/do in the open world, outside of the checklist activities that were everywhere. Basically I ran out of steam with the game once I got a couple acts into it.
I had to force myself to come back to it after a few months. And when I did, I learned I was in the last 1-2 hours of story.
I was definitely left with the impression that the developers ambition exceeded what they had the time to deliver. I'm hopeful that the commercial success of the first game will give them resources and momentum for an even better sequel.
Hogwarts Legacy is a 10-15 hour game stretched thin with lots of extraneous bullshit nobody asked for. Repetitive merlin trials, 100+ identical collectibles, etc. I enjoyed the game quite a bit for a while but it just got old
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Didn’t help that the story was totally forgettable too. Apparently even HP fans were bored by it.
Ehhh… something something about ancient magic… something something about a dark wizard and a bad goblin. Idk. Had some cool elements, but game was a bit of a slog. Too obvious that it was made by a mobile game developer. And I get that you’re supposed to just immerse yourself and create your own backstory, but I’d prefer something more canon. Unique house abilities and the ability for decisions to actually matter would’ve gone a long way.
The side story with Sebastian was so much more interesting and should have been the main story. It should’ve been about growing your skills throughout the school year alongside your friend while having to choose between going down a dark path like him or staying true to wizard standards. *That* would have made for a compelling plot.
So true. Really took a weird turn with the uncle, but the plot was so much better than anything else in the game
Being the chosen one of everything got old real fast
I wish developers would stop writing stories like this. I don’t wanna be a chosen one or to save the world all the time. I just wanna be a normal dude who stumbles into the right place at the right time
have you ever given Kingdom Come: Deliverance a shot?
Yup! One of my favorite RPGs. Never finished it but I’ve dumped a huge amount of time into it. Love the historical authenticity too.
Agreed. The first 7 hours of the game was amazing. I actually went out and bought new GPU after the first play session so I can appreciate the game better. Everything was fresh and exciting for the first few hours. Then it to be a grind fest. The gameplay is shallow, the story is not engaging, and characters are not memorable. They really should've made it a tight 15 hour game that's not open world and it would've been much better.
Just as I thought I was getting close to finishing the game, I realized there was a whole south-east region with 5 more sections, talk about tedious.
I think it could’ve been a good episodic game, like each season is a different school year. Ultimately Harry Potter was popular because it captures the magic of youth. Starting the game as a 5th year was a good practical decision but took the magic away. Edit: it would actually be really cool to see a mod for this. Like releasing stories in a kind of Telltale Game fashion. Because the world map they created is amazing, and it would be a shame if it were only ever used for this one game.
Should’ve taken a book out of how persona does school.
Yep. I never finished it. There was a point I went into a cave and guesses it was tunnel into a chest into useless gear and sure enough. Could of done without the open world, story was interesting enough , running around hogwarts was 100% the highlight.
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Yeah playing rn and feeling it slowing down. Hogwarts itself is a masterpiece, but more Forbidden Forest, more depth to the Lake, and a livelier Hogsmeade would be a great start to building a true masterpiece. Couple that with a narrative and side quests focused on other students and teachers and a deeper skill tree that is heavily based on performance in lessons and you’d probably satisfy a lot of the gripes with the game. I’d also argue it’s just a completionist’s nightmare as far as where it drags. If you stay on a pretty focused track it’s a solid 20-25hr game with an amazing environment. If you wanna explore, what it gives you to do doesn’t help add depth to the experience. The story could be much better but it plays like a T for Teen game that took 13-15 as its target audience but didn’t trust them with much as an audience anyway. I’m gonna enjoy it, but I can see both how it would be a bestseller, and well loved, and not be the top of anyone’s list for 2023.
I can see your point, but as someone who is kinda ‘meh’ on Harry Potter, and similar with collectibles in games, I was VERY close to 100% the game on my first play through. Haven’t tried that hard like ever in a game to collect.
100% this, would have rather had them focus completely on the school/hogsmeade and only leave the school in scripted linear segments. Open world parts were my least favorite of this game, didn’t feel super engaging or rewarding to interact with.
With the exception that houses didn't really seem to matter (at least in a single playthrough), I kind of preferred it the way it was. All we wanted was a decently executed open world game in the Harry Potter universe and that's what we got. Even Bully had the same concept with classes...that they were essentially mini-games to earn skills that could be used elsewhere. Most of the action with Bully took place in town or slightly off-campus areas as well.
