A great game that suffers due to too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay.
The game's strong points do include fun gameplay, while it lasts, great sound effects for the most part and great graphics.
The game's weak points include:
-Too short
-Quidditch could be better
-Too many Cutscenes
-Alohamora is virtually useless
-No real challenge in the entire game
The game begins at the Weasley house, known as the Burrow, after a short cutscene where Harry arrives. After that happens you are given a wand and are allowed to use magic, since when have underage wizards been allowed to do that? Well no one cares so lets move on...
The gameplay is very fun and was designed really well for the title. Using a spell by the touch of a button, three spells to choose from at one time without heading to the menu. Yet there was stuff lacking in the gameplay. The spells didn't always seem as effective as they should. Things the spell should have effected, by the description, remain unchanged by it. And to top it all off you can barely go for ten minutes without seeing a cutscene.
The standard gameplay is nice, while it lasts, but the funnest part seems to be the flying. Once you play quidditch for the first time, or do well a second or third time, you should be given a broomstick by the captain of the quidditch team. This allows you to fly around the hogwarts grounds. Normally you teleport around them but with the broom you can explore the outside of the castle as much as you want. It is much more fun to swerve around Hogwarts than it is to get knocked over by a firecrab and then go into a cutscene for two minutes.
Quidditch was a real dissapointment in the game. While many may say "what?!" you have to admit it wasn't quidditch. Quidditch isn't a set field of rings that goes the same way every time. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (PC) really gave the best quidditch performance. It felt like quidditch instead of "oh great a set path to fly along."
The cutscenes really dampen the game as they are there every other minute! If we wanted to see things happen we'd buy the movie. We want things to happen with us in control. But yet everything has a cutscene. Be it long or short. Plus the loading times are longer than you'd expect on the GameCube. The game would be much more fun if it was longer, had less loading, and less cutscenes.
The graphics representation of the game is done very nicely. Everything looks crisp and clear except the framerate slows down every now and then. The characters, except Dumbledore, look like they ought to. And the environments were done amazingly.
The sound of the game is pretty annoying. The same music plays often enough for it to bug you and the character voices make you wish that it was just text on the screen. Several good voice actors have been used but most are terrible.
The game is a good game but it won't last long and it suffers from too many mistakes. Sadly from what I hear this is the best of the Harry Potter games with the exception of the Quidditch aspect.