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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Review - PS3

Introduction

Welcome back for your fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. With the world in denial about Voldemort’s return, Harry Potter and his group of friends do all they can to prepare themselves for battle. The latest game in the franchise reenacts the recent movie, and to a lesser extent, the book.

Gameplay

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix assumes that you have watched the movies or read the books and thus does not really explain the previous events that lead into the game’s quest. This instantly cuts out a huge range of people, but it has to be said that it’s unlikely someone would pick up the game without having encountered its book or film equivalent. From the word go you control the titular character as you roam Hogwarts, encountering basically every character from the films, which is a nice touch.

The game begins with a tutorial where you learn some basic spells to repair, levitate and push or pull objects. You use these spells by moving the right analogue stick in a particular way. This is quite an innovative way to cast spells, allowing the player full control of the wand. In total you’ll learn twelve spells – six for duelling, and six for non-combative work. Unfortunately, as a whole the spells are rather useless. The non-combat skills are used for menial and repetitive practices like repairing statues and moving furniture, while the duelling spells aren’t used that often because there are very few duels in the game.

Thankfully, you won’t mind the lack of duels because the combat system is very poor. The aforementioned duelling spells are your only means of attack in the entire game – that’s six in total. You have to select what spells to use at the appropriate time, depending on whether you are being offensive or defensive. Some spells are more effective than others and many times during duels you find that you are basically casting the same attack until you win the duel. The game needed many more spells, and perhaps even an ability tree where you can power up your hexes, unlock new forms, mix and match abilities, or even add elemental powers. This could have added so much more depth and even an incentive for completely finishing the game. Going even further, it’s interesting to contemplate what turn-based battles would be like, but admittedly this could complicate the system beyond the average child’s abilities.

After learning how to play you get to explore the vast world of Hogwarts. The map is huge and all the famous details have been included, such as the moving staircases and the talking paintings. However, having to travel so much soon becomes tedious because it’s just so damn big. Although you can take shortcuts through the secret passages behind paintings you still waste a lot of time running around. You do have a map to help with navigation as well as black footprints (continued next page)