Well, hello again!
LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is the second of the two LEGO HP games. This one came out in 2011 for all platforms available that year, and covers Harry's last three years (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows). Though, like the films, the last year is split in two, so you still have four sections with 24 levels like before. Also like the last game, the story comes straight from the films, with a few accommodations for co-op, so if you've seen them you know what goes on.
So, as it stands, this game is kind of a mixed bag. For a game made later, this one manages to have a lot of the same pitfalls as the first. The game did add on-screen prompts (something that's standard in all LEGO games now), but they didn't help me much. Of course, that's just me: I already knew the mechanics from playing the first game, so I didn't need them. I'm totally in favor of them though, because I do know how helpful they can be, and I personally don't find them distracting. However, even with these, there are still some things in this game that can get obtuse. It's not as bad as before, though.
Also, this game still doesn't have a map, which doesn't seem like a good idea because I'm pretty sure the map is bigger. The only reason i knew my way around is because I'd played the first game and started to memorize where things are, and that's to say nothing of trying to find the new stuff they added. The upside to this is that the Hub is much larger (adding a London street, the campsite from DH part 1, and King's Cross Station to the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon/Knockturn Alley), they've expanded the Hogwarts grounds to include the train station to and the path between it and the castle, and you can explore Hogsmeade. Those places aren't too big, so you don't need maps to get around there. Since I started to memorize the layout of the castle, this began to bother me less and less as the game went on.
Unlike some other, earlier games that lacked open worlds (and even the first one, to and extent), this game's story mode is super long. The downside is that it can feel like a lot of backtracking, especially during the parts that take place at Hogwarts, but on the upside that's a lot of game content. And, unlike Lego Batman 2, it was actually long, it didn't just feel like it. This was an aspect I didn't mind all that much.
And then there's the character selection. This one has over 200 available character tokens, a wide array of characters for you to choose from, from mains to random people like the milkman. And out of those, there are... 71 female tokens! One more than the last game, despite the fact that there are about 50 more characters. What in the world. Sure, the ratio is still better than some of the other games, and I got to play as Luna and Tonks, but that's just shameful. I'm getting really tired of this.
There is one thing that is undeniably good about the game, and that's the graphics. There is so much more detail in this, and the lighting is fantastic. Even little things, like the fact that spells cast light onto surrounding objects, adds to the overall tone and mood. The single, solitary, downside of this is that in Hogwarts there pillars with flames in them that you can hit to light, and sometimes the lights from those, in conjunction with the permanent fires and the reflections, can become a little overwhelming. Luckily, you can turn those off.
Overall, I completely and totally recommend this game, especially is you played the previous. Even with its downfalls, it's really good, and an overall enjoyable experience.
So, looks like I've played the last of the LEGO games in my tiny game collection. It looks like we'll be finding new things to talk about on this blog... who knows what, but for now let's hope I get LEGO Batman 3 and Disney Infinity for Christmas! Meanwhile, I'll be forcing myself to play 'grown up' games, like the Elder Scrolls and the Batman: Arkham series -grumble grumble something about those games being hard grumble grumble-.
