Now that the 2nd game is officially confirmed and in development, I have some strong ideas on what they NEED to do, in order to improve upon the first
1 - Give more life to the random NPCs - no brainer and honestly not a game breaker, but it would be nice if NPCs you do missions for have a bit more personality.
2 - Here’s a big one. Gear. Gear space was locked behind Merlin’s Trials. The problem is; you open a chest and more often than not, you don’t have space for the first half of the game. So you dump gear because you don’t want to miss anything. You can SELL gear but you have to go to a vendor, which is no help if you’re in a dungeon or even in Hogwarts and don’t want to use floo. So you’re basically throwing money away, which is a problem because everything is expensive, and you’re broke for a major part of the game. Very, very frustrating. I don’t see the need in forcing us to unlock gear slots. It doesn’t mesh with the wizarding world.
3 - side missions - the main problem the gaming community has witb the game is how repetitive it get. Personally, I don’t mind. But I think they should incorporate a “Ghost Of Tsushima” approach where less is more and all the side missions actually MEAN something, even if it means we unlock less spells or unless spells at a slower pace. Because I can understand why players get frustrated at the constant “fetch this, fetch that”. This is Harry Potter. Creativity should be paramount.
4 - This is just a personal issue - the use of Floo Powder takes me out of it. Fast Travel is necessary and useful but being able to constantly teleport from Hogwarts to Hogsmead in 2 seconds flat as a 5th year just seems to break the lore. Especially doing it at night. The rules just NEVER applied to the protagonist and they should, at least to some extent. It would’ve been nice to see Professors walking around the halls. And if you’re caught out at night you get a Game over. Easy fix, turn invisible. After a few hours of walking around the halls it’s very repetitive. I never felt like a student. More like a guest who occasionally blessed the classrooms with his presence.
The combat was great, story is fine. Could use some more customization but that didn’t hurt the game imo.
I also understand why Quidditch wasn’t in the first game - adding a whole new set of mechanics and rules for the game would be a lot. But keeping it out of the second Game would be a bad look. It’s Quidditch.
I’m sure there are more but those are the things I could think of that would improve quality of life.
The Room Of Requirement was awesome. One of the high points of the game.