The good:
Piranha Bytes jank charm
Piranha Bytes handcrafted world which is rewarding to explore
Piranha Bytes progression system which has you unable to beat more than 3 types of creatures until you're 10 hours in the game
Jetpack allows for more vertical exploration and all sorts of skips
Exploiting the AI is fun and also funny (Example: if you don't touch the ground while using the jetpack, the guards can't talk to you, meaning you can enter any restricted space that is otherwise blocked off by an NPC activating a dialogue)

The bad:
World is less lively than the worlds from their first games
Stunlocking is too easy, combat system is broken
Story is uninteresting and wonky
Romance in a Piranha Bytes game, lmao
Environmental puzzles (AKA some codes are just written on random pieces of paper, walls or tables near a safe), who cares, just give me the loot
World has less distinct locations than even their first games
Really weak setpieces
Game looks pretty bad
Piranha Bytes not-so-charming jank
For sidequests, I do not want to search for shitty pieces of paper scattered across the map without any indication of where they can be, stop this video games, please, it's awful.

Score:
You, reading this, just play/replay Gothic.

Quite honestly, I've had enough of Piranha Bytes games. I don't think they will ever release a game I'll be able to enjoy without a quadrillion caveats. They just have cool exploration left, and they're even oversaturating that with environmental puzzles to make me run around a location in search of some secret code. I don't know how much more they have in them to even make playable games if they keep going like this.

See you in Elex II

Ho-ly shit. What a game.

It emulates so much of what makes Sonic memorable within gaming at large while having this whole refined set of ideas and mechanics that is completely its own. While it's not quite like Adventure, which has you switch out gameplay styles entirely for a set of levels, here it's all either utilizing the same moveset in different ways or entering a vehicle for a part of a level.

And it controls so well, oh so well. The glitches from the second game were all eliminated, so much was added, so many movement options, all these ways to preserve momentum, speed up or correct yourself. The levels do not rely on spectacle during hands-off moments, they rely on constant control and awareness, seeing the challenge ahead from a mile away only to speed through it like a champ. Unlike Spark 2, where I drastically felt the removal of content from the first game within the 3D space, here it's a non-issue due to the sheer amount of options available to you from the get-go, and so many more inside the game's shop.

This game is an absolute miracle. Treats its 2nd game as a stepping stone and simply says: I will singlehandedly make that story cooler. It even has its own absolutely ridiculous story, weird cuts, sudden tone-switches, and more, meaning that Sonic fans should feel right at home. I absolutely do not want to spoil this, but the whole final level is singlehandedly one of the most unhinged things I've seen in gaming in a long while. This, inside a 3D Sonic-inspired game. The absolute freedom of a one-person game, a person who managed to make what is likely the best Sonic-type game since Adventure, is simply overwhelming, joyous and it OWNS.

I'll be revisiting this later down the line, when I will inevitably attempt to actually finish all the 3D Sonic games. I'm unbelievably excited at the prospect of forgetting parts of this game and seeing once again how cool these ideas are. There's just too many to fully remember them all.

Play it.

A poor jump into 3D for the franchise, much weaker than Sonic's. Taking away content, having only 4 abilities which are only used for combat, even though they operate basically the same in those scenarios.

Combat is worse, AI sometimes can't handle you simply moving. But you don't need to move anyway, the parrying is super generous and, thus, overpowered. You just stand in place, parry roughly around the time the enemy attacks, charge your powerup bar and win. The previous game at least gave you a new power for charging up the bar. Here it's just a damage modifier.

I really hate it when games add random curves along a straight path just to make moving forward actually move you a little bit to the side. Makes the typically hands-off moments annoying. Usually, 3D Sonic game would put a nice spectacle for you to enjoy while you run through these. Not here.

Bigger focus on the story. Doesn't do much for me. Fark is boring protagonist. Game's so short that nothing sticks. The cutscenes are poor, models don't look great when you zoom in on them, and the sound effects are silly.

Levels have hidden alcoves and collectibles hidden along them. That's the best thing about them. It's cool to spot them while running. I am not fond of pretty much anything else in the level design. Very, very straightforward, but, like previously mentioned, it lacks any spectacle. Although there were moments where I was confused where I'm at.

There's a lot of glitches. Everywhere. Ones that aren't consistent and are super annoying. The map, on which you select levels. sometimes resets you to the first position and doesn't register that the next location opened straight away, there's a small delay. Small annoyance, but it's only one of many. Biggest one is probably that surface detection is pretty wonky. Sloped surfaces are treated like walls, and walls can no longer be stuck to with a hold of a button, like in the first game. Another bad change.

