Now that I’ve played through about half the story, and some new features have been released, I’m back to write a full review! I said in my First Impressions post that there was some things I was happy with in the first 2ish hours of the game, and some things I wasn’t. Unfortunately, that proved to hold true the more I played =(

The setting (pre-books) is definitely interesting. The player meets younger versions of familiar characters we know and love, though there are plenty of new characters too, which is a fun new way to engage with the series. You get to make friends with both old and new faces. You can interact with your friends and level up your friendship cards by having a meal with them, challenging them to a game of Gobstones, and starting with Year 3, buying them a mug of Butterbeer. It’s always a quiz to test your Potter knowledge, and the questions and answers are always the same. It gets quite repetitive.

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Sharing a Butterbeer with your friend Tulip Karuso, a new character.

The classes are repetitive as well. Certain lessons are required to be completed to advance the story, but to unlock THOSE, you need to attend the same class until you get enough stars to unlock it. For example, to unlock Transfiguration’s Mouse to Snuffbox, you need to attend Transfiguration class and complete a lesson you’ve already learned to earn stars. Earning 7 stars will unlock the new lesson. You do level up your attributes this way (Courage, Knowledge, or Empathy, depending on the class), but again, it gets very repetitive very fast. And the lessons follow the same format: clicking on active blue objects, using energy, answering questions or tracing a path on the screen whenever you earn a star, waiting for your energy to refill, rinse and repeat.

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A Potions lesson. You click the active blue objects to “interact” with them, thus losing energy. For each interaction you complete, you fill up the star meter at the top. You finish the class when you get 5/5 stars.

Are you sensing a pattern here? =P

The story… I didn’t quite care for it. I found myself looking forward to the side quests more than actually advancing the main story. The side quests are things like helping your friends brew potions, meeting Hagrid and puppy! Fang, and even assisting with romantic endeavors. These made the game feel more like an authentic Hogwarts experience. The main story shoehorns you into chasing Cursed Vaults to find your missing sibling, whether or not you want to. Call me crazy, but I don’t want to! I just want to learn to be a witch!! I thought having the story set before Harry showed up was to have a nice, quiet, 7 years at Hogwarts!!! I was so wrong 😭

I’ve played it pretty irregularly for a few weeks now because I’ve grown bored with it. The new features they’ve added, such as pets and star dashes for exclusive avatar items, isn’t enough to save it for me. It’s certainly an RPG, but a very closed one. The main story is too rigid to allow the story to unfold your way, unlike other RPGs I’ve played. The side quests are what made it fun for me; they allowed for more fun and a Hogwarts experience more like what I had hoped for. I’ll just have to hold out and save up for a second phone for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite for a Potter mobile game I’ll enjoy more.

– Kathleen