Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
I was very much looking forward to Hogwarts Mystery, the new Harry Potter mobile game and I downloaded it as soon as I got the notification that it was available. I've got a little way into it now and I have to say, it's not exactly what I was expecting. There was a big deal made over the fact that they had got the actors from the films to provide voices but it's just McGonagall reading out the welcoming letter and part of a line from Dumbledore, the latter which seems like it's been cut from the film. Most of the vocalisations are things like 'Hmm' or exclamations of surprise, not actual lines. So that is a little disappointing.
The game starts with you appearing in Diagon Alley where you get your school supplies. I was rather hopeful of visiting Ollivander's but there's no real selection process there, it seems that everyone gets the same wand: acacia wood, dragon heartstring, 10 inches, pliable. Obviously the next exciting point would be the Sorting but there's even less of a selection process there as you get to choose your own House!
The graphics are quite good, the look of Hogwarts has obviously been copied from previous games and the films. (Click on any image for a larger version.)
Here is the interior of the castle with the main game layout. The little icon in the top left opens your profile:
Clicking the Rank button opens up the Housepoints screen and Leaderboard.
The Leaderboard is only NCPs from the game rather than actual people playing it. Although I'm not sure if that explains why the top three students are all Hufflepuffs.
The icon of a scroll with a H on it opens your task list:
The three icons along the bottom lead to your friends list, the things you've learned or can learn, and your wardrobe.
Again, these friends are just characters from in the game. If you look closely at the little icons at the bottom, the fourth one is Bill Weasley and the fifth one is Tonks. You get to meet them later on.
The arrow at the top takes you through to Year 3 so I presume the game will at least go that far through Hogwarts.
You can use the in-game currency of coins and gems to buy hairstyles and clothing. The prices are ridiculous though. The cheapest things are 300 coins or 150 gems. These can be bought with actual money, 250 coins or 25 gems both cost £0.89. That means you're looking at easily £5+ for most items though. You can earn coins or gems after completing various tasks, some of the lessons have options of coins or attributes (charm, courage or knowledge) and I'm not sure whether it's better to go for the money or the attributes.
You have conversations with other students and occasionally, there are options of different responses which give different outcomes.
This is a side mission where you have to cheer up your good friend, Ben. He's afraid of everything despite being a Gryffindor. Good to know that it's possible for a Slytherin and Gryffindor to be friends and eat sandwiches together! Yay for inter-House friendships! Although why are we eating sandwiches when there's a huge roast chicken right there?!
A large part of the game involves going to lessons, initially Charms, Potions and Flying. Here I'm learning a spell, Rictusempra, which I need for a duel. The three hours listed at the bottom is the amount of time you have to complete this task.
Various items get outlined in blue and you need to tap on these.
Then a little pop-up says how many times you need to tap to complete that action. Each tap takes energy (the little lightning bolt) so in this case it takes 2 taps/2 energy. At the top right, you can see that there's 25 energy. As soon as it drops below 25, it will automatically refill with one energy every 4 minutes. Each time you complete one of these actions, it fills up the progress bar and every so often you earn a star. However, it doesn't tell you how much progress you'll get from each action or how many of those actions it will take to reach the next star or complete it.
Twenty-five taps later, I'm out of energy but I've only got 3 of the 5 stars I need to complete the lesson. It will take 1 hour 20 minutes to completely refill the energy but luckily I've got plenty of time left before the lesson expires.
The last part of learning the spell is to trace the shape on the screen. Occasionally throughout the game, you'll need to use a spell (usually Lumos) and will be asked to trace its shape on the screen to cast it.
That's pretty much the majority of the game. Tapping on things outlined in blue and occasionally tracing a shape. It's the same even in Potions!
I had rather hoped that you'd have to do things like using the mortal and pestle, stirring the cauldron and putting ingredients in so that's quite disappointing. There have been other games that include those kinds of things so it's not like it's impossible to do. Even Pottermore, back when it was more interactive, was more demanding with making potions.
The gameplay itself seems rather lacking. It's mostly tapping on indicated places and so it does get rather dull quite quickly. There's several places where it could have been expanded; in one section, you have to hunt for a book in a room which could have been a good place to put a hidden object mini-game and in another part you play Gobstones which could have been a fun marbles mini-game too. Very occasionally the lessons have a final question which does require some knowledge of Hogwarts/the Wizarding World as the answer is not given in the lesson itself.
The plot of the game itself seems rather derivative. You're trying to find out what has happened to your brother who was expelled after searching Hogwarts for the Cursed Vaults and then disappeared. Perhaps it's next to the Chamber of Secrets? Snape hates you because that's what Snape does, and there's a Slytherin bully who hates you because that's what Slytherin does. And both of the above still apply even if you're in Slytherin! Merula, the bully, also challenges you to a duel. I wonder where I've heard that before... I've seen a few reviews where people are saying that the game is not as involved as they were expecting and that you can do very little before you run out of energy, plus it takes far too long to refill, sometimes so long that the task expires and you have to start again. I know there's the second Harry Potter game coming out at some point, the one that's supposed to be like Pokemon Go. It will be interesting to see how that compares.
