VelivolusDas

Brace yourselves. Barrage of Hogwarts Legacy content incoming!

And here's a video I like to call nostalgia + fan service overload. Watch it after you play, if you'd like to go in blind and experience it yourself. But if you don't care about any of that, watch this. And as always, playing this feels about 10x better than watching on YT. Truly a breath of fresh air (pun intended, sorry)!

I have VRR TV and PS5, but RT mode is not that preferable for me after playing on Balanced. Balanced is the best. Right resolution and texture details along with smooth frame rate gameplay.

Played for 4 hours straight. Midnight 0:00 to 4:00 AM, non-stop! What a game! Starts with a bang and introduces the overarching main story right away. The combat is quite good so far. Obviously, I'm yet to unlock more spells so will have more opinions later on. The graphics and performance are so, so good. *chef's kiss* The overall visual fidelity and level of detail is mind-blowing. There are 5 graphics options on the PS5. I'm playing on Balanced with an uncapped frame rate. Buttery smooth with a good LOD. Note: the screenshot below only shows 4 options during the initial set-up. But from the in-game pause menu, you can access the fifth option which is 'Fidelity with Ray Tracing.' Yet to try it though. Didn't try it yet because it says it needs to reboot the game for the change to take effect. Some more spoiler-free screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/v6CWQ6T Overall observations: Things I love: - Graphics, details, and overall visual fidelity. Stellar work by Avalanche. They are fans of the lore and it's evident. They have taken the effort, succeeded, and then some! - Tight combat, so far. - Literally no bugs so far. Not even the general open-world bugs. The polish is R* and ND-level. - Voice acting, of all characters. - Generally, good Dualsense implementation (more below). - The village of Hogsmeade is so well made. Almost all houses/shops/buildings can be entered from what I saw. Things I didn't like (minor gripes so far): - Loading times are hilariously more than the current standard. Get ready to notice a split-second black screen even while petting cats. Sometimes, even while going through doors within the castle, the main character just stands and faces the door as there is a tiny loading icon on the door handle for literally a second, and then the character opens the door. It doesn't detract from the experience much, but it could've been better. - Haptics could've been implemented during some cut-scenes too, for added immersion. Missed opportunity, IMO! - The isometric view of the map is a poor design choice. Minor thing, which could've been avoided by having a simple traditional map. - The game to play with Accio to drag the balls to a specific score, is simply bad. I skipped the instructions by mistake and lost all matches and I literally don't know how to control the level of Accio to use and I can't find the instructions again anywhere. Not cool (help, pl0x). - This one is more of a personal thing, but Horizon: Forbidden West has really spoiled me with the facial expression animations of characters during conversations. This feels like a generation behind. But only compared to H: FW. Otherwise, it's pretty standard. ----- I am yet to get a mount and truly step out of the castle. Only gone to Hogmeads on foot. Also, will share more observations about quests once I play some more and get to the core gameplay loop. Until now, the game is still introducing things. Overall, for a person who loves the Harry Potter lore, this game is a dream come true. And yeah, it's wife-approved, too!

Super-tempted to watch, but not sure if I should. Not for fear of spoilers. I'm sure major outlets won't have any spoilers, but just for the experience. Good scores overall, I see.

So, this happened. This weekend has been super busy and I was feeling too lazy to check my console. So, I was just now searching online for details of the pre-load availability. Most articles said it would be available on Sunday. Even on the game's official twitter, it was mentioned that it'll be available 48 hours before release on 7th (i.e. Sunday for the Digital Deluxe Edition). Continuing my laziness, I went to the PS Store via the PS app itself to initiate the download from the game's store page (since my PS5 has been on Rest mode since Saturday evening) and I just wasn't getting the option. So, I gave up and decided to check tomorrow in the nothing. Before I hit the sack, I was curious to check how much storage space I had on my console (in case I needed to delete anything, I would just trigger that from my phone itself) and much to my surprise, I saw that the pre-load is already done. It says 80GB (size after installing). I just remembered that I had set the "Auto-Download" option to "On." So, tomorrow midnight is all set! Will livestream right from midnight, too!

Got the new Hogwarts Legacy avatars on PS.

Epic.

That guy just called it "Game Of War Hammer." Atleast rehearse it once. My goodness!

It's almost the definition of a "chill" game. It's surreal to play this after office. Reminds me a lot of thatgamecompany's flower. You can just sit back and soak in the sights while controlling the character on the bicycle.

Yes. Finland: UK: Dubai: Italy: Poland: Korea: There are more that I can't find on Twitter now but came across them over the last 2 days or so. Basically, some pretty serious marketing going on!

According to the information I saw once I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe Edition on the PS Store, it said "Estimated Download Date: 5th February." So, I think it's going to be that. Since we can start playing on the 7th.

Yep. Came to post that... BTW, here's comparison to the previous year: "Juggernaut" quarter for Sony, if you ask me.