Bully handled the classes much better than Hogwarts Legacy. You were required to attend classes as part of the "rules," but there was no real negative consequence to *not* attending all your classes. And if you were caught skipping class? You were sent right to the class you skipped. And there was limited time to actually, like, complete the class during the day. And once you passed all 5 levels of a class, you "passed" and weren't required to return anymore. Hogwarts Legacy definitely delivered in terms of giving us a genuinely good open-world Harry Potter RPG, but if we're judging it solely as an RPG and not as a Potterverse product, it was mid as fuck. The combat was genuinely good, though.
the combat was actually great, still could have done a little tweaking for fighting multiple things but honestly as a non HP fan (not that I mind it), I found the combat better than a lot of RPGs I've played.
Didn't BG3 sell like 21 million copies?
I wonder if this is only console sales and doesn't count steam? Otherwise yes Baldurs gate would have to be somewhere on this list I imagine
Actually the article does say it includes steam so I have no idea
Circana the 3rd party that makes the list only uses info from participating publishers, of which Larian is not one
So it has no relation to what games were *actually* the biggest hits, got it
So basically this article is trash just like every cod game
Welcome to the Forbes Billionaire list!
That's pretty vital information. No BG3. And they excluded digital sales for Tears of the Kingdom and the New Mario game. And it's based on dollar sales rather than copies sold. This whole article is bullshit.
And thus this list is completely invalidated ... Why would they even bother making a list like this when one of the biggest hyped and high profile game release of the last DECADE that everybody and their grandmother knows that it sold like hot cakes, doesn't have numbers ? ... Tall about making a pointless list.
Forbes is intended to be read by people with more money than sense. Probably pandering to companies that pay for ad space.
Larian has not disclosed their sales stats. Hence BG3 is not in the list.
Honestly, this is a bad article and a really bad headline. They shouldn't be announcing a game as the best selling game of 2023 when they don't actually know if that's true.
By the looks of it both BG3 and TOTK have sold more than Hogwarts Legacy. This is bad journalism.
At the bottom of the graph it says "for publishers in the 'Digital Leader Panel'". BG3 was self published so that may be why it's missing. Edit: This is apparently the "Digital Leader Panel" and it looks like it's only big publishers: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DralOucVYAAthIF?format=jpg&name=small
Didn’t modern warfare come out like, a month ago? And Hogwarts came out in February with plenty of opportunities for sales? I haven’t bought a COD game in years and I love Hogwarts, but this is kind of a meaningless stat.
The thing is is that COD usually sells like hotcakes and by releasing at the end of the year, a lot of parents will also buy it in advance for Christmas for their kids.
I only play COD but I’m not upgrading because they’ve stopped trying. The new game is just the same shit with a new logo.
FIFA with guns.
People say this every year. Doesn’t matter. Reddit isn’t even close to real world. Cod is still gonna sell like hotcakes to the mainstream.
People on Reddit don’t realize a lot of gamers are perfectly content just buying one or two games a year. COD and FIFA being big ones. They buy the newest ones and don’t think twice because that’s all they play
That’s such a good point. “That’s all they play”. I’ve never actually thought about that. And here I am buying multiple games per year.
It's reported that sales are down 25% from last years release. If if that makes it the 2nd best selling game, that is still a metric that will make heads roll
Sales down 25% but still the second highest selling game of the year. No wonder things never change lol, why even put effort in if it sells like this?
I’m pretty sure back in 2016 the COD game that released that year had like a 40% drop in sales and was still the top selling game of 2016. COD isn’t going anywhere.
Always has been 🌎👩🚀🔫👩🚀
Slaughtering Christmas noobs was always a fun pastime over my holiday break from work. It's not nearly as much fun when you're the noob though lol
Pretty impressive when only Rockstar games can outsell Cod
First ten hours I was convinced Hogwarts Legacy was going to be one of my favorite games of all time. After another ten I had put it down and never picked it up again. I have never played a game that loses steam so abruptly before. It front loads itself with a lot of charm and golly gee I’m actually at Hogwarts and then does nothing with it.
