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Warner Bros. Games recently released the fantasy role-playing title Hogwarts Legacy, which is easily one of the most anticipated titles of 2023. Developed by Avalanche Games, Hogwarts Legacy is an ode to the Harry Potter (and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) franchise.
Hogwarts Legacy is the quintessential role-playing experience that fans of the Wizarding World have been asking for. With its recent release, the game has finally given some gaming engagement to the world of wizardry.
Another recent release that allows players to role-play as sorcerers, learn, and cast powerful spells, is the Game of the Year 2022 winner, Elden Ring. While both Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy offer plenty of options for players to live their fantasies, one does it slightly better.
Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring both deliver an excellent combat system infused with magical abilities
FromSoftware took a massive gamble in creating their first open-world experience, which is more than double the size of any of their previous projects. While the Japanese developer is known for creating some genuinely exceptional worlds with games like the Dark Souls Trilogy, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.
However, Elden Ring is FromSoftware's biggest project yet, and one that worked out well despite being their first attempt at an open-world setting.
Elden Ring is essentially Dark Souls but in an open-world setting with many expansive levels, more bosses, and many dungeons for players to explore. Much like Dark Souls, Elden Ring features the same build variety that fans have come to expect from FromSoftware's Souls-like games.
From warriors with raw strength, capable of using the biggest and most heavy-hitting weapons (Colossal weapons), to mages, capable of using spells and incantations, Elden Ring offers tremendous variety when it comes to allowing players to dictate their playstyle. When it comes to sorcery and spells, Elden Ring has the biggest catalog of all FromSoftware-developed Souls games.
From ranged sorcery to spells that provide passive buffs, there is a lot of choice for players on how they might want to build their mage in Elden Ring. However, when it comes to the role-playing aspect of it, Elden Ring does not offer as many options. Sorcery in FromSoftware's Souls games has always been treated as another offensive option, unlike the melee options, which also hold for Elden Ring.
While there are ways for players to become and maybe even role-play in their head-canon as a sorcerer, the game never does anything to acknowledge the player's choice of playstyle, something in which Hogwarts Legacy excels.
What does Hogwarts Legacy offer in terms of sorcery?
Being a game of witches and wizards, with a story set within the "Wizarding World," Hogwarts Legacy has the upper hand on Elden Ring regarding delivering a "sorcerer-like" experience. In Hogwarts Legacy, players role-play as students at the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The game features iconic locations and a few familiar faces that fans of the Potterverse books will immediately recognize. While the Potterverse books heavily influence the game's narrative and characters, the gameplay follows the traditional role-playing game format, something fans of modern RPGs and ARPGs will immediately recognize.
From level-based progression, complete with crafting systems and unlockable skills, aka spells, the game is, at its heart, a traditional role-playing experience, albeit with a magical spin to its combat.
As part of being a student at Hogwarts, players learn various spells and curses (including the Unforgivable Curses) while also trying to go toe-to-toe against the forces of evil lurking in the dark corners of the Wizarding World. Much like Elden Ring, the spells featured in Hogwarts Legacy are varied, offering players a vast array of options for combat and exploration.
Unlike Elden Ring, however, this title features sorcery as the primary offensive and defensive tool, which should not come as a surprise given the game's setting.
As such, the wizardry aspect of the game gets much more limelight than sorcery in Elden Ring. That is not to say that the sorcery and spells in Elden Ring are anything to scoff at. It just doesn't match up to the potential role-playing present in Avalanche Games' latest fantasy RPG.
Hogwarts Legacy might be a clear winner here, delivering a much more robust sorcerer-like experience than Elden Ring. However, both games are great at providing endless hours of quality single-player entertainment, something sorely missing in most modern AAA titles.
