The Case Against a Room of Requirement in Hogwarts Legacy 2

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home February 6, 2025 4 Views 6 Min Read
The Case Against a Room of Requirement in Hogwarts Legacy 2
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Hogwarts Legacy weaves a tight, sinewy web as an open-world action-RPG simulating a Hogwarts student experience. Many of the optional activities players indulge in for collection catalogs are monotonous and menial, to be clear, but the core storytelling and progression of learning about Ancient Magic and attending classes is where Hogwarts Legacy reaches its zenith. Hogwarts Legacy would be expansive and thorough enough if it only ever featured Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, and yet the Scottish Highlands’ enormous and dense landscape can withhold players’ attention and curiosity.

Hogwarts Legacy’s Room of Requirement is as faithful to its source material as it is convenient to the player. Hand-in-hand with one another, the Room of Requirement and the open-world Highlands are codependents that players will be farming rewards and resources from constantly if they’re attempting to reach 100% on their Field Guide or complete their collection catalogs. However, while it’s convenient and efficient to have potion-brewing, plant-growing, gear-sewing, and beast-tending in one dedicated area, it might’ve been more engaging and meaningful if players needed to brew potions in Potions class, grow plants in Herbology class, have gear sewn in Hogsmeade, or tend to beasts in Beasts/Care of Magical Creatures class.

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Hogwarts Legacy’s Room of Requirement is a Gracious, Preposterous Blessing

Seemingly for no particular reason, Hogwarts Legacy’s school faculty is more than willing to give the protagonist special accommodations. It already appears excessive that they would put aside so much time to imagine extracurricular assignments for them, but the Room of Requirement—not to mention a house-elf, Deek—is an unreasonably charitable gift that Professor Matilda Weasley bestows onto the player.

That said, if players were attending the same classes frequently anyway, they’d always have time scheduled to harvest the same resources and nurture the same creatures, only in environments unique to them. It isn’t as if the Room of Requirement is far easier to reach, either; players must traverse Hogwarts’ map in order to fast-travel to the Room of Requirement, just like they’d need to traverse the map to fast-travel to different classes.

With new tasks that professors assign, players already have incentives to attend classes or at least meet with professors in their classrooms. Moreover, while the Room itself is a beautiful workspace ripe with decorative opportunities, it can become overwhelming when not one but four Vivariums are subsequently and periodically added.

Hogwarts Legacy’s Room of Requirement and Vivariums are Fat to Be Trimmed

The main reason why the Room of Requirement and its Vivariums arguably shouldn’t be brought back for a sequel is because Hogwarts Legacy’s gear system is highly flawed and superfluous. Indeed, like in many open-world RPGs, players continuously discover new gear with stats or traits that immediately eclipse the stats or traits on gear they recently found and equipped, and therefore it is fairly redundant crafting upgrades or traits for any clothing item. Traits can be valuable late-game if players would like to cater to their preferred playstyle, but upgrades eventually do little to make any discernible difference in combat.

This makes manually sustaining three Vivariums and harvesting beast resources that much more tedious if players strive to achieve 100% completion on Field Guide challenges because they won’t often or ever have the satisfaction of that work actually affecting their gear or gameplay, especially since Legendary-rarity gear is all too easy to come by.

Of course, if Hogwarts Legacy’s sequel could remedy the original game’s gear system and improve upon it in a way that complements and justifies four individual Vivariums, an argument could be made for keeping the Room around, though it may still be difficult to explain narratively why the player has unfettered access to it once more. Nevertheless, a strong emphasis on classes and classmate or professor interaction throughout the whole game, rather than just the beginning, would be terrific and absconding from the Room of Requirement could restore and reinforce that focus.

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