Video Game / Hogwarts Legacy

Live the Unwritten.

Hogwarts Legacy is an Action RPG that's set in the Wizarding World franchise, and developed by Salt Lake City, Utah-based Avalanche Software, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The game is published by WB's Portkey Games label, which was created in 2017 to develop games based on the franchise.

Hogwarts Legacy is set in the late 19th century - in the 1890 - 1891 School Year, to be precise - long before the other stories in the franchise: the original 1990s-set Harry Potter books, the 2020s set Cursed Child stage play and the 1920s-1940s set Fantastic Beasts film series. The Player Character is a customizable witch or wizard who's starting their fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, during which they learn that they are connected to a powerful, ancient magic long gone from the wizarding world, and have to decide if they want to use it for good or evil, while at the same time, the threat of a brewing goblin rebellion threatens the safety and security of Hogwarts and its students.

Just like the other Portkey Games releases, it’s only “inspired by” the Wizarding World and should not be considered a canonical installment of the franchise.^note Technically, the video games are considered a valid source of canonical information except where they directly contradict a more authoritative source, such as the books.

The game was released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 10, 2023, with cross-gen ports for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One released on May 5^note after many, many, many, many delays, and Nintendo Switch on November 14.

Trailers: Announcement, Official Gameplay Reveal, Gameplay Showcase, Gameplay Showcase II

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Hogwarts Legacy provides examples of:

• 100% Completion: The game atually has two counters to this effect. Field Guide Challenges cover pretty much every activity in the game, from combat to exploration to questing, and can be maxed out after completing around 60-80% of the content of each category. The real counter, however, is the Collection menu that tracks almost everything^note only Revelio-dependent Field Guide Pages matter; ones that are acquired through Accio, Incendio or other spells aren't factored in down to the Last Lousy Point. Completing all collections is required for the game's 100% achievement.
• Aborted Arc: In the main story, the game sets up the idea that Isidora's use of corrupted ancient magic, specifically drawing negative emotions and pain from a person, can be used to cure Anne Sallow of her curse. Even should the protagonist question the Keepers about Isidora, they're adamant her path is one that should not be followed. The idea is dropped altogether, even in Sebastian's questline where he instead becomes obsessed with using a relic tied to dark magic to cure his sister's condition. In any case, the subject of a cure is rendered moot when Anne cuts all ties with Sebastian after he kills Solomon with the Killing Curse.
• Action Commands: When enemies are about to attack, a ring-shaped icon appears around the head of the player character indicating that you can cast Protego to block said incoming attack. Successfully doing so causes the player character to cast Stupefy at the enemy you're currently targeting, which doubles as a Damage-Increasing Debuff.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: There are a lot of expensive things to purchase, but only two you can sell for cash (outfits and rescued beasts), and both are worth chump change at best. Worst of all are the crafting components. Top-tier components can set you back up to 1,000 gold apiece, but once you gain the ability to farm them easily from rescued beasts, you can't sell them at all even though they're piling up in your inventory, even when, story-wise, there's supposedly a huge demand for ultra-rare resources like phoenix feathers or unicorn hair.
• Adaptational Deviation:
  • In its previous appearances in the LEGO Harry Potter and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery games, the Chinese Chomping Cabbage appeared vertical with a jagged mouth carved near the base like a jack o' lantern. In this game, they actually look like a cabbage plant with tooth-like protrusions in the center.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Thanks to Slytherin not being the de facto bad guy house with all the Jerkass students, this can actually make the other houses look less noble than previously characterized, since the jerks and racists are more spread out amongst the houses, to the point that the biggest racist student is actually a background Hufflepuff, the house best known for having a more laid-back and kind characterization in the books. That said, the majority of the most abrasive characters are still Slytherins. Also, to the surprise of exactly no one, all three Unforgivable Curses can only be learned from a Slytherin student (although Sebastian's reasons for learning them are far more benevolent than most dark wizards).
  • You can find a note about a Dark Wizard that's said to have been a Hufflepuff. The canon series once stated that no Hufflepuff thus far had become a Dark Wizard by the time Harry Potter attended Hogwarts.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In contrast to how morally-bankrupt the house is when Harry arrives at Hogwarts, Slytherin of the late 1800s has a somewhat more friendly relationship with its competitors as well as being open-minded and hospitable towards the protagonist, regardless if they are in their house or not. It's telling that while Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black seems to prefer the pureblood members of Slytherin, his own former house despises him. The house is more in line with its intended characterization with the members all being ambitious young wizards and witches who take pride in their lineage and have dreams of being the best in their chosen field, at worst just being more willing to bend, or break, rules than others.
• Agony Beam: The infamous torture curse Crucio/Cruciatus is a spell the player can learn to cast if they wish. In combat it stuns any target for a fairly long time while dealing continuous damage, making it an excellent tool for locking down the strongest enemy in the area while you take care of the rest.
• All for Nothing: The Keepers spend the better part of a school year teaching the protagonist about Isidora Morganach's ventures into extracting emotions from people and converting that into a power with destructive potential, with the intent of getting them to carry on their legacy of keeping that power from being unleashed. At the end of the game, the protagonist can choose to ignore all of this and open the repository locking this magic up anyways, with their eyes glowing red for a second as a sign of their Start of Darkness. With Ranrok and Professor Fig dead and the Keepers presumed vanished after they believed their goal had been met, this leaves the protagonist unchecked.
  • Noctua Gaunt's quest to find Slytherin's Scriptorium; she believed there must be something good in Slytherin and that the family shouldn't use dark magic, because it's a disgrace to them and their Slytherin ancestry. Then you get to the Scriptorium, and it needs Dark Magic to get in - and inside is a note from Slytherin basically stating that he cannot sit around and watch Muggleborns make a "mockery" of being magic... meaning that Noctua was totally and completely wrong in all and every way about her ancestor and he'd be happy with where the family is and she literally died for nothing.
• All Trolls Are Different: One of the deadlier fantastic beasts the player character can encounter outside of Hogwarts are huge, ugly Trolls, which come at the player swinging gigantic clubs.
  • Interestingly, despite trolls being described as violent creatures, one forest troll found attacking, or being attacked, by magical poachers and afterward only charged at the player character once before slowly wandering off, completely ignoring the spells being thrown at it, which can be seen starting at the 8:10 mark of this video.
• Alternative Continuity: Portkey’s stance from the beginning has been that their games are “inspired by” the Wizarding World and avert any substantial attempts at Canon Welding. This game is careful to not step on the toes of anything canon while having small elements that would be reasonable, but different in the setting:
  • The Gaunt family is bigger than in canon. Omnius mentions having a big family including parents, siblings, and at least one aunt. Only roughly thirty years later in canon, they had been whittled down to only Marvolo, Morfin, and Merope.
  • The location of the Forbidden Forest doesn't match its placement in the books or the films. The forest is placed next to Hogsmeade and is not on the castle grounds. Oddly the Gamekeeper's hut is where it's supposed to be, but the forest is nowhere near it.
