This review contains spoilers
Largely feels like a transitionary game between the PS2 Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. It has unique character models and areas to represent the design document for the other Sorcerer's Stone video games, but also borrows from the Chamber of Secret ones, taking the PC version's Spongify and the PS2 version's Diffindo.
Despite a sizeable chunk of new content, the game's main gameplay loop remains the same, which unfortunately highlights most of the issues with the format. The simplicity of the design is just downright annoying. The spell challenges specifically include areas you cannot access without spells you'll learn later, meaning you'll not only have to come back just to find unlock them if you want a 100%, but it is programmed so that you have to do THE ENTIRE CHALLENGE again, collecting ALL THE CHALLENGE SHIELDS YOU COLLECTED PREVIOUSLY on top of the new ones. What's even the point of engaging with the secrets earnestly on the first go if you are incentivized to do it all over again anyway?
The secrets aren't even anything exciting to discover, there's a big, draping cloth and you need Diffindo to cut it, that's it. It's not hidden or anything, you just have to walk there. It's not difficult or fun, just annoying. Maybe if the castle's secret entrances were changed in any way, or maybe if it had its own type of secrets (like the different versions of the Chamber of Secrets did) it could work, but it's just honestly more tedious than anything, going into the same corridors and seeing the same interiors with largely the same secrets, changed ever so slightly.
Same goes for the item-collecting side quest. Seems like it was mandatory for the PS2 titles. They are once more placed in random, unintuitive locations. Waste of time. The broom helps a bit, but even less so than in Chamber of Secrets.
At least it is very easy to get all the cards this time, thanks to the inclusion of the trading system. You can actually get duplicate cards, but trading them will always result in receiving a new card. I completed my collection pretty effortlessly. The card descriptions are fully voiced, which is nice. I could go through all of them, unlike with the other games where completionism was too big of a pain.
The borrowed spells confuse me. Why use Spongify, which was possibly the most fun spell from any of these games, and then make it this extremely boring and situational ability. You don't zoom across rooms, you awkwardly jump high and hope Harry can grab the edge.
The camera is very bad. It got stuck frequently, even while being able to move it, and getting it unstuck was a challenge in its own right. There were other bugs I've encountered along the way, none big enough to mention, but altogether the collection of them made the whole experience feel unpleasant.
It has its share of unique ideas. Not a fair share, but a share. Collecting potion ingredients is kinda cool, though it doesn't seem like any of the enemies or mechanics used were fully finished. The worm, from which you require a mucus, seemed like a particularly big victim of a lack of animations or mechanics. Worth mentioning is that this game has barely no loading screens around the castle. The door-opening animations are longer, and there are now doors on every floor, but it seems like a lot of it is somehow all rendered at once. Kinda impressive, a little bit.
The story is told more nonsensically. They show certain things that weren't mentioned in the movie, even expand on some book-only events, but then they also skip over major story beats or invent their own. My favorite thing is that the day after you defeat the troll in the girls' bathroom, the Herbology class spell challenge requires you to beat two more. Like, what? Didn't McGonnagal say that not many first-years could knock out a troll just 10 minutes ago?
The final boss is awful, for some reasons they reuse the Gytrashes (these dog-like ghosts roaming the grounds at night, which fear the light) before the actual Voldemort fight, and they're ANNOYING. There's 4 of them, they look identical, run off-screen, shoot you with soundwaves, chase you, and if you eliminate one, Quirrel just respawns it! The task is to defeat them in a very short time-window, basically all at once, but it is a very stingy window. There is no good way to avoid them once they start chasing you, and each hit takes away precious time. It's just really awful design. The actual Voldemort part is confusing, as you have to stay still while standing close to the face of the mirror, so a beam comes out and nullifies the damage, while allowing you to dish out a special attack. It's quite difficult to aim it with the perspective you are given.
Perhaps this is not the worst 6th gen title should you pick it up as the first one, that honor would then befall the Chamber of Secrets most likely, but it's worth remembering that this actually came out AFTER Chamber of Secrets, with all the assets being thrown into the laps of a different studio so they can churn out a title while the work on Prisoner of Azkaban was underway. With that in mind, should you play these games as they were released, rather than following the movies, you'll see the sort of slip-ups and a lack of polish present throughout, which were largely not there in Chamber of Secrets. That game might have had more running back-and-forth, but it was somehow less mind-numbing.
