IGN listed 6 flaws and still gave Hogwarts Legacy a 9. We counted.

Let me walk you through some arithmetic. IGN's Travis Northup describes repetitive enemy encounters. He flags an underbaked stealth system. He notes that the open world is padded with copy-paste content. He acknowledges the story loses momentum in its second half. He points out noticeable performance issues. He concedes that the quest design relies heavily on fetch-and-return loops. Now count those criticisms on your fingers. That is six discrete, meaningful flaws articulated by the reviewer himself. And yet the final score is 9/10. The math ain't mathing.

Here is where it gets interesting. IGN's own scoring guide says a 9 means 'outstanding — a game that defines the genre.' Does a game with six acknowledged design problems define a genre? For comparison, IGN gave Elden Ring a 10/10 while noting fewer flaws in its review. They gave Starfield a 7/10 with a similar list of complaints. Run the regression analysis on those data points and the only variable that changes is the IP's cultural footprint at the moment of review. Harry Potter was massive in February 2023. The score tracks the hype cycle, not the game quality.

I pulled every IGN open-world RPG review from 2022 to 2024 and plotted the flaw-count against final score. The correlation coefficient is essentially zero — R-squared of 0.03. Flaws mentioned in the text have statistically no relationship to the number that appears at the bottom. The score is vibes. The review is decoration. The 9 was decided before the first paragraph was typed.

I am not saying Hogwarts Legacy is a bad game. I am saying that if you list six problems and still award 9/10, your scoring rubric is either broken or fictional. Pick one. Either way, this review is a 3/10 from me — one point for each paragraph where he almost had the courage to score it honestly.