You have more control of the camera while running as compared to Sonic. I realized that that's not the best idea very quick. Set camera works really well for Sonic, it makes for memorable moments and the games still control well during perspective switches. Here, there's more chaos if you, for example, want to see what's ahead, so you flick the stick, but then you lose control because there's a slight turn, and the character moves in relation to the position of the camera.

The worst design decision is definitely adding a delay to the dash ability. Perhaps the single biggest reason why the game feels sluggish at times, and why the in-stage combat does too. It's weird that one of the best ideas 3D Sonic had gets implemented into a game like this and butchered so badly.

Very disappointed by this. I am a bigger fan of the 3D Sonic style, but I don't think this game quite got it. Here's hoping improvements were made in the third installment.

(Important note: Before playing this, I have tried to get into most of the 2D Sonic games and have never managed to truly enjoy myself, so I am going to be in a very different boat than the intended audience of this game)

I initially picked up this title in order to get to play the 3rd installment which came out this year. Color me surprised with how much I enjoyed it.

Spark the Electric Jester is often described as a combination between 2D Sonic, Kirby and Megaman (X specifically), and that is exactly what it is. I couldn't find a better way to pitch it.

You get through a stage as if it's a Sonic one, picking up Kirby-like abilities along the way, you fight bosses as if they were Kirby or Megaman ones, and you figure out the story which is very reminiscent of Megaman stories (Robots turn on humanity! Oh no!).

Most of the gameplay is about that Sonic speed. And I enjoyed it a lot. For me, the issue with the Sonic titles was that between the more hands-off moments of pure, joyous speed, the slower platforming sections were tedious. The controls were slippery, and it simply felt bad to focus on platforming. Spark the Electric Jester avoids this through many of its mechanics.

The life system allows for more slip-ups without much of a pause in gameplay that is the Sonic animation of getting hit and the process of picking up a ring or two to not insta-die. Health is not much of an issue, but it can get scarce when it needs to. It's not always an easy game, but it lets the player be overwhelmed by its speed and pace, which is a generally rare and awesome feeling.

There's also the fact that there simply isn't much platforming to be found here. Either that, or by playing around with the mechanics you are able to skip large chunks of it. The setbacks are no longer presented in the form of missing a platform, but rather getting hit by an enemy while running along and not paying attention. It's a much more preferable system, to me at least.

The boss combat faciliates the life system, even if it already works perfectly fine in the context of the stages. There's a lot of abilities that you can bring into a boss fight, often positioned just before the encounter itself, presenting possible strategies in a way. Sometimes you'll get a hammer to get up-close and personal, hitting heavy, but sometimes by putting a bow for a ranged approach or "Edgy" (a knife basically) for a more in-and-out tactic, the game manages to spark some creativity in the player. Some abilities also have hidden platforming uses. It's clear the combat wasn't an afterthought like it is in a lot of platformers, some bosses can still be exploited once you learn movesets and whatnot, but the final stretch of enemies can certainly kick your ass.

The characters were very likeable! Spark is very cheeky and, no matter what, will approach people and robots with a charming naivete. Through contrasting other characters with him, you get a readily available set of moments to carry you through the game, with a few clever quips along the way (I love how hyped he gets about just landing a job). There's that same Sonic feel of shit hitting the fan, when Sonic gets serious and turns into Super Sonic. It's all paced properly, making it easy to fall for the campiness of it all.

As far as my issues, I think not every animation being up to par is a big one. Some of them simply look off, the proportions or the movements unnatural. It's a very mixed bag.

Second, there are actually different modes and character stories! A second playable character even! You get to play as Fark, a robot created based off of Spark's circus performances. He gets to wall-run, double jump, infinite dash in the air and gets a cool weapon if you gather up enough energy by hitting things and not getting damaged. He's much more fragile and combat-heavy, requiring you to use the parry function.

It's not very good. I would forget that parrying exists, simply because his damage output is crazy, making defensive options superflous. Then the game throws out bosses that have undodgable attacks, so you have to parry them. Took a while to get used to. Similarly, him being more fragile made stages more challenging, but less fun. They were all slightly modified to fit Fark.

Gone was the feeling of abusing invincibility frames in clever ways or truly speedrunning through levels. With Fark, I would either feel like I completely cheesed a segment due to Fark's improved mobility, or I fumbled around praying I could squeeze through between checkpoints.

