The Prisoner of Azkaban.

The last Harry Potter game I ever played. Never touched any of the games after HP3 cuz my interests kinda shifted and afterwards I heard those are pretty bad.

The graphic texures have pretty much improved since the last game. I also noticed how characters make pretty funny faces in this game, especially Ron and Hermione. Speaking about those, they have been fleshed out alot as characters in this game, in fact I think you play more often as Ron or Hermione than as Harry in this game, who kinda takes a backseat despite being the titular protagonist.

Every character has their own spells and special abilities, making you value each of them differently when playing as either of those.

Hogwarts however feels a bit less alive than in the 2nd game and the stealth missions are kinda downgrades than compared to its predecessor. Also the game is kinda lagging when free roaming outside of Hogwarts.

The levels and puzzles are still great. What keeps this game down to become superior than its predecessor though is the rushed ending. Storywise this feels the far more like it was made for people that only read the book or watched the movie. The best movie and 2nd best book in the series but only the 3rd best game. Still damn good though.

8/10 sinister Dementors swallowing your soul.

Make sure to check out my review of The Prisoner of Azkaban on letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/xgmanx/film/harry-potter-and-the-prisoner-of-azkaban/

despite the characters looking like they are created in sims 3 and having minor annoyances like a sectioned off world and too many loading screens, it replicates the feeling of being in a magical world wonderfully. the puzzles are just the right difficulty to feel rewarding and fun, and the dementors are genuinely unsettling, just like in the movie. though it feels like they try to pack a lot of the story into cutscenes, so the pacing feels kinda awkward towards the end. Ron feels like a burden, but being able to switch between characters during gameplay gagged me a bit, and probably so did rockstar employees.

This game ruins the best part of the last game which was the mappable spell buttons. Because it introduces Ron and Hermione as playable characters, you have to use a button to swap between them. That means you can only map up to 2 buttons instead of 3. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it means that pretty early on you’ll have to constantly pause the game to remap spells. Whenever you’re in a level that uses a variety of spells or abilities, you quickly run out of slots because each character can only map 2 spells or items at a time. I know these games are for kids, but would it really have made the controls too complicated for kids if they had to swap characters with the D pad instead of the buttons?

I always loved how the games followed the films in more ways than one, even accidentally.

The two first films have the same director and thus the same style, and most of the kids don't really have any obvious changes in between them, neither do the two games. It's the third one when everything becomes different. New director, new style. The game has brand new graphics. It feels like the beginning of a new era.

It no longer just feels like a kids game that some team threw together on the backside of a month (until the end maybe), but it feels like an actual game that they spent some actual time on. It doesn't feel like I'm playing a straight-up kids game.

The opening FMV is absolutely epic. Real time was spent on the storytelling aspect of the game, and it makes it so much more rewarding to play. There's an actual style, and an atmosphere, and an aesthetic to it that feels genuine and unique. It feels like if the Chamber of Secrets game just grew up.

No quidditch this time around, though, which is a bummer.

There are less gaps in the narrative now. Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets were almost laughable when it came to that, but these guys actually try to capture the story told as closely as possible. I know it's just because I've read the book and watched the film, but scenes towards the end actually managed to give me chills. I do feel like there was a lot of stuff cut from this game because of deadlines, which sucks, but that's life, and they made it work anyways.

And they even go beyond that. With the previous games, the game might veer off a bit to tell the story in a way that fits the game, but this game adds segments and story beats that aren't even in the book or the film.

Even if their creativeness in its storytelling, and video game making in general, just kinda dies down towards the end (because of deadlines, I'm guessing).

Plus, the game is just better now because you have Ron and Hermione with you for most of the game, and you can even switch to their characters. You even have them with you into the spell challenges, which is more than cool. However, because they follow you this time around, you can't really rely on following them to places, so you kind of have to figure out which doors you're supposed to enter yourself. But not only do you get to play as the three characters, you also get different specific abilities with each character, like Ron being able to see hidden doors, and Harry being able to jump (cool ability, bruv). But it doesn't stop there; the different characters also have character-specific spells. That's really cool.

Also, I adore the character models and animations.

They reuse a lot of music from previous games, which is actually kind of a positive because Chamber of Secrets has my second favorite video game soundtrack of all time. But it's also sort of a bummer because the original music that is here is really good. I especially love the more melancholic and not super happy tone of some of it. And the more mysterious and majestic, and less fun and adventurous, music.

I will say that the pause menu is frustratingly slow. And I don't like how voice lines are interrupted when you pause, and they don't continue when you unpause. And only being able to equip two spells at a time is a nuisance.

And the last act is way, way too short.

But I love this game. It's a good ol' time.

Screeches in Hippogriff

This has been the best one so far, yet Dumbledore's voice it's still very underwhelming.

All three main characters are totally playable. Each one has their own skillset, and at times, the game push you towards which one of the trio would have to complete a quest in order to progress in the game.

The castle and graphics are a bit improved with lot's of new details and rooms added. However the way to the Gryffindor tower was very long and lots of rooms to cross. Some of the floors were access-restricted by a Prefect but by the final day of School all parts of the castle were accessible.