The game starts with you appearing in Diagon Alley where you get your school supplies. I was rather hopeful of visiting Ollivander's but there's no real selection process there, it seems that everyone gets the same wand: acacia wood, dragon heartstring, 10 inches, pliable. Obviously the next exciting point would be the Sorting but there's even less of a selection process there as you get to choose your own House!
The graphics are quite good, the look of Hogwarts has obviously been copied from previous games and the films. (Click on any image for a larger version.)
Here is the interior of the castle with the main game layout. The little icon in the top left opens your profile:
Clicking the Rank button opens up the Housepoints screen and Leaderboard.
The Leaderboard is only NCPs from the game rather than actual people playing it. Although I'm not sure if that explains why the top three students are all Hufflepuffs.
The icon of a scroll with a H on it opens your task list:
The three icons along the bottom lead to your friends list, the things you've learned or can learn, and your wardrobe.
Again, these friends are just characters from in the game. If you look closely at the little icons at the bottom, the fourth one is Bill Weasley and the fifth one is Tonks. You get to meet them later on.
The arrow at the top takes you through to Year 3 so I presume the game will at least go that far through Hogwarts.
You can use the in-game currency of coins and gems to buy hairstyles and clothing. The prices are ridiculous though. The cheapest things are 300 coins or 150 gems. These can be bought with actual money, 250 coins or 25 gems both cost £0.89. That means you're looking at easily £5+ for most items though. You can earn coins or gems after completing various tasks, some of the lessons have options of coins or attributes (charm, courage or knowledge) and I'm not sure whether it's better to go for the money or the attributes.
You have conversations with other students and occasionally, there are options of different responses which give different outcomes.
This is a side mission where you have to cheer up your good friend, Ben. He's afraid of everything despite being a Gryffindor. Good to know that it's possible for a Slytherin and Gryffindor to be friends and eat sandwiches together! Yay for inter-House friendships! Although why are we eating sandwiches when there's a huge roast chicken right there?!
A large part of the game involves going to lessons, initially Charms, Potions and Flying. Here I'm learning a spell, Rictusempra, which I need for a duel. The three hours listed at the bottom is the amount of time you have to complete this task.
Various items get outlined in blue and you need to tap on these.
Then a little pop-up says how many times you need to tap to complete that action. Each tap takes energy (the little lightning bolt) so in this case it takes 2 taps/2 energy. At the top right, you can see that there's 25 energy. As soon as it drops below 25, it will automatically refill with one energy every 4 minutes. Each time you complete one of these actions, it fills up the progress bar and every so often you earn a star. However, it doesn't tell you how much progress you'll get from each action or how many of those actions it will take to reach the next star or complete it.
Twenty-five taps later, I'm out of energy but I've only got 3 of the 5 stars I need to complete the lesson. It will take 1 hour 20 minutes to completely refill the energy but luckily I've got plenty of time left before the lesson expires.
The last part of learning the spell is to trace the shape on the screen. Occasionally throughout the game, you'll need to use a spell (usually Lumos) and will be asked to trace its shape on the screen to cast it.
That's pretty much the majority of the game. Tapping on things outlined in blue and occasionally tracing a shape. It's the same even in Potions!
I had rather hoped that you'd have to do things like using the mortal and pestle, stirring the cauldron and putting ingredients in so that's quite disappointing. There have been other games that include those kinds of things so it's not like it's impossible to do. Even Pottermore, back when it was more interactive, was more demanding with making potions.
The gameplay itself seems rather lacking. It's mostly tapping on indicated places and so it does get rather dull quite quickly. There's several places where it could have been expanded; in one section, you have to hunt for a book in a room which could have been a good place to put a hidden object mini-game and in another part you play Gobstones which could have been a fun marbles mini-game too. Very occasionally the lessons have a final question which does require some knowledge of Hogwarts/the Wizarding World as the answer is not given in the lesson itself.
The plot of the game itself seems rather derivative. You're trying to find out what has happened to your brother who was expelled after searching Hogwarts for the Cursed Vaults and then disappeared. Perhaps it's next to the Chamber of Secrets? Snape hates you because that's what Snape does, and there's a Slytherin bully who hates you because that's what Slytherin does. And both of the above still apply even if you're in Slytherin! Merula, the bully, also challenges you to a duel. I wonder where I've heard that before... I've seen a few reviews where people are saying that the game is not as involved as they were expecting and that you can do very little before you run out of energy, plus it takes far too long to refill, sometimes so long that the task expires and you have to start again. I know there's the second Harry Potter game coming out at some point, the one that's supposed to be like Pokemon Go. It will be interesting to see how that compares.