There was one comment in the earlier Harry Potter Video Game Review. I said that they ran the gambit between great and dreadful, in a nutshell. Guess what? This one took extra steps to be extra boring and repetitive. Harry Potter is a lot of things, but trying to make a straight game from book/movie to Video Games, apparently, people ran out of ideas.
The real problem with this game is that it tries to make it look more exciting than it actually is. It puts you in weird puzzle arenas and makes you think it's exciting by putting a time limit in the mechanics and there's your action sequence, enjoy. The puzzle platforming gets old. You can only move so many platforms over so many death falls so many times and keep the gameplay fresh. Working villains into the end of puzzles where you shoot people with spells is not a good way to pad out your gameplay.
There is also no cooperative mode, when there very well could have been. If they got rid of the platforming mechanic and tighten up the gameplay with some sort of combat mechanics that work, this could have been a good title. It could have been a great title if it just would have stayed closer to the books in story and combat, but apparently they thought there just wasn't enough puzzles. Everything needs to be more complicated, whether it be getting an object and moving that object somewhere, or just getting to stairs!
It obviously doesn't stay with the books or movies to any real extent, but it does keep to the fact that Dementors are annoying. Anything having to do with the Dementors is just going to be tedious and usually rather repetitive. Obviously, they're going to be a bad enemy, given their status as sucking happiness out of you and making you freeze, but really, we should have done something more with Boggarts.
Anything having to do with the story or the dialogue in this game is going to be awful. Even for PS2 era, these graphics are rough. The portions with flying around on Buckbeak look terrible as a result because the surroundings look flat and lifeless. There's no music, only the sound of the afforementioned ticking clock that gets more and more monotonous as time goes on. Speaking of dialogue, did I tell you that it gets very repetitive?
The controls are not terrible, but anything flying around that you have to click on or catch, and you're going to be there for a while. Controlling everything with a PS2 controller was not always as glamourous as Old School gamers will attest. Yes, PS2 came out a while ago, it can be considered old school at this point. Anything with this level of repetitive voice acting gets the retro stamp any day. Speaking of dialogue, did I tell you that it gets very repetitive?
It's still a charming game and some of the gameplay can be pretty fun, but it's marred with serious problems. Unlike the Goblet of Fire for the PS2 (as there are many versions, mind you), this game is very hard to get into. The audio is awful, the graphics are problematic, the puzzles are dreary and boring and trying to keep interest in it is highly difficult. Don't bother with this one.
