Hogwarts Legacy free download leaves fans feeling cheated

There are not many worse feelings than being cheated unless it involves acquiring a jetpack in GTA: San Andreas, of course.

Sadly, however, fans of Hogwarts Legacy are feeling cheated for a different reason and it involves a free download of the action RPG from Avalanche Software.

Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription service offers a varying amount of value across its three tiers, Essential, Extra and Premium. At the basic tier, not only does it include online gaming, bonus DLC and discounts, but also a monthly selection of additional games at no extra cost.

PS Plus Extra offers all that’s included in Essential, but with the added bonus of an additional selection of PS5 and PS4 games. As for PS Plus Premium, you get everything that’s included in Essential and Extra, but with added PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP games. Another bonus feature exclusive to the Premium tier is Game Trials.

Game Trials offer PS Plus Premium subscribers one-hour, two-hour or three-hour trials for the likes of The Last of Us Part I, God of War Ragnarök, Sonic Frontiers, Dying Light 2: Stay Human and much more.

One other game that has joined the PS Plus Game Trial list is the aforementioned Hogwarts Legacy. However, it’s not offering a trial that lasts one hour, two hours or even three hours.

As brought to our attention by Reddit user MatsGry, the Hogwarts Legacy trial is for a whopping 0.75 of an hour. So in other words, it’s 45 minutes, most of which will be taken up from booting the game, character creation and cinematics. If you’re lucky, you might be able to dabble in 10 minutes' worth of gameplay.

“Wow a whole 0.75hr of gameplay!” said the sarcastic Redditor.

“So basically the tutorial. I feel like 2 hours would have been better for Hogwarts. I think going through the sorting ceremony and getting a house would hook a lot of people,” replied dj_cole. “And here’s FF16 that gives 2 hours of the demo without behind a paywall and you can even replay it if you want to,” added Jamesahaha.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re sure this 0.75-hour trial for Hogwarts Legacy might be useful to someone (at a stretch), but for a game as large as it is, we think a two-hour trial (at least) would do the game justice and offer a much better representation of what it's all about. Hopefully, Sony will add additional trial time if the community makes enough noise, just don't hold your breath.

Hogwarts Legacy is out now for PC, PlayStation and Xbox. It was supposed to have been released on Nintendo Switch by now, but after suffering multiplayer delays, patient fans will have to wait a little longer to explore Hogwarts on the go.