Despite a sizeable chunk of new content, the game's main gameplay loop remains the same, which unfortunately highlights most of the issues with the format. The simplicity of the design is just downright annoying. The spell challenges specifically include areas you cannot access without spells you'll learn later, meaning you'll not only have to come back just to find unlock them if you want a 100%, but it is programmed so that you have to do THE ENTIRE CHALLENGE again, collecting ALL THE CHALLENGE SHIELDS YOU COLLECTED PREVIOUSLY on top of the new ones. What's even the point of engaging with the secrets earnestly on the first go if you are incentivized to do it all over again anyway?
The secrets aren't even anything exciting to discover, there's a big, draping cloth and you need Diffindo to cut it, that's it. It's not hidden or anything, you just have to walk there. It's not difficult or fun, just annoying. Maybe if the castle's secret entrances were changed in any way, or maybe if it had its own type of secrets (like the different versions of the Chamber of Secrets did) it could work, but it's just honestly more tedious than anything, going into the same corridors and seeing the same interiors with largely the same secrets, changed ever so slightly.
Same goes for the item-collecting side quest. Seems like it was mandatory for the PS2 titles. They are once more placed in random, unintuitive locations. Waste of time. The broom helps a bit, but even less so than in Chamber of Secrets.
At least it is very easy to get all the cards this time, thanks to the inclusion of the trading system. You can actually get duplicate cards, but trading them will always result in receiving a new card. I completed my collection pretty effortlessly. The card descriptions are fully voiced, which is nice. I could go through all of them, unlike with the other games where completionism was too big of a pain.
The borrowed spells confuse me. Why use Spongify, which was possibly the most fun spell from any of these games, and then make it this extremely boring and situational ability. You don't zoom across rooms, you awkwardly jump high and hope Harry can grab the edge.
The camera is very bad. It got stuck frequently, even while being able to move it, and getting it unstuck was a challenge in its own right. There were other bugs I've encountered along the way, none big enough to mention, but altogether the collection of them made the whole experience feel unpleasant.
It has its share of unique ideas. Not a fair share, but a share. Collecting potion ingredients is kinda cool, though it doesn't seem like any of the enemies or mechanics used were fully finished. The worm, from which you require a mucus, seemed like a particularly big victim of a lack of animations or mechanics. Worth mentioning is that this game has barely no loading screens around the castle. The door-opening animations are longer, and there are now doors on every floor, but it seems like a lot of it is somehow all rendered at once. Kinda impressive, a little bit.
The story is told more nonsensically. They show certain things that weren't mentioned in the movie, even expand on some book-only events, but then they also skip over major story beats or invent their own. My favorite thing is that the day after you defeat the troll in the girls' bathroom, the Herbology class spell challenge requires you to beat two more. Like, what? Didn't McGonnagal say that not many first-years could knock out a troll just 10 minutes ago?
The final boss is awful, for some reasons they reuse the Gytrashes (these dog-like ghosts roaming the grounds at night, which fear the light) before the actual Voldemort fight, and they're ANNOYING. There's 4 of them, they look identical, run off-screen, shoot you with soundwaves, chase you, and if you eliminate one, Quirrel just respawns it! The task is to defeat them in a very short time-window, basically all at once, but it is a very stingy window. There is no good way to avoid them once they start chasing you, and each hit takes away precious time. It's just really awful design. The actual Voldemort part is confusing, as you have to stay still while standing close to the face of the mirror, so a beam comes out and nullifies the damage, while allowing you to dish out a special attack. It's quite difficult to aim it with the perspective you are given.
Perhaps this is not the worst 6th gen title should you pick it up as the first one, that honor would then befall the Chamber of Secrets most likely, but it's worth remembering that this actually came out AFTER Chamber of Secrets, with all the assets being thrown into the laps of a different studio so they can churn out a title while the work on Prisoner of Azkaban was underway. With that in mind, should you play these games as they were released, rather than following the movies, you'll see the sort of slip-ups and a lack of polish present throughout, which were largely not there in Chamber of Secrets. That game might have had more running back-and-forth, but it was somehow less mind-numbing.