  • Some letters imply that the story is set in the early 1890s which is conspicuously just before some of the established characters come onto the scene. Albus Dumbledore for instance was born in 1881 and would have started at Hogwarts in 1892. In canon, this time frame would have actually been right around the time Ariana was attacked.
  • Although this time frame is within some of the pre-established characters’ adulthoods, there are only four canon characters present: Professor Black, and the ghosts, Peeves, Nearly-Headless Nick and Professor Binns. Even then, Black is only ever seen in his portraits in the books and died the year before the first Fantastic Beasts movie is set. The professors at Hogwarts are not the established academics of the era that fans would be more familiar with such as Armando Dippett or Bathilda Bagshot but rather original character.
  • Despite the game taking place in the late 1800's, an NPC student mentions Wolfsbane Potion; in Prisoner of Azkaban, set in 1993-4, Lupin explains that the potion is a "recent invention" and that it was not available during his time as a Hogwarts student from 1971-8.
• Ambition Is Evil: Averted. Slytherins in sidequests are generally more ambitious than in the other houses, but this is generally turned to selfless aims (becoming emissary for the merpeople), benign goals (being the best broom rider in Hogwarts, with the eventual hope of joining a Quidditch team), or purely personal interests (recovering a lost family heirloom).
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Completing challenges, finishing side quests, and opening collection chests will often reward you with new styles of clothing and new handles for your wand that you can mix and match to customize the appearance of the main character.
• Animated Armor:
  • As per canon, the suits of medieval-esque armor dotting the halls around Hogwarts are magically animated, sometimes saluting the player as they pass by, mumbling to themselves, or just randomly falling apart.
  • Pensieve guardians are a far more advanced version that protect Keeper dungeons from intruders. Created with Ancient Magic from magical crystals and what appears to be goblin silver, they range in size from as tall as a human to the height of a three-story building.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Vendors both in the Highlands and in Hogsmeade are always available to shop with, even in the middle of night when the latter's streets are completely deserted, ensuring that a night-owl protagonist can still sell off their gathered loot without needing to wait for morning or use the option to speed up the day/night cycle.
  • If a building or room you unlock with Alohomora has multiple entrances, all of them will be opened after you opened the first.
  • Wingardium Leviosa is a pretty useful spell to move objects around. However, it has no real combat applications, so it can be a waste to put on your hotbar of skills, and it's also a pain to keep taking it off and on. However, whenever you use Accio on an object that can be moved around, if you hold down the button, your character will cast Wingardium Leviosa a second later, allowing you to start moving the object around without needing to put the spell on your hotbar.
  • Once you gain the ability to ride Hippogriffs, Thestral or Graphorns, you don't need to actually carry them around in your nab-sack in order to summon them. Even if you left them in a vivarium for breeding purposes, the Protagonist can still pull them out of the bag at any time.
  • In the "Minding Your Own Business" sidequest, you have to navigate your way across a giant wizard's chessboard by avoiding squares where the pieces on the board can capture you. However, you can simply use Revelio to reveal the squares you have to avoid for the benefit of players who don't know how to play chess.
• Anti-Grinding: Experience is awarded for doing things that advance completion of challenges in the field guide. Once a challenge has been completed, that action can no longer grant experience. This is most notable in the combat challenges, as it isn't hard to defeat more than the total quota of goblins/spiders/poachers/etc.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While walking around Hogwarts you can see, or more aptly hear, various students receiving Howlers, angry red letters sent by parents that loudly scold the students for their misdeeds. Most of them are understandable, a student cheating on a test or another who almost died stealing a broom, but every once in a while you'll see a student getting scolded for silly things, like supporting the wrong Quidditch team or getting sorted into the wrong house.
• Art Shift: In the Third Keeper Trial, you get sucked into a book, placing you in a stylized black-and-white setting. It's here that you're introduced to the three Deathly Hallows. The look of this episode seems to be modeled on the "Tale of the Three Brothers" sequence in the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 film.
• Asleep in Class: The History of Magic class is so dreadfully boring that one of your only objectives is to stay awake until it’s over. One student even bemoans about not bringing a pillow.
• Attack Reflector: Hitting the block button at the last possible moment - called "Perfect Protego" in-game - reflects any incoming blockable projectile attack right back at its source. One available Talent even turns each incoming projectile into two outgoing ones.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Flying animal mounts, such as the Hippogriff, don't really have any advantages over flying broomsticks. In fact, they are less precise in flight than brooms are. But it still looks awesome to fly on a large beast.
  • Graphorn riding is even worse. Yeah, it's cool and all, but Graphorns are huge land creatures that handle like a barge around corners and, despite their ability to leap down cliffs, are always constrained by the area's geography, making them vastly less useful overall than the broom. They are the only beast that can attack enemies, but their charge is hard to aim, can only be used sparingly and deals surprisingly little damage.
  • Avada Kedavra. Yes, it can kill almost anything in one shot aside from the Final Boss, for obvious reasons, but it also has the longest cooldown of any spell in the game.
• "Back to Camera" Pose: On the cover art, because of Character Customization.
• Badass Teacher: Just about all Hogwarts teachers except Headmaster Black are immensely skilled and powerful spellcasters that will smear the walls with your exploded remains - having actually been the ones to make your remains exploded, mind you! - if you threaten the school or its students, as they ably demonstrate in the prelude to the Final Battle.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Even though you can play the Student as a selfish Jerkass, they're still firmly on the side of good. Learning and spamming the three Unforgivable Curses at any enemy unfortunate enough to cross their path won't change a thing about their moral disposition. It's helped by the fact that you simply can't target anyone that isn't an Asshole Victim.
• Beam-O-War: Ensues every time a boss casts Avada Kedavra at you, forcing you to keep Button Mashing to push the spell back at them.
• Big Brother Instinct: Sebastian Sallow has a twin sister who unfortunately is suffering from a mysterious, debilitating curse that is slowly sapping her health. With his family having had no luck in breaking it through conventional magical means, Sebastian has become convinced that the only remaining way to save his sister from death lies in pursuit of The Dark Arts.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the final battle all of the Hogwarts teachers (except for Professor Binns who is a ghost and thus cannot use a wand at all and thus would be less than useless, and Headmaster Black of course) will arrive to defend the castle from the attacking goblins, saving Fig and the main character from being crushed by a falling pillar, and taking on the horde of goblins and trolls so the protagonist can focus on fighting Ranrok.
• Big Eyes, Little Eyes: Mooncalves in all their sweet, big-eyed adorableness make a return here, modelled after their appearance in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
• Big "NO!": Sometimes screamed by enemies when they witness you killing one of theirs, usually followed by them swearing to avenge their fallen buddy.
