TT Games manages to keep the charm alive, but for how much longer
Of course you would see a review of this eventually. After all we are a fan of the Lego games in this household! It is a game on a very short list that I can get my wife to play. Plus it was the added value of being a family friendly game, something not very common these days. At any rate, after playing through the first half of the franchise, we finally get into the more action packed second half. Knowing the source material, you should see some good action moments in this one.
There are not many improvements to mention when comparing this game to the rest. You have your same wheelhouse of Lego manipulations, building, moving, destroying, you know how it goes. You get 8 spells at the most to mess around with. There are some new spells this time around but nothing really worth mentioning. What stuck out the most while playing through this game is the new wizard's dueling system.
When a duel is initiated, you enter a ring with an opposing wizard. Your movement becomes restricted to strafing your side of half of the circle as is the opponent to his. The circle surrounding you takes on the color of whatever magic you and your opponent has selected. So what you want to do is match the spell your opponent has selected in order to initiate a face-off and hammer on either the x button or the square button. If you did manage to match the spell and hammer the button you earn a hit. First to four hits is the winner. That means that if you don’t match your spell fast enough and you get hit four times you lose the duel. But no worries, it is a Lego game and even if you lose the duel you just jump in there and start it again.
The biggest annoyances that you come across this time around are the character unlocking and purchasing system and the loading times. The character unlocking has been a problem in previous games but with 200 characters to purchase it is becoming more and more of an issue. Basically instead of having a listing with 200 characters to buy, which I wouldn’t want, they group like characters together. So you have like 5 versions of Harry on the same spot and they cycle through. So when you unlock a new character, you first have to find him on this huge wall of characters, and then you have to isolate which spot he is in the cycle. This makes it more like a find-it game to get the new characters you unlock. Someone tell Traveler’s Tales that this system needs to be improved, it has gotten out of hand.
The loading times have also gotten out of hand. The first few Lego games had next to no loading times. This game has a lot of loading. Too much. I understand that this game is much larger than the old games and it takes more power to load those pretty visuals, but I think I would rather have less visuals with less loading times. I know, it is nitpicking but I have to find something to mention, it isn’t a perfect game after all.
But other than that Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is a grade A Lego game. There are still some moments where you find yourself wondering what you have to do next but this has come so far since the early Lego games that I don't want to fault them for that. It is hard to make a fun game and still make it accessible to the wide audience they have amassed. Every time TT Games goes to bat, they manage to knock one out of the park. It really is a testament to their development that this franchise has boomed as big as it has and I am hotly anticipating the next two games coming out this year. Until then, this game gets high marks all around and anyone who likes the source material or the Lego games, or both, should pick this up. At any rate it is a great family game in a generation of consoles that don't really have very many of those.