While it recycles a lot of elements from the previous EA Harry Potter games, Prisoner of Azkaban didn't quite hit the way Chamber of Secrets did for me. What felt so fresh and exciting last time around began to grow a bit tedious in this one, and more importantly the game failed to make very good use of some of the book and movie's best sequences for gameplay.

This time around you get to control Harry, Ron, and Hermione- who stay together as a trio for most of the game. No co-op seems like a missed opportunity but at least it lends some variety to puzzles as you need to have each of them participate in some component of the puzzle.

Really the game is more of Chamber of Secrets. Instead of getting to explore Hogwarts from the sky on your broom, this time you can fly Buckbeak. The sizable puzzle dungeons return as does the spell mapping system.

It's all serviceable enough though I wish it included more of the locations and moments from the movie. There could have been a unique implementation of the time travel elements, for example, or at least an explorable Hogsmeade (Chamber of Secrets had a pretty elaborate Diagon Alley so that doesn't seem like a huge ask).

Prisoner of Azkaban isn't a bad game and is still worth checking out for Harry Potter fans, but it's understandable why they wanted to change things up in the next game for better or worse.