• Bittersweet Ending: Whether you choose to keep the Repository locked away or absorb its power for yourself, by the end of the story, Ranrok and Rookwood are both dead, Harlow is arrested in Natsai's last quest, and it's only a matter of time until the Loyalists and Ashwinders disintegrate without their leaders. And for your efforts in the final battle beneath Hogwarts, you earn a hundred points for your house, singlehandedly winning the House Cup. But none of it changes the fact that Professor Fig is dead, the Keepers seemingly vanish from their portraits forever once their role in guiding you is fulfilled, and you can potentially choose to keep the Repository a secret from your allies, taking on the burden of protecting it all by yourself. Oh, and Professor Black never does uncancel Quidditch.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Two of the Unforgivable Curses ironically fall into this category, namely Crucio and Avada Kedavra. These spells purely rely on flat damage and don't do anything fancy, such as Playing with Fire, flinging enemies around or transforming them into objects. However, all Unforgivable Curses break through enemy shields, allowing the player to fully rely on them in all combat situations.
  • Riding your broom vs. riding magical beasts. The latter is definitely cool, but the former gives you the same mobility but more control, along with how you can hover in place, and move up and down at will.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The trolls after the first one aren't technically bosses, but they are still extremely tough that can take a lot of your life with a single attack if you're not careful.
• Bragging Rights Reward: As the leveling system is tied to completing challenges, it's impossible to get and use Level 40 equipment unless you complete the entire game's challenge section. In doing so though, you would need to complete the main story, all of the side quests, and defeat all infamous foes around the map, and the game does not have any post game content. By the time you can actually use Level 40 equipment, you would have already cleared the game's array of enemies.
• Breath Weapon: The one dragon that the player character encounters and fights in the game utilizes a variety of fire-based attacks launched from her maw. Given that the Student doesn't want to hurt the dragon because they're trying to return her stolen egg to her, dodging the attacks is the only thing you can do.
• Broken Aesop: Sebastian's storyline has him become increasingly involved in the Dark Arts out of his stubborn desire to cure Anne, culminating in him killing his uncle with Avada Kedavra in anger and getting himself sent to Azkaban if the player decides to turn him in. It is portrayed as a horrible event that proves Solomon right about the Dark Arts and how incredibly dangerous it is, for both themselves and everybody else around them. Meanwhile, the protagonist can not only learn and use the three Unforgivable Curses to wipe their enemies out with zero consequences even if they're otherwise a goody-two-shoes, but everybody else treats it rather nonchalantly.
• Call-Forward:
  • A sidequest requires the protagonist to sneak into Honeydukes through a secret passageway hidden in a statue of a one-eyed witch. Harry uses this same passageway to sneak into Hogsmeade without a permission form in Prisoner of Azkaban.
  • You can find the bathroom where "someone has carved a small serpent into one of the faucets". You're standing at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
  • The wand movement used to learn Avada Kedavra is in the shape of Harry's iconic lightning scar. Appropriately, this is the spell that gave him the scar.
  • Reaching Salazar Slytherin's secret scriptorium will have the player find a letter revealing that he has placed a basilisk within the Chamber of Secrets that he hopes his descendant will use to purge the school of muggle-born students.
• Canon Welding: Generally speaking, the game takes lore from the Harry Potter books and aesthetics from the Harry Potter films, but it doesn't strictly adhere to either book canon or movie canon. Hogwarts in the game is a kind of compromise between book Hogwarts and movie Hogwarts. The game even welds the Hogwarts of the earlier films and the later films by including the Entrance Courtyard alongside the Entrance Hall.
• Carry a Big Stick: Trolls carry gigantic clubs, which can be used against them by casting Flipendo or using Ancient Magic.
• The Cavalry: As you're racing through Hogwarts' foundations to stop Ranrok from accessing the final Repository, an army of trolls and goblins eventually blocks your path. Cue almost every single one of your teachers apparating in and start blasting the everloving crap out of the attackers. It's half a dozen against hundreds, but they utterly curbstomp the loyalists regardless, clearing the way for your showdown with the Final Boss.
• The Chosen One: The protagonist apparently possesses a unique, strange, and mysterious talent that is the key to unlocking an ancient, long-forgotten power, a power that could change and shape the legacy of Hogwarts and the entire wizarding world for good or evil, depending on the player's choices.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Standard combat spells fall in one of three color-coded categories: Force (purple), Control (yellow), or Damage (red). Advanced enemy types regularly throw up colored shield charms that are vulnerable only to spells from the category of the same color. Major bosses also use attacks that, unless countered quickly with the correct spell category, are unavoidable and deal massive damage to the Student.
  • Gear quality is color-coded and follows the standard RPG formula of green, blue, purple and gold/orange, in ascending order.
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the protagonist's schoolmates is Ominis Gaunt, related to the Gaunt family, who are direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin and ancestors of Voldemort.
  • To access Phineas Nigellus Black's office - who is the Headmaster at this time -, the player has to consult with his house elf the password to give the gargoyle: Toujours Pur, the Black family motto.
  • At one point in the game, the player goes through Niamh's pensieve flashback and encounters the three Deathly Hallows: the cloak, the stone and the wand.
  • The wand movement used to learn Wingardium Leviosa is in the distinct pattern of a horizontal swish and downward flick motion, which is the exact motion for the spell explained by Professor Flitwick in Sorcerer's Stone.
• Cool Teacher: Most of the Hogwarts teachers you interact with count. Some like Fig, Ronen and Garlick are friendly, personable and fun-loving. Others like Weasley, Sharp and Hecat are on the stricter side but nevertheless reasonable, fair and genuinely invested in their students' success. The only exceptions are Binns, who continues the franchise tradition of absent-minded ghosts teaching unspeakably boring History of Magic classes, and Headmaster Black, who fortunately doesn't seem to teach at all, being too preoccupied with himself.
• The Corruption: Some magical beasts in the grounds around Hogwarts are being corrupted and driven mad by a mysterious dark magic. Strangely, although there are some implications here and there, the exact cause of the corruption is never revealed or even investigated.
• Cow Tipping: You can use Flipendo on a cow to tip it. There's even a Trophy/Achievement for doing it 10 times.
• Crapsaccharine World: Voldemort isn't around, and possibly due to that, Slytherin students are comparatively more easygoing, but the campus is somehow even more dangerous than it will be in the late 20th Century, and the nearby town of Hogsmeade is threatened by criminal and terrorist elements that go so far as to operate in broad daylight.
• Creature-Breeding Mechanic: Once you reach winter (and you've finished his previous quests), Deek will have a side quest teaching you how to breed the beasts you've rescued and taken with you to the Room of Requirement.
• Crime of Passion: Sebastian Swallow, the Slytherin companion of the protagonist, attempts to find a cure for his cursed sister by using the Dark Arts. This unfortunately conflicts with his uncle Solomon's distaste for the Dark Arts, and when Solomon destroys the artifact that could possibly cure Anne, Sebastian's anger leads him to cast the Killing Curse on his uncle in a fit of rage, an act that shocks and horrifies him. This also leads Anne to sever ties with her brother, making Sebastian's quest to save Anne All for Nothing.
