By Cameron Swan
Transmog systems are still relatively new in the gaming landscape, and Hogwarts Legacy's Transmog system should be the standard going forward.
The best RPGs are all about player-freedom, from deciding what order to do quests in to choosing which members of the team join the party to selecting from a vast array of weapons. And there's one choice that RPGs always put front and center: what the player's going to wear. Gear has always been an incredibly important aspect of role-playing games, determining the player's strength, and acting as the primary way to show the player's progress through their journey, and thankfully, Hogwarts Legacy has a pretty robust gear system.
From hats to robes to undershirts, Hogwarts Legacy has five different gear slots for players to fill, and as RPG fans can expect, there are plenty of clothing items to find out in the wilds of Hogwarts and its surrounding valleys. One of the biggest problems with RPG gear systems is that players are constantly swapping out gear when they find new pieces with better stats, and this can lead to some pretty mismatched outfits. But Hogwarts Legacy avoids this issue completely with its incredibly intuitive Transmog system.
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Hogwarts Legacy Sets the Standard for Transmog Systems in Games
For those unaware, a Transmog system essentially allows the player to keep the stats of a piece of gear, but swap out its appearance, therefore allowing them much more freedom in how their character looks. Transmog systems aren't anything new to the world of RPGs, with World of Warcraft receiving one all the way back in 2011, but they haven't been the most accessible systems in the gaming world.
Hogwarts Legacy may feature one of the most intuitive and accessible Transmog features in all of gaming. It's become a recent trend of modern RPGs to implement a Transmog system, but lock it behind a lengthy grind. God of War Ragnarok, for instance, only lets players Transmog their gear if that gear is fully leveled up, which defeats the whole purpose of the system as the player will have to spend hours of their time playing with gear that they don't like the look of. Hogwarts Legacy, on the other hand, lets players Transmog their gear from the game's offset. As soon as players pick up a piece of gear, they can immediately swap out its appearance.
It's also an unfortunately common trend that many RPGs' Transmog system takes quite a bit of effort to use. The aforementioned World of Warcraft requires players to visit a specific vendor and pay a fee for each item they wish to change the appearance of. Hogwarts Legacy's Transmog system couldn't be any easier to use. All players need to do is click on the gear menu, hover over a gear slot, and press square/X to swap out its appearance, and that's it. Just a few button presses and players will be donning whatever robes and accessories fit their character.
There's also a surprising lack of limits on Hogwarts Legacy's Transmog system. As soon as a player finds a piece of gear in the wild, or unlocks a new appearance via a challenge or quest, that design is then unlocked forever. This means that even if a player sells that specific item of clothing, they can still use it in the Transmog process, and apply it to another piece of gear. This high level of player-freedom is exactly what fans should expect from a sprawling RPG like Hogwarts Legacy, and this particular system should set the standard for all RPGs moving forward.
Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. PS4 and Xbox One ports are scheduled to release on April 4, the Nintendo Switch version is arriving July 25, 2023.