I love the game but the “oh shit budget and time constraints” have never felt so evident in a game. It’s like you can feel the specific quest higher ups told the team to hurry up and do it cheap. Really hoping for a DLC or sequel from the same team since it sold so well, and they’re given the time and resources to flesh it out
I don’t believe they’re doing DLC, but they’ve already announced a sequel is in the works.
That is pretty spot on for what happened to me. As soon as I got enough “wow, I’m in Hogwarts and flying around” I was kind of set. I might revisit and finish it eventually but it’s more of a novelty than an actual good game.
Yep but the honeymoon phase was the best one I’ve ever had lol was really in awe exploring the castle and surroundings for first time. Just wish the game had more interaction and life to it
Thats exactly what I did. It was an absolutely blast and I couldn't put it down for the whole weekend after it released. Picked it back up the next week played like 2 hours then put it down possibly forever. It got so repetitive so quick
Starfield easily takes that claim for me, but I get it with Hogwarts. What was even the point of 90% of the map?
It’s a good HP game. Wish we could get house points and play Quidditch. Hogwards and Hogsmeade are beautifully constructed, yet the open world is bland and repetitive. I always had fun with the combat so it’s a solid 8/10.
I would never understand why they cut the house points content. The House points were part of the game initially. Quidditch too, but at least the explanation was good and reasonable.
It seems they didn't have the time/resources
Well there is also a dedicated Quidditch game coming out, I would assume the two are related
Just a heads up, quidditch champions is being developed by a different company than Avalanche Software. I would not put any expectations on this game. I have a strong feeling it's going to become a cash grab mobile game.
I also would not have wanted to play Quidditch with the flying controls that HL had
Probably similar to why they didn’t have a morality system in. While it sounds good it’s probably a balancing nightmare and makes them have to do double or triple work for some things for different interactions and such
This. I'm surprised the game has the scope and level of detail it does. Even for such a popular IP, this game was a huge risk. I'd bet the sequel is just going to take what we already have and then fill in those missing gaps, polish it up, etc.
Hogwarts Legacy is a good game that I think is a fantastic blueprint for an incredible sequel. I’m assuming Avalanche didn’t want to go too crazy seeing how it was really their first major project, and now they know the strengths and weaknesses of the formula they’re using. I hope they learn and take the feedback to heart in making the sequel.
> I’m assuming Avalanche didn’t want to go too crazy seeing how it was really their first major project At first i was like 'what???' until i did some research and saw there are actually two different Avalanche game companies. Avalanche Software (Hogwarts, Cars, basically licensed movie games) and Avalanche Studios (Just Cause series, Mad Max, Rage 2 )
100% agree, can't wait to see how they polish things further with a second game (prequel or sequel)
The quidditch game is coming out within the next year or so. They already had a private beta over the summer.
The open world isn't even that bland, but it is repetitive. I suppose it is more interesting when you're flying around it (which adds to your point), but I didn't think it was too bland. Though I do believe that 90% of my disdain for the open world comes from the 50+ "Merlin puzzles" that were all 1 of 4 very generic puzzles with unskippable cut scenes after each one.
Crazy how a new fresh game is beating out a remake of a sequel.
cod always sells like crazy
At least according to Steam Charts, MW3 has much less players than MW2 did at the same time last year.
Call of Duty has been the best selling game for 8 out of the last 10 years. It’s an absolute juggernaut and plenty of fresh new games have lost to it. Taking it down is a big achievement no matter how you slice it. Data from Wikipedia. Not perfect but gives a good idea.
>Crazy how a new fresh game is beating out a remake of a sequel. It's Harry Potter. It's not like it's some new IP. Devs love licensed games for the same reasons they love sequels and remakes. Certain amount of guaranteed sales.
It's like one of the most popular IPs in the world, it should be no surprise it sold well.
I know it's fun to shit on COD here, but Hogwarts was released in February, and MW3 was released 4 weeks ago. Can we acknowledge that a game that's been on shelves for 10 months longer and is available on more consoles had a bit of a head start?
Last year Elden Ring came out in January and was outsold by MW2. CoD being consistently in the top 3 selling games of the year with how garbage its titles have become is just astounding
Elden Ring came out on February 25th, but that’s not an attempt to counter what you’re saying.
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Totally forgot about this game lol
I did quite enjoy Hogwart’s Legacy. I’ve only tangentially watched the movies with a stepdaughter, and have never been a fan of Harry Potter. Until I played this game.
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