• Cue the Sun: After saving Highwing the Hippogriff from poachers and narrowly avoiding an Avada Kedavra aimed at you the sun will rise just as you escape the area and reach the safety of Hogwarts.
• Cutscene Incompetence: While the protagonist is attending Hogwarts pretty late as a fifth-year and is justifiably weak early on, they're quick to pick up on every spell throughout the year, including the Unforgivable Curses, and a skilled player can have them utterly decimate large groups of enemies of various types. However, at the end of Lodgok's Loyalty when Rookwood and Ranrok are alone and in the same room with them, the protagonist just stands there and doesn't even make a token attempt to save Lodgok's life or attack Rookwood and Ranrok. Had it been a playable segment, the player would've started fighting them as soon as they showed up or immediately after Lodgok gets pushed the first time.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: All three of the Unforgivable Curses, the mind-controlling Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus torture curse, and the killing curse, Avada Kedavra, can be learned by the player character. Interestingly, and unlike how they're normally portrayed, learning and using them has absolutely no impact on your character's morality, part of which might be explained by almost all sentient enemies in the game being Asshole Victims that really have it coming. The Killing Curse is also shown in use by an otherwise extremely moral background character, providing yet another example of Bad Powers, Good People.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The Thestrals might be big and scary thanks to their dark coloring and skeletal appearance, and the bat wings don't help either. But they are still kind creatures who love receiving belly rubs.
  • The player character can invoke this trope by dressing as a Dark Wizard, but being played as a complete goody two shoes.
• Dean Bitterman: Phineas Nigellus Black, the current headmaster of Hogwarts. Frequently referred to in later years as the most unpopular headmaster in the history of Hogwarts, Phineas is shown as a pompous, snide, thoroughly unlikable man, who clearly has zero real interest in the academic advancement of the students under his charge, only really interested in the power and status that being the headmaster of Hogwarts brings him. He also shows favoritism towards pure blood students, as per his family tradition.
• Death Ray: The dreaded Avada Kedavra is one of the spells you can learn.
• Degraded Boss: The first troll you meet appears in Hogsmeade and it's basically a boss battle, after that you can find trolls in the open world, even finding two in the same area, due to the level system, the trolls you find in the open world they are even stronger than you faced in Hogsmeade, so you can end up dying if you are not careful or prepared.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • You can remove your robes and travel around in your pajamas, which will trigger unique passive dialogue from various named NPCs, such as shopkeepers and companions.
  • Though it will one-shot just about every foe, even some bosses, the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, has absolutely ZERO effect against the inferi and other undead. Why? Because they're already dead.
  • Toward the end of the game, Professor Weasley will remark on some of your adventures outside of Hogwarts. She'll remark about how sociable Poppy's become as of late if you completed her questline.
• Dialogue Tree: During conversation you will often have the option to ask more questions or dig deeper into specifics. You'll also be given the option to give the main character a personality by selecting which response to give during said conversations and in some cases receive a different outcome to a quest based on which answer you chose, such as handing over the requested item, keeping the item, or demanding a reward.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In the "Solved by the Bell" side quest, you have to play a series of eight musical notes. The resulting music is a snippet of "Hedwig's Theme".
• Distant Prequel: According to the game's trailer and the press release, the story is set in the late 19th century, putting it roughly a half century before Fantastic Beasts and a century before Harry Potter but is within the lifetimes of some of the pre-established characters in the franchise.
• Downer Ending: Sebastian's questline does not have a happy ending for anyone involved. Sebastian kills his uncle with the Killing Curse in a fit of anger after Solomon destroys the relic that might've been able to save Anne's life. When the latter learns of this, she tells Sebastian she will never forgive him and cuts off all contact with him. Worse still, the protagonist has the option of informing the authorities of what Sebastian did, landing him in Azkaban. Even if you don't sell him out, it's clear that Sebastian will never be able to forgive himself for killing Solomon.
• Dramatic Irony: The Field Guide page for "Slytherin's Sink" points out a snake symbol carved into a tap in a girls' bathroom, stating that "Nobody knows what it means." The characters may not know, but the audience knows that it conceals the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
• Dub Name Change: Sebastian, Anne, and Solomon Sallow are renamed Pallow in the French localization, presumably because "Sallow" pronounced with a French accent is phonetically identical to a French insult ("salaud", which more or less translates as the non-literal meaning of "bastard").
• Dull Surprise: The game's voice acting and facial animations certainly aren't the most expressive of its time, which often results in characters reacting to spectacular events in a very understated fashion. Maybe it's the Stiff Upper Lip?
• Easy Level Trick: Most Ancient Magic Traces and a bunch of Merlin Trials are clearly built around climbing and platforming, but they're almost never located in no-fly zones, so you can just zip to the targets on your broom nice and easy.
• Elopement: Otto Dibble and Rose Hill find this as the solution to their Secret Relationship behind her father's (who is also his boss) back. You will receive a letter from him where he mentions that they'll inform him of their marriage as soon as they return from their honeymoon.
• Enchanted Forest: The Forbidden Forest outside of Hogwarts, home to all manner of secrets and dangerous, deadly magical beasts, is one of the areas the player character can explore.
• Equipment-Hiding Fashion: Every equipment piece can be magicked to look like any other piece of gear you have owned in the past at least once. By completing challenges and quests you can even unlock more visual styles. Sadly though, the game never mentions it, so unaware players can go around wearing Rainbow Pimp Gear for hours before noticing the "Change Appearance" button on the Gear menu.
• Evil Is Easy: At one point, you have to choose between chastizing Sebastian for using the Killing Curse or condoning his use of dark magic. If you take his side, you get to use the Killing Curse yourself.
• Evil Is Not a Toy:
  • This is the basis for the conflict between Sebastian and his uncle Solomon regarding Anne's curse. Sebastian believes dabbling in dark magic is the answer into curing Anne, while Solomon, being an ex-Auror adamantly believes this trope, saying dark magic can only lead to ruin.
  • The flashbacks show Isidora following the same path as Sebastian, using ancient and dark magic to help her father and others. However, it comes at a terrible price, forcing her colleagues to stop her.
• Evil Poacher: Poachers make up one of two hostile human subfactions players have to tangle with. They're cruel, ruthless, well-organized and absolutely everywhere. The upshot is that they provide plenty of deserving targets to practice your Unforgivable Curses on.
• Explosive Barrels: Commonly found around enemy strongholds, primarily the ones where excavations are taking place. You can blow them up right where they are, but it's generally more effective to pick them up and throw them at the most annoying enemy in sight. Later in the game you can also create your own explosive barrels by hitting any enemy with an upgraded Transfiguration spell.
• Faceless Goons: Dark Wizards, be it Rookwood's goons or poachers under Harlow are all wearing masks eerily reminiscent of Voldemort's Death Eaters. It helps make them Obviously Evil, but also dehumanizes them since the main character will go through hundreds of them in a single play through. Notably, Ranrok's loyalists are spared of this trope.
