Tbh that’s a low bar to pass. The newest CoD flopped pretty bad and Rockstar has been too busy with GTA6. Almost every other notable release was either a flop or a smaller studio or indie title.
While that might be true, 2023 was an year filled with great games and yet Hogwarts Legacy is first, and Call of Duty is 2nd.
As for notable games of the year that weren’t flop (in no particular order):
- Spider-Man 2
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Diablo IV
- FF 16
- Armored Core 6
- Street Fighter 6
- Alan Wake 2
Not to mention:
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Dead Space Remake
They may not be to your taste, but they all rated very highly. I haven’t included any Nintendo games, cause they don’t share digital data. Their numbers are based only on physical sales.
That’s actually fair. I barely pay attention to AAA gaming to begin with, so most of these games just weren’t on my radar. I just thought “oh, Starfield was the big hyped flop of the year, of course there wasn’t much AAA competition”
No worries. Of all the games mentioned above Starfield was probably my most anticipated. But it let people down.
Those Nintendo releases this year we’re bangers:
- Tears of the Kingdom
- Super Mario Wonder
- Pikmin 4
- Super Mario RPG Remake
- Metroid Prime Remastered
Plus the DLCs for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out this year.
Great year for gaming IMO. But yeah, all of these are niche enough that I wouldn’t expect any of them to be top sellers.
On the other hand, I know at least one non-gamer that got a Switch just to play Hogwarts Legacy.
Well, Mario has kind of a general appeal, so I won’t call it a niche (and it was in 12th with just physical sale). And Pikmin 4 also sold over 2 Million in just first month or so, IIRC, though not sure if that’s enough for being a top seller in a year like the one we just had.
Also, Tears of the Kingdom was on 5th overall sales, and that’s only with the physical sales. Don’t know the actual number difference between 1st and 5th, but with digital added, it could’ve at least entered top 3, if not gone for 1st.
Been waiting to pick it up cheap second hand. Not interested in financially supporting it.
Just… pirate it… 🦜
Honestly, considered it even though I haven’t pirated a game in like twenty years. But when I found out the the person who cracked the game is also a hateful bigot, I didn’t even want to download their work. Nah, I’ll buy it second hand.
Would have tried it out if the author wasn’t a transphobic piece of shit. Might pirate it.
Might pirate it.
Wait till you learn about who cracked that game.
Oh yea Empress may be the most transphobic person alive currently
Not even close tbh. There are middle eastern states that kill Trans people.
I’m pretty sure that if she had the power to do so she would have deathsquads going after anyone remotely suspected of being trans. I was in her telegram group just to watch the crazy unfold and she is absolutely batshit and hates trans people with a burning passion.
Wtf is wrong with people
I did. it was alright. Worth it if you want to explore hogwarts and surroundings.
Also, the erstwhile lead designer was a far right agitator.
Is this game really that good? I’ve been holding out on buying it.
No.
It’s extremely popular because it is a well polished Harry Potter game; something the world has been begging for for a long time. It does invoke that sense of magic that the films do so well, so if you’re just looking to get a fresh hit of the Hogwarts world it’s great. There are also a lot of really interesting and well designed characters. Most of all the world, particularly the castle, is beautifully and lovingly crafted.
The game buried beneath all that polish is a pretty basic-ass RPG. It is crammed with filler fetch/find quests. The dialogue system is just another exhaust all options non-system. The combat has some really cool ideas on paper but I personally ended up mostly mashing buttons against one of like 5 generic enemies most of the time. Also the only customization in this RPG is your appearance.
It’s not a bad game by any means, but i wouldn’t say it’s great either.
As much as I enjoyed the game, I cant deny anything said here. Pretty much sums it up
I also agree with the above statements. The best way I could describe it is that while the gameplay wasn’t all that spectacular, experiencing the game world was definitely a treat, and made me smile like I did the first time I opened the first Harry Potter book or played the first games that game out on PS1!
Oh big time, I told myself going in that I wasnt going to also listen to all of the audiobooks again but I definitely did
Haha! I actually listened to the audiobooks on the lead up to the release to get myself in that warm and cozy mindset for the game. Those books are like comfort food for my soul.