The combat was definitely more satisyfing when it came to him. Less varied, as the only thing that changed him slightly was the aforementioned weapon, which needs to be charged up by attacking and parrying. It retains the same moveset though, just extends range and adds damage. It's more consistent, and the design for new bosses takes advantage of it. Most weren't very challenging, but I definitely died more as Fark. Whereas I completed Spark's story almost in one sitting, Fark took me several evenings.

Afterwards you unlock different challenge modes. Those were too much even for me, I'm good. They are omegatough, and make me feel like I've learned the wrong lessons by playing this game. Maybe I did, but I simply feel like the game allows for a much more free of an approach as compared to pretty much any 2D Sonic I've played. I was able to truly focus what I enjoyed most: speed. Many a time I had chills running down my spine from just how much was happening on the screen per second. Truly a game for zoomer-minded individuals. And that owns. That's what Sonic always was in my perfect image, and what a lot of 3D Sonic is. Excited to check the sequels.

Also, the soundtrack slaps.

Like a lot of the games of its kind, Islets really shines the most when you obtain every tool in your arsenal. Revisiting areas with all of them feels great! It's just too little too late.

So much of this game should have either been unlocked earlier or from the start. The biggest selling point of this game, for me, were the cloud arrows, which leave a trail from your position you can walk on. And that is indeed the single best ability in the game, with clever uses for puzzles and even combat. However, putting so many underwhelming upgrades into the pool of upgrade tokens, as well as even some of the main abilities is really disheartening.

For upgrade tokens, stuff like exploding small pots on contact or having to hit a block only once rather than twice to destroy it... really? That should be there from the very outset of the game. That's not an upgrade, that's a tiny convenience that only shows how meaningless that mechanic is.

And for the main upgrades, the Shift Shot stands out as super underused. There's like 2 locations you use it at, tiny little passages where only an arrow could fit through. It doesn't serve any purpose in combat, unlike every other upgrade.

Everything else is solid, I could do without the gimmicky ship combat but those boses tend to be the toughest in what is otherwise a very easy game, even with the malleable difficulty. I do think the game has the same problems as some of the other games of its type: the double jump is often too strong of a tool for example, meaning that for about 60-70% of the game I didn't even use the similarly overpowered dodge, I just had that much control over my position.

There are fights or sections that require you to use the dodge, but somehow those are actually less common than the ones that don't. Refreshing, in a way, to have a game with a roll that doesn't rely so hard on it, but then why even have it in the first place?

I, admittedly, like the little dudes. I think the game is wholesome, charming, funny, has some wacky animations and an interesting design in places, but it's too little for a title starting out with a price tag bigger than some of its toughest competitors. It's still a very small price tag for a new game nowadays, mind you, but there is so much to be found in that lane that can definitely rival Islets. I just find it to be a somewhat hard sell.

I'd say that, roughly, this game has about as much charm and as many issues as a lot of the random indie titles I've picked up over the past couple of years that I haven't logged because I just didn't finish them and the memories of playing them are lost to time. So, perhaps, Islets' biggest strength is that it is very short, and beatable in two evenings. It probably makes for a fun speedrun as well.

Although I have been spoiled by similar games, such like Disco Elysium and This War of Mine, which managed to tug at the very core of who I thought myself to be, Citizen Sleeper felt more like a reaffirming reminder that perhaps now I am a made human, with a path and character I am happy with. The endings I managed to get feel so close to me specifically: the Gardener one and the Lem and Mina one. I got so invested in these that I'm not sure I'd even want to go check the other ones, at least not right now.

But I am perfectly satisfied with that, I think this game has storylines so distinct that, should you find joy in its simple survival elements, they all have the potential to elicit this great warmth that I have felt. I think achieving an array of possible paths as good as these is a great achievement, and even with the art style and music being great, this range and level of empathy is Citizen Sleeper's best quality.

I highly recommend this game, if only for the sense of whiplash the combat brings compared to most modern titles. Post-Dark Souls games seem to really focus on enemies which have these long windups and they all make you fight from the backpedal, but Dark Messiah is fast, frantic and chaotic, while still working well enough. It's a bit buggy and there's some annoying stuff to be sure, but there is joy to be found in working within the chaos, being proactive and working with what's given to you in any fight.