• Fantastic Light Source: Lumos is one of the first spells the player character will be able to add to their repertoire, useful for exploring through the dark areas they traverse.
• Fantastic Racism: As is usual for the franchise, Wizard-kind looks down on pretty much anyone and everyone not a wizard or witch, and of course there is the usual Pure-blood vs Muggle-born racism along with it. Sadly, if the books are anything to go by, it's only going to get worse in the future. That's the motive of Ranrok's evil, who becomes a racist himself after falling victim to it.
• Fluffy Tamer: The main character has the opportunity to tame and raise multiple magical beasts, some of which would make most wizards pee their pants and/or run for the hills, such as Thestrals, Hippogriffs or the massive Graphorns. You even have the opportunity to name them, creating your very own Fluffy the Terrible or Deathbringer the Adorable.
• Flying Broomstick: Players are able to obtain their own broomsticks, enabling them to travel around at a much faster speed. There is also a time-trials minigame and a couple quests focusing on it.
• Forced Transformation:
  • The late-game Transfiguration spell lets you turn animals into various inanimate objects or enemies into barrels for a time, which you can then hurl at other enemies for massive damage. Invest a talent point and the barrels get upgraded to Explosive Barrels for even more damage.
  • Ancient Magic finishers may occasionally and irreversibly turn the target into a chicken.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Nearly Headless Nick is convinced that his latest attempt to join the Headless Hunt will be successful. Anyone who's familiar with the series proper knows that he is doomed to failure.
  • The goblin rebellion that features in the main plot is also doomed to failure.
• Foreshadowing: During Divination class, Professor Onai will ask you about what you see in your future. One of the responses is “power”; “I see good things. After all, the future is mine for the taking, and I shall take what I must.” you tell her. This hints at one of the final choices of the story, in which you choose to absorb some Ancient Magic from the repository and become even more powerful.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Mr. Moon's quest requires you to remove Demiguise statues left behind by a prankster since Mr. Moon apparently has a phobia of them. The statues are meant to inconvenience him and keep him from doing his job as Hogwarts groundskeeper. Why are half of those statues inside people's locked bedrooms in towns miles away, and how would that inconvenience him while he does his job is anyone's guess.
  • In spite of the series' lore stating that "The Wand Chooses The Wizard", your wand is fully customizable, with the player able to choose their wand core, wood, colour, and handle. To be fair, the wand is treated like Schrödinger's Player Character, with the wand being set in story, and the customization being entirely for the player's benefit.
  • Conjuration spells cannot be used outside of the Room of Requirement. Prof. Weasley states this is because of spells blocking their use in the rest of the castle due to safely concerns; however, this doesn't explain why they also don't work outside of Hogwarts.
  • There are dozens of locked doors in the game, mostly meant to keep students out of places they're not supposed to be in. However, once you learn the Alohomora spell, you can walk into said places, even in the face of authority figures that are meant to keep you out of those places and they'll have no reaction whatsoever.
  • During a couple of stealth quests you'll be immediately sent packing if you're caught by patrolling NPCs in these restricted areas. Once the related mission is over, however, you can waltz right back in and no one will even acknowledge your presence.
  • During infiltration sequences, the game will make your broom unavailable for no in-game reason (not even bothering with an excuse about a spell preventing broom use ). It becomes almost Lampshade Hanging when the protagonist stands looking around wondering just how could they possibly get to the top of a castle.
  • Since the main character is joining Hogwarts as a fifth year, Deputy Headmistress Weasley will ask the teachers to give them special assignments to catch up to their classmates. The assignments are usually related to their subject, the reward for completing them however more often that not is completely unrelated to the subject they teach. For example, Professor Howin (the care of magical beasts teacher) will teach the main character "Bombarda", an explosive spell.
  • In the Wizarding World, casting the Unforgivable Curses is punishable by life imprisonment. In cutscenes, several characters react very emotionally when one of these curses is cast, most notably Solomon's death at the hands of Sebastian using the Killing Curse. In gameplay, you can cast them all the time with only light reprimands from other characters at worst, if even that.
  • Successfully hitting someone with the Killing Curse results in, well, that person being killed. While this applies for most enemies with a couple exceptions like Inferi (since they're already dead), during Victor Rookwood, Cassandra Mason (before it was patched out), and Theophilus Harlow's boss fights, using it on Rookwood and Harlow doesn't kill them on the spot; you have to successfully pass a QTE to finish them off. In Harlow and Mason's cases, the game just acts like you didn't cast the curse on them in the subsequent cutscene.
  • Inverted during the "haunted Hogsmeade Shop" mission after a patch. During the player's fight against Cassandra Mason, the Unforgivable Curses are locked since Officer Singer is in the immediate area and would logically arrest the player for using the curses.
  • Despite a fully implemented day/night cycle and certain activities only being accessable at night (along with a map option to switch between the two) vendors are open 24/7 barring any story related incidents.
• Giant Spider: The wilderness surrounding Hogwarts include multiple nests of them. Notably they are not acromantulas but a different species of giant spiders known as Thornbacks. ^note The Acromantulas seen during Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts were introduced to the Forbidden Forest by Hagrid much later, starting with Aragog.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Creature-Breeding Mechanic feels predicated on this. Normally you'd try to keep animals safe in their natural habitat, but with the threat of poachers having grown so extreme that nothing and nowhere is safe anymore, capturing and relocating the defenseless beasts to your vivariums is the only sensible choice left.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Ominis Gaunt's aunt was convinced that their heir Salazar Slytherin was not an evil man and that there was more to him than use of the Dark Arts. While attempting to reach his secret office within Hogwarts, she ended up in an un-escapable trap as she came by herself and the trap required at least 2 people to escape, causing her to starve to death. And even if she had been with someone else, the only way to escape the trap is for one person to cast the Cruciatus Curse, a very sadistic curse designed to cause unimaginable pain, on the other, proving that Slytherin really was as sadistic as the Gaunt family lauded him for being. Also, a note that you find within his office makes it clear that the argument between him and Godric that caused him to leave Hogwarts forever was about whether to allow muggle-borns to study at the school or not, something Slytherin was whole heartedly against.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: The conflict between Sebastian and his uncle Solomon about Anne's curse is this. Sebastian is willing to go far in order to cure Anne, including relying on the Dark Arts. Solomon, a retired Auror, does not want anything to do with the Dark Arts, even if it could possibly cure his niece. He proclaims the Dark Arts to be dangerous and that they never should be meddled with.
• Hellish Horse: The black, bat-winged thestrals make an appearance in the game, with a purchasable DLC allowing for one to serve as a mount for the player character.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: The game offers a multitude of ways to turn enemies' own weapons and attacks against them.
  • Trolls can have their giant club smashed into their face, or the rocks they throw caught and launched back at them.
  • You can grab a Loyalist Ranger's magical crossbow bolt right out of his weapon and hurl it in his face.