Im basically always juggling back to back harry potter and wherl of time read-throughs
I recently learned of the wheel of time series!
Can you give me some of your opinions on it? I made it to book 3 of Lord of the Rings, and just couldn’t put up with the purple writing any longer. Segments just seemed to drag on and on and on just to get through some dialogue that could’ve been said with a lot less flowery prose. It was charming at first, but I couldn’t put up with it any longer by book three, at least going back to back. I will finish it one day though! 😭
I got it on sale in December and think it’s worth it. I’m not a huge HP fan by any stretch but was impressed by the mechanics, they’re fun. Though as the game opens up you start to spot the tedious shit all open worlds tend to throw in to keep you busy. I just ignore that shit.
Thanks! I hate when open works games do this. I might skip out on it for this reason.
I’ve been enjoying the game as well. Not so much the story, or even “day by day” quest line its had. Once you get into the game and it opens though as the last guy said, it also has a lot of fun activities. You can also customize youre own “room” with the many magical creatures you can find as well.
If you liked the books, and just want to enjoy the game to feel what it might be like as a wizard than its an awesome game.
My wife is a big Harry Potter fan but has mixed feelings about it. She described the game this morning as not great but not bad either, with great graphics, but also with an indecisiveness to it that suggests too many cooks in the kitchen.
With that said, that’s just one opinion. The game seems outstandingly popular. She felt it’s worth the money if you can get it on sale in her personal opinion.
My wife and I had the same opinion. Magical to run around the castle for a few hours and do the early classes, surprisingly good combat mechanics, but then… Nothing.
It is really hurt by the inclusion of brooms. They necessitate a huge world so you can’t cross it in a minute, but then it’s too spread out and empty. At least in Ghost Recon my world-design-crippling flying devices have rockets and gattling guns.
You may hit the nail on the head, once you get the broom you just breeze past everyhring. The forbidden forest may be the most dense content wise on foot, everything after that does feel more sparse as it was designed with the broom in mind. All in all I still enjoyed the game and got my moneys worth out of it, I did pick it up rather cheap on a sale
And then for some reason they decide to give you some worse modes of transport later on for fuck knows why
Totally agree with this. The first few hours were great but then when you get the broom and you see the huge open space that’s just really lacking. I really wish it never went to that scale.
Thanks! I think I’ll hold off on this title. I don’t have much time for gaming and open world games can be got it miss for me. This one sounds like it might be a miss.
It’s a casual game that lets you run around the world of harry potter casting spells at people and things, solving puzzles, and wearing silly wizard clothes. If that sounds good to you then it’s good.
Pretty much, yeah, that’s what I want. Character maker?
The character customization is pretty good. Mostly just face and hair iirc but there’s a good bit of options. You can also customize your wand. That’s the most important bit I’d say.
Cool, thanks!
If you’re a HP fan the game is a no-brainer. But if not I suggest finding another AAA RPG game. I borrowed my friend’s copy via family sharing and I only got maybe around 4-5 hours in before I got bored and uninstalled the game.
It’s a standard open world game. If that appeals to you and you love HP then perhaps.
If you aren’t sure, wait for a big sale. I quite enjoyed the game, but other than being a massively-popular IP, I’m not sure why it’s getting so much acclaim. It’s big, it’s Harry Potter (with all the attention to detail that usually gets), and it’s an RPG. If it wasn’t HP, it’d be another good indie game, and that’s it.
It’s fun, lemmy/reddit screeches (rightfully so) about JKR’s views but that doesn’t mean the game itself is bad.
I’d say if you’ve ever wondered what it be like to just wander about the castle, it’s well worth it. It’s cheaper than going to say universal studios or the Warner Brothers lot in London…
But there’s actually very little gameplay in the castle around areas you recognize from the books or movies. It doesn’t take long until you’re throwing into a very generic game with a thin coat of Harry Potter paint applied. There’s a lot of samey quests and combat doesn’t really evolve ever.
Thanks, this game seems very skipable. I keep reading lukewarm reviews of it.
Culture warriors would rather play a mid rpg at $80 than admit that JK Rowling is a bigot who is bad at world building.
