Hogwarts Legacy 2 Should Embrace Soulslike Inspirations with NPC and Player Summons

Highlights

• Hogwarts Legacy incorporates Soulslike influences in its gameplay, providing exhilarating exploration and unpredictable perils around every corner.
• The game could benefit from the inclusion of NPC summons or player summons, allowing for companionship and assistance in taking down enemies and bosses.
• While summons in Soulslike games have been met with mixed opinions, the addition of summons in a Hogwarts Legacy sequel would enhance the game’s immersion and align with the Soulslike subgenre.

Hogwarts Legacy might not be the first game that comes to mind when fans consider Soulslikes, though it does more as an action-RPG to support that subgenre classification than one may think. Hogwarts Legacy follows all the iconic tropes it feels obligated to while belonging to the Harry Potter and wizarding world IP and still it manages to craft exquisite gameplay systems that are all in-depth and elaborate, which is impressive for a debut open-world title of its scale. The school itself could’ve housed an entire action-RPG and Avalanche extrapolated that further to put the Scottish Highlands on display, where a lot of Hogwarts Legacy’s Soulslike influences are laid bare.

A lot of what’s fun about a Soulslike experience, at least on a first playthrough when everything is novel and unpredictable, is the exhilarating exploration of navigating an unfamiliar land and knowing there are perils around every corner. Players even have to worry about certain NPCs not being the friendly hosts they appear to be, but mainly what they must deal with are mobs of enemies from all different flora and fauna in the world whenever they decide to trek out past Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. In a Hogwarts Legacy sequel, Avalanche should take this a stretch further with summons, either of the NPC or player variety.

Soulslike Summons in Hogwarts Legacy’s Sequel Would Be Immersive

NPC Summons Could Make Hogwarts Legacy Companions and Classmates Paramount

Part of what makes this exploration in Soulslikes engaging is the fact that players are on their own and must precariously round corners or corridors with their guards always up. That said, they don’t have to do it alone, and quite often players can get the most out of a FromSoftware Soulslike by accepting and contributing to its online connectivity features.

This way, while adventurers are out on their pilgrimage and never need to actually gain assistance from others, they can always see messages scrawled throughout the environment and choose to read them if they’re interested in getting a heads-up about an upcoming area. Indeed, if it wasn’t for these messages, first-time players might miss crucially important interactions that the game wouldn’t otherwise clue them in on, such as being able to burn the windmill in Dark Souls 2’s Earthen Peak to drain Mytha’s boss arena of poison.

This is only one of countless examples where these messages can be helpful, yet they only have specific words and phrases that can be used and not all of them may be well-articulated or legible. NPCs being summoned sometimes rely on whether players have talked to them in-game while some are ready and willing to aid the player at any moment’s notice, and a Hogwarts Legacy sequel with fellow witches and wizards available to take down bosses would be excellent for the same reasons.

If talking to a classmate enough meant they’d had a summon sign somewhere close to a nearby boss, that would help the game feel like the connections players make with other students have an impact on ordinary gameplay.

Player Summons Could Give Hogwarts Legacy a Co-op Component

Otherwise, if players do desire legitimate assistance to slay bosses, they have the option to summon NPCs or actual players—even if the process of summoning players in FromSoftware Soulslikes is often illogical or resource-intensive. Floo Flame was already established as Hogwarts Legacy’s means of fast travel, and Floo powder itself could become the resource players need to collect in order to summon other players. Keeping with that iconography and making it immersive, each applicable boss fight where a player or NPC could be summoned may have a fireplace there for Floo powder to be tossed in.

Hogwarts Legacy’s lack of a multiplayer component was a gripe players had when it was confirmed to be single-player only and that made sense because the atmosphere of a wizarding school full of classmates was a premise ripe for online functionality. It’s no more clear whether a sequel would decide to indulge in that, but summoning players into co-op sessions like FromSoftware Soulslike encourage could satisfy that a bit, especially if players could summon one another and run around inside the castle together before attempting to kill a boss.

Summons such as these are typically only meant for bosses, however, and branching out to allow players actual co-op might be too much on Avalanche’s plate if it wants its sequel to be as expansive and mechanically rich as the original is. Perhaps co-op functionality would better substitute for a lot of the miscellaneous action-RPG features players had access to in Hogwarts Legacy’s Room of Requirement, and leaning into Soulslike inspirations may be Avalanche’s best bet considering how much of a positive impact FromSoftware has had on the gaming industry, let alone open-world action-RPGs.

Summons aren’t Largely Favorable in Soulslikes Anyhow

Rather, summons haven’t always been a widely agreeable feature in Soulslike games. Summons commonly scale bosses to make them more difficult depending on how many NPCs or players are brought into a fight, which has led to a lot of players forgoing the feature entirely. Still, many may find it helpful to take aggro off of themselves in a boss fight, if for no other reason than to stay alive long enough and begin to learn what sort of attacks the boss throws out in different phases.

Lies of P’s NPC Specter summons actually made bosses easier because they didn’t scale, though, and Hogwarts Legacy’s sequel could choose to design its own NPC summons similarly. Regardless, summons would definitely help a Hogwarts Legacy sequel feel much more like a Soulslike, and it’ll be neat to see what other mechanics and features are introduced that possibly lean more heavily into that subgenre than before.