The combat is a bit clunky, I think the issue is that some attacks hurt you on every frame of the attack animation, meaning the beginning the swing does damage before even hitting you, which can be frustrating at times. Even then, this is still one of the better combat systems out there even today, if purely because overcoming these issues rarely makes you feel overpowered. You have a lot of tools that are quite strong, but on any but the lowest difficulties, one slip up can mean doing an encounter all over again. Quick planning, constant repositioning: it just feels good.

There's also still enough Arkane-iness too, the secrets may not be as clever but they often use the mechanics which were at your disposal this whole time: bows, jumping, climbing, looking around in the dark. There's also rewards for attentiveness, as the big levels have you revisit certain locations, and as you obtain keys, you are able to unlock doors which were previously locked. This often means obtaining stronger gear earlier than usual.

While some might not fit your build, it might also be an incentive to put some points into a different part of the skill tree and explore the possibilities that provides. This happened to me with magic, as the first piece of armor I found required Magic Affinity. This helped me TREMENDOUSLY when I had to deal with spiders which are vulnerable to fire.

Due to a certain level of annoyance with somewhat unreliable systems, I wouldn't say the game holds up as well as I remembered, but having finished it, I am struggling to think of a first-person melee-focused game that feels like Dark Messiah. It feels like it implements a lot of FPS ideas into the melee systems, there's no dashes or any other moves to get you out of trouble there's just running and weaving between the best positions and thinking of ways to deal with individual threats as fast as possible. There's a lot of fun to be found there, in feeling like you can't ever make a mistake during these tense moments.

As I suspected, my previous experiences with first person platformers (SEUM, Cyberhook, A Story About My Uncle etc.) have severely undermined Neon White for me.

The biggest thing is the lack of any way to carry over momentum. It lacks some passive power that would allow that. There are stretches that are slowed down too much for my liking, and that would be fine if at any point, even after beating the game, there existed a way to go through these stages faster. Moving out of water or slowing down during a jump is honestly disheartening. This is why my favorite stretch of it is when you get the ultimate ability at the end of the game, I zoomed through each stage like crazy.

There are, admittedly, levels like this scattered throughout every mission. So the issue really is inconsistency. When I see water or bombs during a level: real shit. When I see that I have to fall a lot or go through a lot of rooms: I sleep. I simply do not understand why you don't accelerate further while falling.

Same goes for the writing. Lots of the humor is referential, some more up my alley, some less, some more in-touch, some less. It pushes a little too much into the modern meme references, so the moments where it falls flat are easier to point out and the cringe stings a bit harder. The memes about the 50-year-old guy in a suit clapping make themselves. But I don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be, there's some creative setups and some good character work. It's all tied into a really blasé plot, and I think that drags it down towards the negative side the most.

Without the novelty of the gameplay, I come out of Neon White largely unsatisfied. In-between the best stages, there just wasn't much to grab onto for me. The promise of a better time on global or friends leaderboards is meaningless when I know I could do the same for so many other titles with a, quite frankly, better movement system.

I theorized in my other review that this style of gameplay fits Part 2 much better, and I was extremely right.

There is exactly zero filler content, and it does a genuinely great job at taking each section of the movie and turning it into a shooting gallery. While the DS version had more characters to play as, here they feel better to play. You get to control Harry, Ron, Hermione, McGonagall, Seamus, Neville, Ginny and Molly. Their sections are short, but so is the game itself, which is honestly its strength.

This is where my praise ends for the most part. The spellcasting, while generally snappier, is still not very fun. You get less spells and each is actually unique, but the pace of the combat is often unexciting, due to the heightened focus on the cover system. Enemies hide more often, there's generally more of them and they can spawn from any direction, as teleportation is a thing, and they all tend to use the shield spell Protego a lot. This creates a very static feel, and the game seemingly acknowledges that by having a plentitude of segments where you have to defend someone. Unfortunately, it just isn't very fun, even on the medium difficulty this pidgeonholes you into a very repetitive playstyle, and it gets old very fast without much else to latch onto.

There are some sections of this game which look neat. The Chamber of Secrets is the single biggest standout, with it being restructured into a pitch-black cave system connected by pipes, with visions of yellow eyes scattered around the darkness. You are incentivized to follow Ron as he casts Lumos, but you can also light up the road with your own spells, and since they have different colors, it can make for a nice visual. The rest of the game, however, is still very gray and unimpressive. I guess even in the movie, the visual of Hogwarts getting attacked isn't as impressive given the fact that the battle largely takes place at the courtyard and not the grounds. Maybe there's only so much they could do.

