Story
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix follows the story of JK Rowling's novel of the same name, starring the boy wizard. Harry Potter has returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardary for his fifth year, but many changes are taking place; Dolores Umbridge is stamping down crazy rules and is trying to overthrow Dumbledore, the current headmaster. The player takes control of Harry as he goes about on his adventure and set up his secret society for teaching magic. He is followed closely by his companions Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, although they are not playable. There are a few instances where you get to play a different character such as one of the Weasley twins, Sirius Black and Dumbledore, but the gameplay isn't significantly different. The events in game closely follow the plot and action of the movie, with additional tasks restricted to fleshing out the world created by JK Rowling.
Gameplay
The game takes an open world approach, allowing the player to explore Hogwarts freely, with story being fleshed out with cut scenes (plenty of them) and instance specific action and/or mini games.
The game revolves around two main quests: recruiting members to Dumbledore's Army, and then with the collected group of students, causing mayhem for Professor Umbridge. Each of these quests is fleshed out with smaller tasks, usually amounting to helping other students at pedestrian tasks in and around the school. There is no specific order to these tasks, and during their completion, the player can take part in wizard games (including Exploding Snap, Gobstones, and Wizard's Chess), completing specific tasks for teachers, and, inexplicably, general maintance of the school, which seems to find itself in disarray. All of these tasks can be completed to unlock bonus material including interviews with the game designers and actors from the film.
After you finish the main storyline by defeating Lord Voldemort, you can still walk around in Hogwarts to finish the smaller quests. All of the quests can be done during the entire game and after you finish it, but there is one quest that unlocks only after you return from the Ministry of Magic.
Controls
Depending on the console you play, the controls concerning the spells will be different. For the Xbox 360 and PS3, you will move your analogue stick, for the Wii you will move your controller in a specific way to perform a spell, and on the PC version you do a similiar thing, but with the mouse.
Environment
You have almost complete access to Hogwarts, with the details recreated from the Warner Bros. films. The game is set at Hogwarts for the majority, but you do get to spend time at 12 Grimmauld Place on two occasions and at the end of the game you will get to visit the Ministry of Magic. The whole world is open and rich in details, you will have to find pupils around the school and complete the tasks they give you for them to join up to Dumbledore's Army.
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