Hogwarts Legacy's Treatment of Trolls is a Massive Missed Opportunity - TrendRadars
TrendRadars > Culture > Hogwarts Legacy’s Treatment of Trolls is a Massive Missed Opportunity
Hogwarts Legacy’s Treatment of Trolls is a Massive Missed Opportunity
Hogwarts Legacy's Treatment of Trolls is a Massive Missed Opportunity,Hogwarts Legacy is a wonderful experience for fans of the IP, but struggles with enemy variety, and trolls could have helped make it more diverse.

Hogwarts Legacy’s Treatment of Trolls is a Massive Missed Opportunity

Hogwarts Legacy is, on the whole, a successful feat that brings players to a gorgeous and dense world and lore that fans have craved the opportunity to explore in a video game for decades. The school is impressively recreated with its curious and crafty personality still intact, and the surrounding areas all do well to make the experience feel like it's more than just a big school surrounded by empty landscapes. It's a joy to be in, and dozens of hours can be spent in classes, battling bad guys, and ogling at all the loving references like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets or Hogwarts Legacy's Follow the Butterflies side quest.

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Should developer Avalanche Software decide to return to the wizarding world, there's much that it can build upon. Hogwarts Legacy is a valiant first attempt that creates a lot of great loose ends that can be improved on, with performance issues, inconsistent storytelling, and bland flying mechanics all feeling like blemishes on an otherwise really great game. The lack of enemy diversity is another substantial issue, and trolls are perhaps the biggest example of this, as they offer no real innovation and don't use the potential that the species can have on the story and world-building. They're not terrible by any means, but they don't stand out at all, and it feels like a waste.

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Hogwarts Legacy's Trolls Contribute to the Poor Enemy Variety

While roaming the halls of the castle or shopping in the quaint shops in Hogsmeade is a lot of fun, as is ambling around the surrounding areas, Hogwarts Legacy can get boring quickly as the combat variety leaves much to be desired. Poachers, dark wizards, spiders, and a few other beasts will be the adversaries for much of the adventure, and while trolls are less common, each encounter feels somewhat uninspired and serves as a big enemy that has to be overcome using plenty of spells and dodging repetitive attacks. In truth, they could have been replaced with any other magical beast and the game would have been no different.

This is a shame, as the world of Harry Potter allows for so many interesting possibilities. A troll appears in the girl's bathroom in the first film and has much the same effect on the story, being a beast that has to be felled to prove the hero's unrelenting potential as a wizard. The species doesn't get much development at all, and Hogwarts Legacy was a good opportunity to change this and make them more compelling with the way they act while in, or out, of combat. Besting a troll isn't exciting because they're presented as nothing more than a big, dumb villain with a large reach and an empty mind, and giving them more attention could have helped improve the game's lackluster enemy variety and diversity.

Hogwarts Legacy Needs to Learn that Enemy Behavior Is as Important as Enemy Abilities

Some of the best encounters with adversaries in gaming are presented in a way that subverts expectations. Big Daddies in BioShock are hulking, terrifying beasts that have no mercy for players if they decide to attack, but if they aren't provoked, they will roam Rapture without a care in the world. It gives them a layer of complexity that does well to give the player the impression that the character isn't necessarily there to be fought.

Trolls in Hogwarts Legacy can be easily escaped from, but the way they are implemented and where they pop up means that more often than not players have to take them down sooner or later. They'll also be present in places they ought not to be to make sense in the wider story, and so their presence feels inconsistent and poorly handled at times.

Trolls in Hogwarts Legacy could have provided a good opportunity to make combat feel fresh and develop on the 'fight the big bad guy' trope that plenty of open-world games rely on to some degree. Learning more about their habits, giving them subspecies that act differently, or making each one look unique would have made the end product far less repetitive, and could even have expanded the Harry Potter lore even wider.

Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC. PS4, Xbox One, and Switch versions are currently in development.

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