  • Upgrading your Ancient Magic Throw enables you to disarm an enemy with Expelliarmus and immediately launch their dropped weapon at them, similar to the trolls' rocks mentioned above.
  • Performing a Perfect Protego returns incoming blockable projectiles right back to sender.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Towards the beginning of the game, after meeting Professor Weasley and receiving the Field Guide, if you press the button opposite of using the Revelio spell, you bring up the hotkey menu for assigning your manual spells that reveals the full list of spells that you're going to be able to use way ahead of actually learning them. Including the Awesome, but Impractical Unforgivable Curses, spoiling that you will eventually get the opportunity to learn and use them.
  • Similarly, opening the tools menu at any time reveals that you'll gain access to a broom, a flying mount and a land-bound beast to ride at some point in the story.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Early in the game you'll be granted access to the Room of Requirement to use as your private study hall. You can collect or purchase multiple items to decorate the room with, including workbenches that will actually produce ingredients and potions.
• Joke and Receive: The sidequest "Follow the Butterflies" applies this trope retroactively to a line from the second Harry Potter film. After Harry and Ron are told to "follow the spiders," the arachnophobic Ron complains, "Why spiders? Why couldn't it be, 'follow the butterflies'?" This was presumably meant to be nothing more than a joke Ron was making, but the sidequest reveals that following the butterflies was an actual thing all along. (Since the game and the movies don't take place in exactly the same continuity, this might also count as a Mythology Gag.)
• Jump Scare:
  • Your first encounter with an Acromantula will be through a gap in the wall, as you see the largest spider in the game slowly climb its way over the hole, with a suitable Scare Chord to boot.
  • The haunted dungeon in "Minding Your Own Business" is chock-full of creepy scares. Furniture flies at you, faceless mannequins appear out of nowhere and try to grab you, a giant spider lunges at you in a seemingly-empty hallway... enter this sidequest at your own discretion!
• "Just Frame" Bonus: The ring-shaped icon mentioned in Action Commands will have its outer rim slowly converge to the inner rim. Casting Protego as both rims overlap causes the attack to bounce back at the attacker.
• Just Train Wrong: The Hogwarts Express makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of the game, with her design lifted straight from the movies. Except said design is of a 1930s Great Western Railway locomotive carrying 1950s British Railways coaches in the middle of the late 19th century. A Wizard Did It to be sure, but still.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When you get Sorted into your house, the Sorting Hat comments that you've come with "preferences and preconceptions — certain expectations". Players will probably have an idea of what they want from a Harry Potter game and what house they want to be Sorted into.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • Hogwarts Legacy is similar to the early books of Rowling's book series, albeit much more positive in that the Wizarding World doesn't have to deal with Voldemort for another four decades or so. The only dark wizards encountered in the story are the Ashwinders working under Victor Rookwood and poachers hunting magical beasts, though the wizarding world is also dealing with a goblin rebellion.
  • That said, the game casually has a bodycount that is much higher than any of the books (even if mostly generic mooks). The game doesn't even really try to pretend that the Protagonist isn't killing dark wizards and evil goblins in your encounters with them; many of their one-liners for finishing off enemies all but state that they are killing them, even without the Killing Curse. Whether it's frying them with lightning, repeatedly slamming them into the ground the way Ranrok killed the Gringotts employee at the beginning, or freezing and shattering them, the protagonist quickly gains a higher kill count at the age of 15 than Harry did the entire story.
• Living Hat: The Sorting Hat, a sentient hat that sorts every new student into one of the school's four houses appears at the beginning of the game as a means for the player to choose which Hogwarts House their character will be sorted into.
• Logical Weakness: Try to use Avada Kedavra on already deceased and reanimated foes like Inferi, and the spell yields no results whatsoever. Can't kill what's already dead, after all. Same goes with artificial constructs like the Pensieve Guardian since they're never actually be alive to begin with.
• Loophole Abuse: One Field Guide page tells the story of a wizard who wanted his house-elf to fight alongside him in battle, and fashioned a suit of armour for the elf; however, since the armour could be considered clothing, it freed the elf as soon as they put it on, allowing them to disapparate away from the fight.
• Magikarp Power:
  • The transformation spell on its own only stuns an enemy into place by turning them into a barrel. Hitting a transformed enemy with a spell even ends the effect. However, unlock the corresponding talent and the target turns into an explosive barrel, which you can then hurl into another enemy, killing both of them.
  • Avada Kedavra is Cool, but Inefficient due to its high cooldown. But there is a talent that allows it to kill every enemy with the Curse debuff. If you center your character build around spreading this debuff, you can easily clear enemy groups with one simple Avada Kedavra.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Dark Wizard category of enemies will often wear masks as part of their Obviously Evil uniforms.
• Money for Nothing: The game features an inverted cash difficulty. At the start of the game multiple teacher's assignments require you to obtain materials for class, which are expensive when you don't have any form of income other than selling old or under-leveled gear. However as you buy more spellcraft recipes to furnish your room of requirement and the necessary seeds, you'll be able to produce everything that you could possibly need. By the end of the game there's nothing you can buy that you can't obtain for free via the Room of Requirement or by random drops.
• Monster Munch: Hapless Ministry of Magic official George Osric joins Professor Fig and the Player Character on their trip to Hogwarts, only to get promptly eaten by the dragon that destroys their carriage en route. The story even makes his death an explicit fact shortly after when the Student becomes able to see the carriage's team of Thestral mounts.^note Creatures that are noted in canon to be invisible to everyone except those who have experienced the death of another.
• Mook Horror Show:
  • If you kill an enemy, other enemies of the same group will sometimes scream in horror and/or swear to avenge their murdered companion.
  • Every enemy in the area will cower in horror for a few seconds whenever you cast Ancient Magic or Avada Kedavra.
• More Diverse Sequel: While the original books and movies were already ethnically diverse, this is the first time official Wizarding World media has featured a visually impaired character (Ominis Gaunt), a transgender character (Sirona Ryan), and a happily married lesbian couple (Nora and Priya Treadwell).
• Multiple Endings:
  • Downplayed. The ending of the game is more or less the same, but the outcome differs via Last-Second Ending Choice. The protagonist either decides to take the corrupted magic power for themselves or succeed Rackham and his colleagues as the newest Keeper and safeguarding the ancient magic.
  • Sebastian's questline has two different outcomes depending on your choices toward the end. You can either turn Sebastian over to the wizarding world authorities for killing Solomon with Avada Kedavra (using the Killing Curse on a living creature or person guarantees the user will be thrown into Azkaban for life without parole) or convince Anne and Ominis not to say anything and keep Sebastian safe.
• Non-Player Companion: There are four companions the protagonist gets involved with throughout the course of the game, each hailing from one of Hogwarts' houses: Natsai Onai from Gryffindor, a transfer student from Uagadaou, Poppy Sweeting from Hufflepuff, a magical Animal Lover who's awkward around her fellow students, Amit Thakkar from Ravenclaw, a budding astrologist, and Sebastian Sallow from Slytherin, a troublemaker with an interest in the Dark Arts.
