Games like Hogwarts Legacy, for the castle more than the plot
Playze Staff · Nov 2, 2026
You finish Hogwarts Legacy and the thing you miss is not the plot. It is the shifting staircases, the moving portraits, the fact that a corridor you walked past eleven times had a room behind it. Avalanche built an open-world action RPG around being somewhere, and the ancient secret threatening the wizarding world was always the least interesting part of it. So games like Hogwarts Legacy, for the purposes of this list, means games that reward poking at a place — plus the handful that take spellcasting somewhere the Hogwarts talent trees never go.
| Game | How you cast | Low | Date | Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skyrim Special Edition | Spell schools, first-person | $3.99 | 1 Oct | Steam |
| Fable Anniversary | Learnable spells | $10.49 | 1 Oct | Steam |
| LEGO Harry Potter Collection | Wand spells, lessons | $3.87 | 26 Sep | Eneba |
| Persona 5 Royal | Personas, turn-based | $12.20 | 23 Oct | Eneba |
| Magicka 2 | Combine five elements | $3.26 | 14 Oct | Eneba |
| Black Book | Spell cards | $1.27 | 2 Oct | Driffle INC |
| Immortals Fenyx Rising | God powers, not spells | $3.82 | 30 Sep | GamesPlanet US |
Castles worth getting lost in
LEGO Harry Potter Collection
Two games sit inside LEGO Harry Potter Collection — Years 1-4 and Years 5-7, remastered into one package — and between them they cover the whole saga with spell-casting, potion-making, lessons and duelling, which is a sentence from TT Games' own description and also a fair summary of what Hogwarts Legacy does. The castle here is a hub stuffed with collectibles and gated by which spell you have learned, so the loop is familiar even though the tone is not: everything is a joke, nothing is at stake, and you will break furniture for studs. What it loses is scale and any sense of threat. What it gains is a Hogwarts you can finish with a child on the sofa next to you.
The same corridors, rebuilt as a toy box. Spell-gated collectibles work exactly as they do in the 1800s version. (Official Steam screenshot)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Bethesda's Skyrim Special Edition is the nearest match on this list and has been the answer to this question for fourteen years, which is slightly embarrassing for everyone involved. The reason it holds is that it is the only game of this size where magic is a career path rather than a combat option: you can commit to spell schools, join a college of mages, and spend the entire game never drawing a sword. The Special Edition bundles the add-ons and opens the whole thing to Creations, so the content problem that eventually hollows out Hogwarts Legacy does not arise here.
Where it falls short of the castle is texture. Skyrim's dungeons are assembled from a kit and you will recognise the pieces by the twentieth barrow; nothing in it was hand-placed with the care that went into the Hogwarts library, and the quest writing is functional where Avalanche's was at least trying. The trade is breadth for craft, and after a hundred hours most people decide breadth wins. It is also fourteen years old in its combat, and no remaster fixed that. It is on Game Pass, so the trial costs nothing but an evening.
Skyrim's answer to the Highlands is bigger and emptier, and the magic build is a genuine route through all of it. (Official Steam screenshot)
Wands, and how games like Hogwarts Legacy let you cast
Magicka 2
Eight elements, combined up to five at a time, is the whole of Magicka 2, and it makes the Hogwarts spell wheel look like a menu. Arrowhead's system has you assemble each spell as you cast it, which means friendly fire is constant and hilarious and four players in co-op will kill each other far more often than the enemies manage.
Black Book
Vasilisa, the young sorceress of Black Book, carries her spells as cards, and the deck-building that follows is the sharpest magic system here by a distance. Set in the Slavic countryside, it has you performing exorcisms and solving villagers' problems while managing a flock of demons that cause trouble when left idle. At 92% positive it is also the cheapest row in the table, and the one nobody recommends.
The gameplay showcase from the game's own channel, which spends most of its time on the castle rather than the story.
Talents, and becoming the wizard you chose to be
Fable Anniversary
Lionhead's pitch for Fable was four words — for every choice, a consequence — and Fable Anniversary is the remaster that keeps it intact. You age and evolve into a hero or a villain through what you actually do, learnable magic included, and the world responds with glory or notoriety accordingly. It is the closest thing on this list to the fantasy of arriving somewhere as a nobody and leaving as a name, which is the arc Hogwarts Legacy gestures at and then slightly fumbles.
It is also short, which after a seventy-hour castle may be the point. The Anniversary edition adds a Heroic difficulty with no Resurrection Phials, so a death is a death — worth knowing, because the base game is gentle. The caveat is age: this is a 2004 design in 2014 clothes, the combat is three buttons, and the open world is a series of corridors pretending otherwise. Our record also puts it well above most of this table, and it is the only row where a reading that sat far below the market had to be set aside as unverifiable.
Albion is small, but it remembers what you did in it — the one thing Hogwarts never really does. (Official Steam screenshot)
Persona 5 Royal
A Tokyo high school is the setting of Persona 5 Royal, and it is on this list for the half of Hogwarts Legacy nobody else bothers with: the timetable. You attend classes, build relationships that unlock mechanical benefits, and then descend into a hidden world where your power is a Persona you unlock and swap rather than a spell you aim. The structure is the appeal — days are a resource, and deciding whether to study or go out is a real decision with consequences in the dungeon.
What it is not is anything like Hogwarts Legacy to play. It is turn-based, it is a hundred hours long, and it is Japanese in a way that has nothing to do with the British boarding-school fantasy. But if what you wanted was to be a student somewhere strange, this is the only game that takes that seriously. It is on Game Pass, and at 96% positive from 140,850 Steam reviews it is the best-reviewed game in the table.
Persona 5 Royal splits its time between a school year and a dungeon, and the school year is the part that matters. (Official Steam screenshot)
Merlin trials, done with better puzzles
Immortals Fenyx Rising
Fenyx is blessed with the powers of the Olympian gods rather than taught spells, and Immortals Fenyx Rising uses them for aerial combat and for solving ancient puzzles across an open world — Ubisoft's own framing, and a precise description of what the Merlin trials were trying to be. The puzzles are the reason to take it: they are properly designed rather than scattered, and the vaults they sit in are the closest any open world has come to making optional content feel authored. At 73% positive our data has it as the weakest-reviewed pick here, and the reason is usually the writing, which is relentlessly jokey. It is on Game Pass.
Fenyx glides between puzzle vaults rather than flying a broom, and the puzzles inside them are the real content. (Official Steam screenshot)
Back through the portrait hole
Skyrim Special Edition, and it is not close. It is the only game here that gives you a world large enough to get lost in and a magic system you can commit your whole character to, which is the two things the castle did at once. Take the mage route, join the college, and do not touch a sword — played that way it is a different game from the one most people describe, and it is the one a Hogwarts Legacy player actually wants. It is on Game Pass, so you can find out this evening whether the fourteen-year-old combat is a dealbreaker.
One note from the record: Magicka 2 did not move. Every reading we logged across that month sat within thirteen cents of the lowest, which for a ten-year-old game with twenty-five readings is as flat as our data gets.
Further reading if none of these land: our verdict on Hogwarts Legacy itself if you have not actually bought it yet, discounted RPGs and discounted open-world games for a wider sweep, the pick of PC Game Pass given that three rows above are on it, and whether keyshops are safe before you buy from the cheapest seller in the table.
We wrote this from store pages, published reviews and our own price record, not from playing each game for this piece. Some store links on our game pages are affiliate links, so playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.