She is a terrible bigot, and a loud one, and that sucks because she also produced a cultural phenomenon of my childhood, and while the canon of HP is only just barely pretty okay sometimes, it spiralled out from there and SO MUCH of the media and culture I’ve consumed and existed within since then has been informed by it.
So yeah. If there’s any comfort, let it be that any money she gets from this comes from explicitly affirming a trans woman through the work, as well as implicitly affirming any trans players through the character creation options. Small comfort maybe, but she is far away.
That’s how I justified it to myself.
That, and there was an entire team of people working on this game for years, trying to make it the best vision of theirs as well as making it fit within the pre established world.
A racist a transphobe and an antisemite walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says “aren’t you that girl who wrote HP?”
JQ Lolling stares unflinchingly ahead and states “Your teacher, Professor Eleazar Fig, dies at the end of Hogwarts Legacy. This happens in all possible endings and can’t be changed. Oh and Rookwood is the one who cursed Anne while the goblins were framed. Also, you’re also required to quell a slave uprising and you have no choice in the matter.”
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HogLeg’s success is pretty crazy if you think about it. Ignoring the sales we’ve looking at today, take yourself back to the launch of HogLeg. It kept up pace with Fallout 4 in terms of active players and achievement completion rates. This is huge to me. They’re both singleplayer RPGs, so they’re both vying for the same type of audience.
But.
Fallout 4 was a hugely anticipated sequel to one of the most renowned series in all of gaming. Harry Potter had almost no presence in gaming beyond nostalgic shovel ware titles.
Fallout 4 was developed by gaming darlings, a company known for producing huge open worlds with strong volumes of content. HogLeg was developed by shovelware developers with no major releases in their history.
Fallout 4 is a first person looter shooter, one of the most ubiquitous and successful genres out there. HogLeg is an action roleplaying game, still admittedly a safe genre but doesn’t have the genre conventions that makes it possible for anyone with FPS experience to pick up a Fallout.
And finally, Fallout 4 targeted gamers. It’s a gamer’s game, you know? It’s for lore nerds and RPG fans and tacticool nuts and all the rest. HogLeg was for Harry Potter fans. It needed to drag fans across media types to secure a big enough audience.
I truly, truly did not expect HogLeg to find the success it has. And to be honest, it’s quite a mid game! It’s a visual accomplishment and adherence to the universe means that it’s a treat for any Harry Potter nerds, but the rest of the game is as close as generic as it could get.
And finally, Fallout 4 targeted gamers. It’s a gamer’s game, you know? It’s for lore nerds and RPG fans and tacticool nuts and all the rest. HogLeg was for Harry Potter fans. It needed to drag fans across media types to secure a big enough audience.
This is… perhaps, the very formula for its success. Perhaps the gaming crowd isn’t that big. Perhaps, HL was not chained to a particular demographic and instead had the freedom to appeal to a wider audience.
I know of people who picked up a controller for the first time in their life because HL was a Harry Potter game… just saying.
Yeah, I feel like their logic is circular. Choosing to actively ignore the fact that the game is based off one of the most popular book series in the entire world is frustratingly dense, and feels like they’re stanning for the sake of it. From what I understand, the game is ridiculously repetitive, and is genuinely riding solely off of the popularity of the book series.
Wow. Good comparison. Didn’t realize how close they were. In both being average games too.
Number 5 in switch after just a few weeks is crazy
Might have to check this out!
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Hogwarts Legacy is not Game of the year…
To no one’s surprise.
I can’t believe this made so much money. If I had a pc, I still wouldn’t pirate it. Millennials need to collectively get over Harry Potter.
Sorry, are the neighborhood kids on your yard again?
Yeah people really need to stop having fun in ways I disapprove of, totally with you on that.
I’ve seen the movies and read the books, and I’m not a millenial. I also don’t have time to play all the games I’d like to, so I can take a pass on supporting the person spreading hate and occupy my time playing something else, instead.
Millennials? Kids under 10 still go batshit for it!
I can absolutely believe it made that much money.
The youngest millennials should be in their 30s. I doubt enough of them have the time or money for this to blame the whole generation.
Another way of saying you have deep empathic issues