• Noodle Incident: Frequently the subject of the random event where a student is being publicly berated by a Howler received from a family member, ranging from covering their entire house in hexes to Transfiguring their owl into a goblet and leaving it in the Great Hall to freeing their family's long-time house-elf by giving them clothes unknowingly.
• Oddly Small Organization: Despite there apparently being enough dark-magic wielding poachers and homicidal goblins in the Hogwarts Valley area to qualify as substantial demographics in their own right, the local police force seems to consist of one constable, who doesn't do all that much.
• One-Hit Kill: The Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, appears in the second gameplay showcases, and true to series lore, it one-shots any enemy unfortunate enough to get hit by it. The player can't cast the spell willy-nilly, however, as it has a long cooldown.
• One-Hit Polykill: The variant of Avada Kedavra infused with Ancient Magic doesn't just kill whatever you hit directly, it bounces around between every enemy in the vicinity.
• Open Secret: Despite Crossed Wands being an 'unsanctioned' duelling club, where members can only join when invited by another member, it's not as "secretive" as club members Lucan and Sebastian think it is; DADA Professor Hecat is so well aware of its existence that she instructs the protagonist to participate as part of an extra assignment.
• Our Dragons Are Different: A gigantic fire-breathing dragon appears as one of the fantastical beasts the player encounters.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: Hippogriffs make an appearance, and the player character will have the opportunity to ride and fly on one once they've liberated it.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Shambling, glowy-eyed Inferi are one of the dark creatures the player character can encounter in the wider world outside Hogwarts.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Unforgivable Curses are the epitome of dark magic, but it's hard to feel bad about using them when the targets are an assorted collection of murderers, racists, poachers and similar scum.
• Permanently Missable Content: You get up to three chances to learn each of the three Unforgivable Curses, but if you decline all of them, you can ask Sebastian later on if you change your mind. However, if you opt to turn Sebastian in for killing his uncle at the end of his questline, there will be no other opportunities to learn them. There's no actual benefit to declining, though, as using them to your heart's content has no ramifications whatsoever. Thankfully, the Unforgivables aren't factored into the "learn all spells" achievement, so you can unlock it even if you roleplay as a goody-two-shoes character.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Lucan Brattleby is only thirteen years old, but he’s the leader of the duelling club for a reason, and proves himself to be very skilled despite his young age.
• Player Headquarters: The Room of Requirement serves as this, giving the player their own space to decorate and design it as they see fit and fill it with various implements to help you with quests, such as potion and plant stations.
• Pocket Dimension: The Room of Requirement features up to four vivariums that boil down to this thanks to them being Bigger on the Inside; with their own weather and even own sun, giving enough space for rescued beasts to run around in it.
• Police Are Useless: Despite having proof that Harlow and company are blackmailing multiple people around Hogsmeade, and that they kidnapped two people, including a minor, student at Hogwarts and daughter of a professor there; Officer Singer still refuses to do anything about it and is more concerned with tattling on Natty to her mother than doing anything to stop Harlow's gang. And yet, during the PlayStation exclusive quest "Minding your own business", after Cassandra Mason uses a single spell on her, Officer Singer chains her up and silences her and then declares that it's off to Azkaban for her without any evidence other than her own suspicions and the word of a student.
• Punny Name: On top of the usual in your face name puns (such as Ominis Gaunt), some quests also have these, such as "A friend in deed", "Like a moth to a frame" or "Well, well, well" (which features a talking well) and "Sweeping the competition" (about broom racing).
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Most of the smaller magical beasts like puffskeins and fwoopers are almost dangerously cute, and even the biggest ones can make animal lovers Squee with their adorable behavior when groomed and fed. And that's not even getting into their babies.
• Rollercoaster Mine: The opening section of the game involves the player visiting Gringotts, which involves taking a speeding cart through the bank's twisting caverns, all the way down to one of the oldest vaults.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: The Highlands around Hogwarts are littered with ruins of various sizes, from detached pieces of wall to entire crumbling castles. A few are revealed to have been the estates of powerful wizards and witches that died centuries ago, and some of the dungeons are explicitly tombs, but most are just... there, with the Student often musing about what they might've been back in their day.
• Running Gag: There is a wandering musician that appears in Hogsmeade and other surrounding hamlets. Tipping him with money causes him to reappear later with another instrument added to his collection, remarking that your tip gave him enough money to purchase said instrument.
• Savage Wolves: The wilderness surrounding Hogwarts has wolves called Mongrels that will attack the player. Presumably they're the werewolf descendants mentioned elsewhere.
• Scenery Porn:
  • The greater Hogwarts area and especially the castle itself are absolutely gorgeous.
  • The Vivarium biomes for your beasts are quite stunning and atmospheric. They include a cozy mountain, a wide open forest, a summery coast, and a haunting swamp.
• Seasonal Baggage: As the events of the game progress, seasonal changes will occur, with trees changing color and shedding their leaves in fall, snow coating the grounds in winter, and frequent heavy rains occurring in springtime.
• Secret Room: Considering it's Hogwarts, there are plenty of these to be found. Some are hidden behind locks, whereas others require solving puzzles to gain access.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some side quest names feature a few. For example "The Girl from Uagadou" references The Girl from Ipanema. Or "The elf, the nab-sack and the loom" references The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
  • The Herbology teacher, a young airy-fairy witch named Mirabel Garlick is a reference to Magrat Garlick of Discworld fame, both being lighthearted witches and herb-women.
• Slave Mooks: The Unforgivable Imperius Curse is a learnable spell in the game and can be used in combat to brainwash enemies into temporarily fighting on your side.
• Some Dexterity Required: On PC, default keys for broomstick flight have faster flight mapped on Shift and flying lower mapped on Ctrl, which makes speeding while going down a very unconfortable finger combination as one finger must remain on W at all time (to go forward) and A-D are required to turn fast. The keys can be remapped, though.
• Spiders Are Scary: The devs put a lot of work into making the game's Giant Spiders as disgusting and scary as possible, and it shows. The smallest ones are the size of a cat, the largest rival a big truck in scope, and their mobility allows them to attack from almost any angle at any moment, making them prime Jump Scare material. Their lairs are almost always dark and covered in spider webs that impede movement, and the spiders themselves seem to actively hate you. Even the harmless spiders that just crawl around for decoration and don't actually attack you are marked as enemies on the minimap. Fortunately, anyone truly terrified of spiders can turn on arachnophobia mode, which replaces them with goofy balloon-like things wearing rollerskates, referencing Ron Weasley casting Ridikkulus on a boggart.
• Start X to Stop X: You can prevent magical beasts from being captured by poachers by capturing them yourself and raising them in one of your vivarium.
• Story Branching: Downplayed. Your playthrough only slightly differs depending on your chosen house. As in it affects which of the four companions you interact with the earliest and which quest puts you on the path to finding the Map Chamber. For example, a Ravenclaw student will be tasked by Mr. Olliveander to retrieve a stolen wand, whereas a Hufflepuff student will visit Azkaban prison and meet with Anne Thisbe.
