Hogwarts Legacy 2 Could Be A GOTY Contender In 2025 If It Is Willing To Break Its Format

While the original Hogwarts Legacy certainly raised the bar when it comes to a Harry Potter game, it was missing a lot of what fans had hoped for, as well as features to help set it apart from other third-person open-world RPGs. Fortunately, the sequel has the perfect opportunity to rectify this by not only implementing innovative features but also finally adding in everything fans have been asking for. From adding more immersive elements to fleshing out pre-existing features, there is a lot that Hogwarts Legacy 2 needs to change in order to be better than its predecessor.

However, perhaps more importantly, the sequel needs to leave behind Hogwarts Legacy's worst features in order to truly thrive and have a chance of getting a GOTY nomination. While GTA 6 will undoubtedly take home the GOTY award, Hogwarts Legacy 2 still has a chance of getting its foot in the door, especially if it removes one key feature from the original game and implements a far better alternative. Luckily, there is a specific series from which it can draw inspiration in order to help it accomplish this.

Hogwarts Legacy's Structure Didn't Fit The School-Sim Fantasy

The Lack Of A Schedule Made It Feel Too Free

There are many reasons why Hogwarts Legacy fails as a school sim, from its focus on a central narrative based almost exclusively outside the school to the lack of importance placed on lessons and bonding with other students. It can often feel like Hogwarts and the school setting is a mere backdrop for the main events, intended more to serve as a cool location in which to complete a handful of side quests and little else. For many, this was a genuine shame, as the school side of the Harry Potter books is, by far, the most immersive and appealing.

However, by far the most crucial reason why Hogwarts Legacy fails at delivering a compelling school sim experience is its structure. There is no real limit to what players can do in Hogwarts Legacy, as they are encouraged to head out and complete side quests, explore, finish open-world activities, and visit other towns and villages whenever they please. This open-ended structure means that there is rarely any reason to stay within Hogwarts or attend classes - not that there are any to do beyond the initial tutorial missions.

Players can explore Hogwarts at night without consequences, which, in turn, robs it of any authenticity. Similarly, there's no need to ever sleep, which makes common rooms feel entirely redundant. In any other game, this wouldn't inherently be an issue, as hub areas often serve a similar purpose to Hogwarts in Hogwarts Legacy. However, thanks to its setting, it had the potential to be so much more, to put a unique spin on the open-world formula that players have grown so accustomed to. Hogwarts Legacy needed a smaller world and a more concise structure, something akin to the Persona series.

Hogwarts Legacy 2 Should Borrow Persona 5's Structure

A Daily Schedule Would Give Players Purpose

There are several features Hogwarts Legacy 2 needs to borrow from other games, but by far the most important is the Persona series' structure. Persona 5, for example, is set across several months, with players given a set number of weeks to complete one of the many overarching objectives before moving on to the next one. Each week is split into days, with each day giving players multiple time slots during which they can do whatever they want. Of course, during the days when school is on, some of these slots are taken up with classes.

This structure gives players purpose as it forces them to actively think about how they wish to spend each day, while also completely immersing them in a daily routine. Each part of Persona 5's worldbuilding, from the school to Tokyo itself, feels significantly more believable thanks to this unique structure. Another game that utilizes a similar structure and is also set in a school is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. That allows players to freely explore the castle, hang out with their students, or go on mock battles each day, before facing the main event at the end of the month.

This style of structure feels far more apt for Hogwarts Legacy as it would greatly heighten the school sim elements while also ensuring that players have the time and space to pursue all the open-world activities and side quests. Hogwarts Legacy 2's version of this structure could see players attending classes during the day on a weekday, exploring during the afternoon, and heading back to their common room at night to sleep. This would also give Avalanche Software the opportunity to add one of Hogwarts Legacy's most-requested immersive features: prefects at night.

Players could be incentivized to spend their nights exploring, as certain creatures could appear exclusively at night, or some side quests could only take place then. They would then need to attempt to sneak out of Hogwarts all while avoiding prefects roaming the halls. The introduction of a stricter structure opens up a lot of exciting possibilities that would greatly enhance the school sim side of Hogwarts Legacy and its gameplay loop in general. It would make a lot of the game's more redundant features worthwhile, such as stealth, common rooms, and classes.

Hogwarts Legacy 2 Needs To Prioritize Its School-Sim Elements

It's A Game Set In A School

It feels like a no-brainer that Hogwarts Legacy should be prioritizing school sim elements, which is what makes their absence all the more frustrating. Of course, mods have picked up the slack, including those that add more classes and the ability to study in classrooms whenever players want. However, while it's always inspiring to see a community come together to implement missing features, it's hard not to feel like they shouldn't have been absent in the first place. That's why Hogwarts Legacy 2 absolutely needs to work harder at prioritizing this aspect of the game.

Of course, it's hard to argue that the more action-focused narrative experience that the original game provides is a negative thing. It would be a shame for the school-sim elements that would come with a revised structure to overshadow those elements, especially as there are many possible Hogwarts Legacy 2 settings and time periods that would lend themselves to great narrative and lore-building opportunities. However, both Persona 5 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are primarily praised for their narratives, with their structures only helping to elevate them further.

Hogwarts Legacy 2 wouldn't need to sacrifice the foundations laid by its predecessor in order to alter its structure. It could still put a huge focus on story as well as open-world activities while managing to put a bigger emphasis on its school sim features. By taking this risk and changing its core structure, Hogwarts Legacy 2 could become a truly unique RPG, one that blends the best parts of school-based JRPGs with the Ubisoft-esque open-world content that made exploring the Scottish Highlands in the original game so fun, and even be in with a shot for that GOTY nomination.

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