10 TERRIBLE Games That Got Great Reviews
8. Hogwarts Legacy
Even with much debate about whether the mere act of playing the new Harry Potter game was ethical or not, Hogwarts Legacy still managed to land a very respectable 84 on Metacritic, with most reviewers praising it for doing firm justice to the license within a AAA open-world framework.
But after one spends a few hours exploring Hogwarts and the surrounding world, the allure begins to wear off and it becomes thunderously clear that Hogwarts Legacy is an almost laughably by-the-numbers Ubisoft open-world game with the Harry Potter license crudely pasted over it.
As recent AAA launches go it at least released in a serviceable, not-anger-inducing state - an apparently laudable achievement for a video game in 2023, because the bar is truly in Hell.
But from the groan-inducingly generic quests to the nothing-burger of a story, forgettable villain, and pointlessly level-gated main quest line, this feels like a thin sketch of a AAA game that could have been great with a few more years in the oven and a ton more ambition.
Instead, it's embarrassingly basic fare that's evidently content to just do the bare minimum each and every time. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.
This didn't stop it selling 22 million copies in less than a year, though, so there's clearly no accounting for taste - or, at least, the indefatigable power of the Harry Potter license.