• Super Multi-Purpose Room: The Room of Requirement makes a reappearance, where it functions as a sort of player hub, where they can brew potions, grow magical plants and herbs, upgrade gear, and care for the fantastic beasts they find and adopt in a magical vivarium.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The PlayStation timed exclusive sidequest "Minding your own business" starts out as every other "go talk to NPC and come back" style of quest. There are few odd comments about how the previous tenants had to leave in a rush and the shop has been abandoned because the owner has been unable to keep a tenant, but it's not until you're asked to go check the chest in the back of the shop that the whole quest evolves into a horror mission to escape an ever changing house of horrors, sometimes in pitch black darkness, all while being teased and harassed by a cruel Poltergeist proud of having drove many of the previous tenants mad, with sudden moments where the lights turn off unexpectedly during which the dozens of Murderous Mannequins will change position, getting closer and closer until they start attacking you. The whole quest takes cues from Silent Hill and Resident Evil. While the puzzles and exploration aren't particularly difficult and there's nothing gory or disturbing, the ambiance and constant jump scares will keep you on your toes and make it one of the most memorable side quest of the game for better or worse.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Thornbacks are this for the Acromantulas of the Forbidden Forrest as giant spider enemies, since the latter would not be introduced until the 1940's. Unlike the Acromantulas, they aren't capable of speech.
• A Taste of Power: With the DLC that the deluxe edition has, there is a statue to the north of Hogwarts that takes you to a battle arena where you are given all 3 of the Unforgivable Curses to use while in the arena, allowing you to witness their power firsthand. This can be accessed rather early in the game, much earlier than you can otherwise obtain said spells.
• There Is Another: It's almost immediately established that the protagonist is not the first person to use ancient magic. In the distant past, it was previously used by Professor Rackham and his fellows from Hogwarts. Coincidentally, it's revealed that all currently known ancient magic-users all started Hogwarts late as a fifth-year, meaning the protagonist's circumstances are not unheard of.
• Tongue Trauma: Dugbogs are massive toad-like beasts that can tank tons of damage, but if you manage to lift one by its tongue, a quick follow-up with the slashing charm Diffindo will cut off their tongue and kill them instantly.
• Too Many Belts: Some custom outfits can veer into this territory, particularly the Ashwinder outfit earned by completing the battle arena, which features eighteen belts, including one randomly hanging from the left leg not attached to anything.
• Traveling Salesman: You can find a few of them such as Priya Treadwell and Leopold Babcocke along with their magic sales carts all around the Highlands.
• Useless Useful Spell: Reparo verges on this due to the rather vague junctures it can actually be used. The player is usually prodded when to cast it, but it can otherwise do nothing, such as not restoring a suit of living armor that's come apart after being knocked to the ground. In essence, it's purely a puzzle-solving skill with no other utility beyond that.
• Videogame Caring Potential:
  • During Natty's quest "A Basis for Blackmail" you can hear how Harlow's men stole from Agabus Philbert the book of poems his deceased wife wrote before passing away and that he had bound it in silver to gift to her as a birthday present (that she was never able to receive). You can find this book in the Ashwinder den and return it to him after the quest is over. You won't receive anything in return and there's no marker indicating it, it's just the right thing to do.
  • In Hogsmeade, there's a street performer playing music outside the Hog's Head to whom you can give a 10 Galleon tip. Doing so will allow the performer to buy another instrument.
  • At the end of the "Minding your own business" quest, you can free Penny the House-Elf. This has no effect on the game, since she'll voluntarily agree to stick around and run your shop anyway, but it allows the player to avoid making their character a slave-owner.
• Videogame Cruelty Potential: There's a lot of mischief you can commit while not wholly committing yourself to the Dark Arts. Bully students younger than you, throw cats into the school lake, melt the nice living snowmen who were waving at you, and more.
• Weak to Fire:
  • All spiders are weak to fire, but the Thornback scurrior will panic if it's lit on fire at low health and will run around in a panicked state. If you manage to hit it while it's panicking, it will explode, causing massive damage to other nearby enemies.
  • Inferi will be invulnerable to all damage until they're lit on fire.
• We Buy Anything: Most shops you'll find are specialty shops focused on one specific type of product. Specially in Hogsmeade where every shop usually carries only one type of good. Yet they will all accept to buy your hand-me-down gear. Some vendors will even comment on what you're selling them and some might even say "that's exactly what I was looking for", odd for a potions vendor.
• Welcome to Corneria:
  • The game mostly averts this, since you can't talk to characters unless they have something to say to you, and background characters have multiple conversations with each other to cycle through before repeating themselves. Deek the house-elf, however, is always in the Room of Requirement and only has a couple lines when he's idle, mainly commending you over and over on your potion work.
  • Similarly, each Floo Powder fast-travel point is decorated with a bust of Ignatia Wildsmith, and her five or so comments become very familiar after hearing them every time you fast-travel or run past one.
  • The Student has a very limited repertoire of combat quips and reactions to environmental puzzles, and neither of them take into account how far you've progressed through the game. This results in situations like the Student being amazed at having defeated an Ashwinder even though you've likely killed hundreds of them already. They also tend to treat every Merlin Trial they come across as something new and exciting despite, again, there being dozens upon dozens of them in the world that reuse the same half-dozen mechanics over and over again.
• When Trees Attack:
  • You can grow or purchase Chomping Cabbages, Mandrakes and Venomous Tentacula to use during combat.
  • According to Professor Garlick, her predecessor as Herbology teacher didn't care much for the plants and treated them with disdain. It escalated to the point that a Bowtruckle attacked and partially blinded him. When he returned to work, he kicked a chomping cabbage (by accident he claimed) which of course attacked him too, and finally after he was discharged again from the hospital, he was attacked by a Venomous Tentacula. He hasn't returned to work since.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Not the first Harry Potter branded game to feature this trope, but this one certainly takes it to a new level. In previous games, the open world would be limited to Hogwarts itself and maybe some of the grounds. The scope of this game's map features much more land to explore beyond the Hogwarts grounds, with mountains, wilderness, caves, dungeons, and tiny wizarding hamlets dotting the countryside for the player to explore.
• Wizard Duel: Single and group Wizarding Duels are included in the game, both as part of regular combat and as a side activity with an "unsanctioned" invite-only dueling club.
• Wizarding School: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - which teaches young witches and wizards how to use their magic - and its surrounding area is the main setting of the game.
• Would Hurt a Child: No enemy in the Scottish Highlands has any qualms about maiming or outright murdering meddling kids, particularly your 15-year old Player Character and their occasional companions of similar age. Listening to Enemy Chatter also reveals that Ranrok's goblin loyalists consider any and all witches and wizards enemies to be killed on sight, and the Ashwinders would happily attack Hogwarts itself if it weren't for the school's protective enchantments.

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