Harry Potter's magical world is no longer a place I wish I could visit.
You start the game watching some horrible cut scenes. Seriously, who wants to see pictures and read text anymore. These scenes progress throughout the entire game. Then you get into the action and things get worse. You are directed down a path of performing useless meaningless tasks. Then, when you have completed those, you get to move on and perform more useless meaningless tasks. The only word to describe this is brutal. It is just simply brutal.
When you are walking around Hogwarts you can appreciate the amount of time they put in to make the castle as big as it is. But, you are immediately resentful because you cannot go discover anything on your own. As soon as you deviate from your set path someone tells you are going the wrong way and you have to stop and go the correct way. Just simply allowing people to go where they want would make this game score higher. Well, probably not that much higher.
The spell minigames are okay. They are a good use of the touch screen because you draw the shape with your wand but, I kind of think that should be all you have to do. You don't see wizards waving their wand and then hitting colored dots to make sure that their spell works. It adds nothing but making you take a little longer to cast your spells.
However, the spells you cast during duels are much better. You simply trace from line to line to cast your spell. Not very challenging but much more fun. The duels are set up as you taking turns with your opponent. You cast one spell and then the enemies cast one spell. It is kind of unrealistic but it is also probably the only way that they could have set it up. It is also nice that the number of spells you can cast is based on your magical training. That was a well thought out part of the game. But, the duels always seem a little unbalanced. I never once lost one of my characters, I always defeated all of my opponents before I even came close.
There are other games like gobstones, quidditch, exploding snap. Okay at first but you probably will not be putting this game in your DS just to get some quidditch in. They incorporate the touch screen a little bit, but not in any new inventive ways.
The lessons are hit or miss. Some are okay, others are terrible. Take history of magic for instance. If you new nothing about Harry Potter you could not do this one, you would fail every time. Potions is the best though. It uses the microphone to blow on the fire to make it hotter, you have to stir the cauldron and you have to drag and drop ingredients in. This is probably the best use of the DS controls in the game. As a whole, the lessons are probably the best part of the game. But, that really is not saying very much.
I know it may be asking a lot to make a great game from a movie. But, I think with Harry Potter it is achievable. There is so much more that could have been done with the spells, lessons, and games. They storyline should have been the easy part in this game since it was already written but it was also a failure. Also, we have seen from other recent offerings on the DS that it is capable of achieving graphics that are way better than these.
This game has a lot of good ideas but none are complete. If there was just a little more time spent in devolpment we would be singing a completely different tune. As it is, this one is not worth even renting.