Recent reviews by toshie

Pretty good co-op game for some late night fun with friends. Some of the mechanics are extremely frustrating and there are bugs, but it is supposedly still in development so.. yeah. In terms of connectedness and some kind of a linear progression it's probably one of the (if not the) best backroom games on Steam.

Actually a super simple concept, backed by some great comedic values. Laughing and screaming guaranteed. Also don't worry if you don't have friends to play with, you'll make some. 10/10

I can't stop playing it so far, although I'm a bit late to the party.

Quite the hype around this game. Kudos to the aesthetic, even though it's kind of borrowed from somewhere else.
But it just wasn't for me, the survival aspects don't bring anything groundbreaking, the game feels repetitive even after an hour, inventory/crafting system is kind of annoying, and the game feels like its probably multiplayer-first which gets hard since no one has it and solo it's just kinda boring. I'll follow and see where it goes, maybe I'll give it another try in the future when it gets out of EA, until then it's a pass for me.

Yes, but.

I can mostly recommend this to die hard fans of Harry Potter, the visuals, the world and all of the atmosphere is just mesmerizing and amazing. Unfortunately it is plagued with weird story and design choices, while definitely not being an overall 10 outta 10. Potential spoilers ahead, duh.

The Bad:
- UX is a nightmare, all of the UI animations are super long and unskippable, this means spending minutes to hours just in menus. Navigating any of the menus is a pain in the a*s and unfortunately you have to do it quite often.
- Some collectibles have a unskippable cutscene, eg. the Merlin Trials - Do I really wanna watch a bunch of pillars erect and a hologram of Merlin appear every time? This and other similar choices felt like a never-ending chore.
- Most of the side quests/content is bland and pretty similar.
- There is no sense of progression / context all round the game world, characters (even your own) give you voice lines and dialogs that no longer apply after you finished some other quest. Negative dialog choices do not affect anything and generally it feels like it does not matter.
- Annoying voice lines from your character and other characters that just repeat for all eternity every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time, even if you've been in a village before you will still hear a "I wonder who lives here", or similarly..
- The controls system is a bit of a headache on PC.
- Potion making is a straight up mobile game, so is any other type of crafting or pokemon-like-animal-caring.
- Learning spells is just level-story-bound, without any further difficulty and accomplishment, talent trees are just unlocks for better damage or more hotbars.
- Oh the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hotbars, all the spells don't even fit with all of them unlocked, and it's just a pain to work with.

The OK:
- Main story line is ok, ending seemed very rushed, altogether around 25 hours for the whole quest line.
- Performance wise it's fine, the two latest patches improved it immensely, not playing on a beast PC (3060ti, 32gb ram, ryzen 3600) and still had a very nice and enjoyable playthrough.
- The "school experience" is mostly just homework quests, this is sort of a let down, but it's acceptable.
- No quidditch, any bets on a DLC?
- Lot of the world content begins to repeat, this is mostly due to it being filled to brim with collectibles.
- Questing and collecting has a bit of a WoW vibe, there's a "organic" feeling to it to some extent, but WoW did it better.
- Lots of clothing items to shuffle around, albeit a lot of them looking very silly and the UI just not remembering your skin choices, but hey you can reskin anything you're wearing at least.

The Awesome:
- Beautiful world, a large one, with all kinds of cavities, hidden spots, streets, villages, houses, funny characters, details. Just a very mesmerizing cool world of HP.
- Flying. The broom is fun, the gryphon is fun, it's a cool experience and it's just nice flying around hogwarts with RTX on. Past HP games had that too, but this is just so detailed and open it's uncomparable.
- The first excitement and amazement you get from starting the game is comparable to being 10 again and just being swalloved by the books or going to see the movies.
- You can explore every nook and cranny of Hogwarts Castle, and I highly recommend doing so, it is probably the most unique and detailed part of the game and it's just great sneaking around.
- Spell casting and combat is very well executed (apart from the PC controls), battling it out is exciting even after hours of gameplay, as you level up you also get stronger and the rush of just bombing it somewhere with a broom and obliterating everyone in the area is priceless.
- Moddable, can't wait what the modding community can bring to the table.

TLDR:
A much less dramatic launch in terms of performance, 40-60 hours of gaming, 25-30 hours of story, fun, pretty, riddled with bad UX choices, a little bland on story telling, but compensating with great combat, detailed locations and just a level of immeasurable excitement for any HP fan - 7/10.

Finished the game in 12 hours, but I have played a lot of HL1 in the past. Amazing animation, graphical and musical upgrade to the original game. Highly recommended to any Half Life fans and even people that have no idea Half Life exists (are there any?). Thrill ride from start to finish.

This game is fun and stressful at the same time. You will love it, you will hate it, you will scream, you will laugh. I wish the developer would pop out more content, maybe even add the option to create custom levels! For 20 bucks it seems a little empty. Nonetheless, recommended.

Pros:
- Super fun
- Addicting
- Cute and fun visuals
- Competitive

Cons:
- Content is sparse
- Sparse content = becomes repetitive

Hands down the most realistic zombie survival simulation you can buy. There's nothing more to say. Oh wait.. I love it!

Refunded this game in 8 minutes. I though they might have fixed the alleged optimization issues and what not from like a year ago, since the game is finally a 1.0.. So I started the freshly installed game, boom error, boom game shuts down. So I'm like "well ok, Ill just start it again" (good old restart to make it work), this time the game started fine even with an error that was in the background, okay, fine enough. Made my character and what not, loaded the main menu, boom another crash. Error reporting tool pops up at me, I fill in the description and hit upload, seems like its doing something. After a minute or so, the error reporting tool gives me an error... and crashes. Im done. 0/10 would refund again.

This game just went above and beyond my expectations and kicked me in the nuts so hard.