You play a student at a magical school, attending classes, learning spells, and exploring a large world filled with side quests and hidden secrets outside the castle walls. Combat lets you combine different spells, like freezing an enemy in place and then hitting them with something else for extra damage. It is a long game with a lot to see, so expect plenty of side content beyond the main story.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The short version
A genuinely impressive open-world debut for the license, delivering the wizarding school fantasy fans have wanted for years, technical hiccups aside.
In the hands
Spell combat has real flair once unlocked, chaining charms together cleverly, though the open world's side content grows repetitive by the midpoint.
Look and sound
The castle and grounds are rendered with obvious love, though the Switch version noticeably softens textures and drops frames in busier areas.
The long haul
Dozens of hours of content make this a great pick for Harry Potter fans, though the technical compromises here are the roughest of any version.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You create your own student and walk the halls of Hogwarts in third person, seeing the castle's stone corridors and floating candles up close as classmates and professors talk to you. The left stick walks and runs, the right stick looks around, and buttons cast spells at whatever you are aiming at, with a wheel that lets you cycle between attack spells, a shield, and utility spells like one that lifts objects. In your first ten minutes you will be sorted into a house, given your first wand, and sent to a class where a professor teaches you a new spell before letting you loose in the open castle to explore.
Once you are free to roam, most of your time goes toward a mix of story missions about ancient magic and a hidden threat, class assignments that teach new spells, and simply wandering the grounds and nearby countryside finding chests, plants, and beasts to catch. Combat has you juggling multiple spells in real time, since some enemies only take damage from a specific color of spell, and difficulty ramps by throwing more enemy types at you at once. A full playthrough with a reasonable amount of exploring can run thirty hours or more, since the world outside the castle is large and full of side activities like brewing potions or caring for magical creatures.
Session to session the castle itself is the reward, since just walking to your next class means passing moving staircases and talking portraits, and the side activities are relaxing rather than difficult. What will frustrate newcomers is that objectives can feel repetitive after many hours, and on Switch specifically the picture looks noticeably softer with occasional pauses between areas. If living inside the Harry Potter world matters more to you than a tightly designed game, this delivers that fully.