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I'll keep this as spoiler-free as possible, and this review is entirely subjective to my own opinions

What appeals to me most about Hogwarts Legacy isn't its mastery over just one aspect of the game, but how it seems to achieve so much in a singular title. I have spent a considerable amount of time on several recent AAA titles but nothing comes close to complete at this.
To elaborate, Forspoken had amazing gameplay and parkour mechanics but the NPC interactions felt stiff and clearly weren't very polished. Spider-Man similarly had great gameplay and cinematic story-telling, but it didn't feel like a very personalized experience more so than a trip to the movies. Hogwarts Legacy was different. You don't dive straight into any long intense combat sessions or get super flashy moves from the get-go, but instead emphasize gradual progression and an immersive experience.

What's so great about slow progression?

For starters, it's much more rewarding, and it gives you time to absorb the rich history, lore, and present-day slice of life the developers have prepared for you. I'm about 10 hours into the game and every dialogue I've been in so far was fully voiced, even your own character. So many things are happening simultaneously in the school, random events will trigger as you walk around and it really goes to show just how much love the developers have placed into this game to curate such an immersive experience.

What I think Hogwarts Legacy did right

Definitely World-building, 100%. Even though the whole "theme" of Hogwarts is a magic school, few places inside felt completely the same. I'm surprised at the variety of assets they created. I'll see things I've never seen before, walk up, study them, and there are even field guides that tell you what they are. Every part of the school feels unique and the experience was in short, magical. From the different animal skeletons you find, the moving paintings, the ghosts loitering around, the moving (empty) knights in armor, to even the students walking to class and all the conversations I can eavesdrop on. There's already so much to talk about and I haven't even counted the open world.
The relationships you meet at school don't feel at all superficial. They don't always mention it directly, but just their expressions, choice of words, and tone of voice are enough for you to draw your own conclusions about what has happened behind the scenes, making the game feel more expansive than it already is. I'm really enjoying talking to people and despite having the option to skip text as you read, I have yet to skip a single dialogue, all so I can hear the voice acting in full.
Attending classes, meeting new professors, and exploring Hogwarts Castle didn't feel as restrictive as I would have thought. On the contrary, I had so much freedom to do whatever I wanted, even explore the open world that I've never grown weary at the thought of being forced to go to class or feel trapped in a linear gameplay loop.
I usually have pretty high expectations for real-time combat systems, but Hogwarts Legacy genuinely did it justice. It was surprisingly fun, and I find myself craving to meet new foes and fight as soon as possible. It's not as hard as dark souls, but I'm certainly seeing some semblance of one. You can cast offensive magic spells but starting out you won't be reliant on them to decimate your foes. Instead, you'll be using the most fundamental basic attacks, defending, countering, and dodging the majority of the time. It takes some time to master but it feels a lot more rewarding than being a walking auto-killing machine.
Next would be Flying. They did it right by not forcing it into a priority mode of transport like most games. It makes traveling the open world more enjoyable, there's a Stamina System (for boosting) that keeps the player's attention and the no-flying zones help limit the player's reliability on them. I find that the moment we get some sort of mount or fast-moving mode of transport, players will be using that ALL the time and they start missing out on all the wonderful details in the world, the voices that play in the background. Flying only plays a small part of this, but I've seen many games where world-building has become less important than getting to the destination quicker in an effort to min-max time and resources.
There's the beasts and plants mechanic, talents, customization features, dialogue choices, and lots of things that make the world richer and more personalized. I'll cut it short here since I think this section is already pretty long. All in all, games should be an enjoyable experience, and I think Hogwarts did a great job of focusing on the healthier aspects of a game for the players.

What I think Hogwarts Legacy didn't do right

Although they did a lot of optimizations to keep the experience seamless, the experience can sometimes be jarring and offputting. There weren't any loading screens whenever you move between areas, but you'll find your game lagging very frequently as a result for short bursts of time before it becomes smooth again.
It's caused me a lot of headaches to be honest. I'm looking at a pretty big screen, and the lag spikes paired with the intense motion blur cause me bouts of motion sickness. If you're reading this and you have the same issue, I highly recommend you turn off motion blur, and also increase the field of view to +20 in the display options.
I'm not familiar with the minimum graphics requirement, but I'm running a Ryzen 5950x, RTX 3060Ti with 64GB RAM, and the benchmark recommended settings are set to Medium. Even with Nvidia DLSS, going any higher will result in a significant hit in performance, especially when entering any cutscenes. On the Steam Deck, it runs pretty smooth on the Low Graphics Settings, but the experience was pretty much incomparable. In the case of Spider-Man for example, the experience on PC and Steam Deck felt almost identical and the graphics were still crisp and smooth, but it wasn't the case on the Steam Deck.

Conclusion

This turned out to be fairly long. Woah. In any case, everything above is completely based on my own opinions having played the game during the Early Launch Period. There may be patches and updates in the future that addresses the concerns I have above. Despite its flaws, Hogwarts Legacy is still an amazing game, and compared to any other full-priced AAA title on the market, as long as you have a love for fantasy, magic, and RPGs, you'll definitely get your money's worth. That would be all.