After 40 hours of gameplay and completing most of everything in the game...
I think overall it's a good game, very good even - it has a lot of things to love. The world itself, naturally - especially if you like HP lore, especially Hogwarts itself. There's tons of little quirks, secrets and fun references dotted around every inch of it. You can really tell that the developers treated this as a proper passion project, I've never used fast travel inside the actual building because I love just going around, and as you advance in the game you can solve more and more of the random puzzles, which is great fun too.
I also think the combat is very solid. It's not particularly complex or deep but it has a very good feel to it. I love the animations and the spells are satisfying to use, easy to create combos to more effectively deal with the enemies. Even after 40 hours I'm not particularly bored of it, so in that regard it's definitely done better than vast majority of open world games, even some that I overall like more.
Also Sebastian's character quest chain in particular is really good and probably the highlight of the game for me narratively. There's actually some really fun side quests too - my favorite is "Minding your own business" ... but apparently its Playstation exclusive? What a shame that...
All in all, in general there's a lot of positive things to say. The presentation is fantastic, the gameplay feels good - I love the broom for navigation also, actually way prefer it to the mount - and the game, despite being a AAA super production, doesnt feel corporate in a way so many western super hyped AAA games do nowadays.
That being said, I do have a couple of disappointments with the game and a few minor issues.
- I wish the game leaned more heavily into the school sim aspect. Or at least pretend that you're a regular student for a bit longer. Beyond one class per subject, there's only tasks which is basically random open world stuff, and some cutscenes. It seems that originally the devs might have planned curfew also, but scrapped it - there's 2 quests that force you to stealth around at night, but outside of them you can run around the school anytime. I know that not everyone likes stealth, but I do think that curfew would've made stealth make more sense, and also they could've made more side quests revolve around night time hijinks at the school.
- The choice of your house should have a bigger impact. As it stands - slightly different dialogue here and there and one quest that's completely different, and that's about it. I know it's tons of work, but I really wish there were at least certain character quests chains that were exclusive to each house. It provides more reason to replay.
- The gear system is too basic, and gets too tedious. Some QoL updates would be nice, like making it so that instead of changing the cosmetic look of each gear piece, you can just do it on the gear slots themselves - because in this game you can find stronger stuff pretty much every 5 mins, so having to equip it and then also change its look gets a little annoying to do constantly. Also, marking stuff as junk, and having a sell all junk button at traders.... Also I get that merlin trials expand your inventory but I really think the game should be more generous about it to boot.
- Plus, I think the loot is too common. It makes rewards often feel underwhelming because you are constantly finding gear pieces anyway. Make the gear less common and when they're given as rewards, they'll feel more special.
- The game's menu system is not great. It's too slow - for example when you're using the shoulder buttons to switch menus, instead of going as fast as you press, every menu animation is played out in full before you get to the next one. Sure, it's like, I dunno, 150ms per menu, but considering how often you need to be opening it up, it gets a bit tedious. The map system is also a little weird, the lack of different colours on the icons make it hard to immediately see things you want, and the 3 different maps-- while they make sense, i wish they were automatic, in a sense that if you hover over hogwarts or hogsmeade it just pops up their specific maps. Basically, this is nitpicking, but lenghty open world games with tons of side shit need to have fast menus.
But my main disappointment is the main story itself. Outside of the Sebastian character questline, the game's story is pretty unremarkable until the last couple of hours. It starts strong, but then it treads water for a long time. It doesn't really break the game for me though, as to be honest, the world and lore itself is brilliant enough to carry the game.
So yeah, I have greatly enjoyed my time with the game and hope that it gets some meaty expansions as it feels there's plenty of room for those. Quidditch would also be nice if the devs can make it actually a fun activity.
