Technically, but the singleplayer play was by far the main draw over the co-op and limited competitive multiplayer. 

I watched a review with my wife, she bailed when it came to the combat. Too many buttons and combos... She's more into Potter than me, so I'll pass.

Maybe the story mode simplifies combat rather than just change HP and DMG values? The need to use a radial wheel (or tool wheel as the game calls it) during combat is a big no no. So far I can't find any info on whether you can stick to one 'setup' during combat without needing the tool wheel. Does the game at least pause when opening the tool wheel? The accessibility options seem rather sparse.

Story mode makes it ridiculously easy. I started on Story mode and it was so stupidly easily that I didn't need to use any potions at all during combat, ended up switching to Easy which at least offers some challenge on certain boss fights (though still not much).

You don't really need to switch hotbars during combat, as long as you are on one of your combat hotbars when you enter combat. You do get dueling challenges which pop-up on nearly every battle which ask that you use certain spells certain ways during the fight, but they are entirely optional, so you can stick with a single combat hotbar an entire fight if you want.

You unlock more hotbars for the spells with talent points once you unlock talents partway through the first season of the game (Summer), you will eventually get 4 hotbars, which isn't quite enough to hold all of the spells you will unlock over the course of the game, but it's enough for 2 combat hotbars, one transfiguration and magical beast care hotbar for the room of requirement, and one exploration hotbar (at least that is what I use each of the 4 for). The game doesn't pause when switching between hotbars (which is holding down the right trigger on controller and selecting which of the 4 hotbars you want with the 4 D-pad directions), but you can pause by entering the spell menu (right on D-pad) and then switch to the hotbar you want while paused in the spell menu I believe.

The game also has extremely generous block/dodge windows compared to many other similar games, you get a B button prompt for dodge or Y button prompt for block/parry on your screen on an Xbox controller (Circle and Triangle on PS controller I believe), like you have about 3 seconds to block/parry or dodge when the prompt appears usually on easy difficulty (edit: it's apparently 5 seconds on story mode), so it is pretty hard to take damage in this game except on a few bosses who have attacks that don't give a dodge prompt, requiring you to actually read those attacks and dodge them on your own, but on story difficulty even those attacks are a joke. 

Edit: Story mode also gets rid of the time limit on the spell learning minigame, and makes capturing a magical beast in your grab bag instantaneous. On easy and above, you have a time limit on the spell learning minigame which gets shorter on each successive difficulty level, and certain magical beasts have a 2 to 5 bar long catching minigame requiring you to use an immobilizing spell on them before you try to catch them.

It's obvious why this game has been successful despite the backlash it received.

1. The backlash came from the culture warrior “left” which caused a stir around this game, resulting in significant negative publicity.
2. However, on the other side of the culture war is the much larger culture warrior “right” that take negative publicity from the culture warrior left as the most positive publicity possible.
3. In short, the game has become a flash point between these two opposing culture warrior clans.
4. The culture warrior right has taken it upon themselves to support this game what could be considered just another mediocre Harry Potter game (what is it, like 190 of these now?) pretending it to be one of the greatest games ever made.
5. Now, the game is all that the culture warriors can discuss, leading to loads of free advertisement of good quality when the only noteworthy aspect of the game would otherwise be its unfortunate name, “Hogwarts,” a name it shares with a slang term for HPV.

I put the “left” and “right” of these groups in quotes, because they are concerned more with contentious political issues and alignment with the ideological left or the ideological right is more coincidental. They trade different issues back and forth all the time. If the culture war left truly held Marxist beliefs, they would not give much weight to J.K. Rowling's outlier opinions. Marxism is concerned with populations rather than individuals, and Rowling is on the losing side of history when it comes to this issue. The general trend far outweighs any impact she could possibly have. She’s not relevant.

The game is successful because it's the Harry Potter game the fandom always dreamed to have, one more focused in living in Hogwarts as a student, attending to classes and freely exploring the castle mysteries. It something no game in franchise was able to emulate yet. Harry Potter has a huge fandom, I'm talking about dozens of millions of fans. I'm seeing even people who don't play video games often buying and playing this one, because it was literally their childhood dream. 

I was a huge Harry Potter fan until a couple of years ago, and I spent around 22 years of my life waiting for today. This kind of connection far outweighs any negative feeling I have towards JK rowlling opinions about transgender community

Aside of that, this is the kind of game that is the perfect bait for normies who buy games once a year and don't follow either gaming outlets nor Twitter news about JK Rowlling. It's built on top of a huge IP, it's pretty, story focused and fairly easy.

A similar effect from world of mouth of games like Spider Man is likely. Give it a couple of months and some price cuts and Warner have a very obvious 20 million+ seller in their hands. 

Nah.

1. A vocal minority on the internet doesn't matter.

2. The game is good.

3. People like the Harry Potter franchise.

Those are the reasons the game is successful.

It’s not a mediocre HP game, and people aren’t pretending it’s amazing for no reason. It has a great Metacritic and genuine hype. Not sure where you’re gathering your info?

By far the majority of the positive buzz has nothing to do with politics. There has never been a HP game like this. It’s letting millions of people live out their HP dreams. I’m not a HP fan, but my girlfriend is. We went to our V Day dinner last night, and probably a third of our conversation was about the 4h she played Hogwarts so far. She was excited and giddy like a school girl—to the extent where I actually felt a bit envious. 

Yeah, its worth mentioning that even at announcement this broke the playstation youtube record. Again nothing to do with the politics, its succeeding in spite of the backlash, not in response to it,

This is just a dream title for anyone interested in the biggest selling fantasy series of all time. A lot of people playing do not like JK's recent stances but the HP franchise and place it has in people's hearts is bigger then her. Nothing to do with left vs right

I'm so sick of people talking about the controversy of this game from any perspective. Play the game or don't. I'm enjoy the game and that's really all that matter. It's not surprising it's broke the record on twitch. It's been one of the most anticipated games to come out.

I just want to say thanks for replying to this thread, it's crazy that people don't understand the controversy about Rowlings "opinion" about the trans community and how that has dangerous consequences as a result.