Hello hello friends, it's about that time again for me to review another LEGO game.
LEGO Harry Potter came out in 2010 for all platforms. It is one of two LEGO Harry Potter games, and covers Harry's first four years at Hogwarts (Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire). Of course, my copy was for the Xbox 360.
Like LEGO PotC, this game doesn't have an original plot: it is based on the first four Harry Potter films, and so the stories of each section of the game come from that. And when I say that it's based on the films, I mean it; the books aren't really represented here, with the exception of a few easter eggs. The game does add a few flourishes to things, either for comedy or to accommodate the two player function (like having Hermione be present for the first task in Goblet of Fire, which would have been forbidden in the actual games). If you've seen the movies you know how the games go. There are four sections, each with six levels, meaning 24 levels in all, the most of all four of the LEGO games i've played so far.
So, downsides first, because, again, i have relatively few complaints. For one, oh man does this game get obtuse at times. This game has a consistent problem with not telling you what's going on at all. And it's not due to the fact that it lacks voice acting - I had no problem figuring out how to do things in PotC. They just straight up don't tell you some things. Like, you get descriptions of how your spells work, and then they send you off. Maybe this was this game's attempt at making you work your brain, but sometimes it just makes things unnecessarily hard.
Going along with that, THIS GAME HAS NO MAP. You're forced to memorize where things are in Hogwarts, which has a lot of sections. And I know that, of all the games with open worlds, Hogwarts is relatively small, but by its nature the school is like a maze. I take off points for any Harry Potter game that forces you to roam around Hogwarts with no map. Thank god for people on the internet who'd spent time drawing up and labeling ones themselves.
And lastly, I experienced a game breaking bug while playing. I don't really understand it, but my game is making it impossible for me to get two character tokens in the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom, making 100% completion impossible. After looking it up it seems I'm not the only one, either. There were also people saying that their games would make it impossible for them to enter that classroom at all without the game glitching, so watch out for those if you play on Playstation of Xbox.
You might have noticed that one of my most common complaints about the LEGO games is missing. That's because I'm not quite sure where to put this. There are quite a few more women in this game then there are in any of the others I've played: 39. However, this is out of 109 individual playable characters*. That's better than the 11 in Batman, the 23 in Marvel, and miles better than the 9 in Pirates, but it's still not enough! The 70 other characters are all dudes. I'm happy that there are so many women in this game, but what do I have to do to get a LEGO game where at least half of the characters are girls?
So, on to the good things now. As a Harry Potter fan, nothing really tops running around the Hogwarts castle in terms of immersion. It helps that the scenery is great and detailed. The stuff looks like it came straight out of the films. It also had the scores from all of the films included, but it is heavy on the original John Williams stuff that made the Harry Potter music so memorable. There is also a lot to do in this game, what with it having 24 main game levels and then 11 bonus levels. The ten bonus levels that you access through Gringotts function more as giant puzzles than miniature levels (like the ones in Marvel), which was something different that I appreciated. I like the selection characters that you can play as in free mode, which includes lots of side characters like the Patil twins and Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. Altogether I didn't mind replaying the levels of this game, which is something that Batman 2 very nearly soured me on.
Overall I recommend this game, especially if you are a Harry Potter fan. Personally, I can't wait to play the next installment.
*Though there are 167 character tokens in this game, some of them are for different outfits for the characters, and, for some reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione show up twice in the roster (see for yourself here), so there are 109 individual characters in all.
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