The level design is often very annoying, with enemies spawning extremely slow or from too many angles. The focus on putting "snipers" with heavy damage spells high up and far away in the latter half of the game is similarly not very fun. Doesn't help that you also begin revisiting the same areas as well.

If you HAVE to play a Deathly Hallows game, this is probably the best one. This doesn't say much unfortunately. The best part of this game comes after the credits, with a wonderful little montage of all the different styles in which Harry Potter games were realized in 3D. Almost feels like they knew some idiot like me would binge them one day.

While I don't think this format of a game had much of a chance to begin with, this is a significant improvement over the Part 1 game.

You continue to control using primiarily the stylus, but there's even less need to use buttons, with only a shoulder button being necessary to have a fighting chance against some late-game enemies. This control scheme would be awkward even on the DS, and it still is on an emulator. This is the main reason why I think these games were doomed from the start, this gimmicky approach to design has been a plague when it comes to the handheld Harry Potter titles from the fourth movie onward. It feels cheap, and it aged poorly.

There is music in this game! If you were to only read about this game, this might not be a big deal, but Part I only ever had music in very few instances, so its presence is welcome. I'm not going to give it credit for having music for goodness sake, but it is worth noting.

I enjoyed the rather robust cast of playable characters. Aside from the main trio, you get Neville, Seamus, McGonnagal and Flitwick, with all except the last having unique abilities. There are seemingly even more characters available in the multiplayer, even Voldemort, but I am not forcing someone to try it out with me, sorry.

I enjoyed the combat more than the puzzles, however. They're pretty much the same typical bs as almost every other handheld HP game: there's one thing on the screen, click it. Few of them did require slightly more effort, there were BLOCK SLIDING PUZZLES, truly my favorite for sure, but they were individual moments rather than a consistent challenge. So, again, this is mostly just mindless walking.

The combat, while similarly simple, actually manages to occasionally provide a feeling of being a powerful wizard, taking on multiple enemies at once and casting these multi-target spells with ease, or repelling hordes of enemies while protecting your ally. In many ways I enjoyed it more than even the mainline version of Part I.

While all these novelties are good and all, like I mentioned I think this format was doomed from the start, and these two games couldn't manage to overcome their gimmicks. Very little could have been achieved here in my opinion, but I'll give credit to this part for squeezing something out of it.

Confused. Stupefied, even.

So horribly mismanaged. It almost feels like the devs didn't know that this was to be split into two parts. But they did! This was announced two years before this game. And they also had more time to work on it than most previous Harry Potter games. But there is clearly so much filler that it is so difficult to wrap your head around the process and decision making behind the creation of this game. I mean, even aside from the fact that this is a COVER-BASED SHOOTER... that doesn't even utilize cover!

There's just so much repeat content. In-between the actual story beats which follow the movie, the game presents a set of three small maps every once in a while. You will often return to these locations during the main story or vice versa, making very few areas feel actually unique. The first set is somewhat special, with one mission involving an escape from a dragon cave. Because, you know, going into a dragon cave only to escape it while being hunted is a great idea. But there is also one that's... in an abandoned nuclear powerplant?

Yes, a nuclear powerplant. Not only that, but you return to it later as part of the main story. For some reason they fit in a section where the main characters find Dean Thomas and Griphook traveling and discussing how they're trying to avoid Snatchers (which always conveniently spawn right behind them and in front of you), which gives Harry a lead on Gryffindor's sword. But... he doesn't even catch up to them. Why? And to make matters worse, you have to go back through the level to find a resting spot (this happens often by the way, you run through a level from the back. Filling in time at its finest). The resting spot Hermione decides on is in a cylinder, where, previously while passing it, immortal zombies resided, and in-between which a hundred Snatchers were spawning around every corner.

These are only some of the multitudes of nonsenses which the game throws at you to actually put in some gameplay. Another one worth mentioning, and perhaps the single most egregious one, is that after escaping the Ministry (which Hermione specifically mentions is the single most dangerous place they could be at given their current situation during their attempt at sneaking in) when the trio are on the run, Harry still somehow gets tips about people being held in various locations, and so he RETURNS TO THE MINISTRY TO FREE 6 RANDOM PEOPLE. WITH THE HORCRUX.

And I'm not trying to make it out as if some of the other games don't change the original stories significantly or without much sense in order to add some gameplay, the GBA version of Prisoner of Azkaban comes to mind as it has Malfoy guard the cage Sirius is locked in so there can be a final boss, but this is seriously out there, and in a very serious part as well. Also, it's quite difficult not to nitpick everything, when the actual gameplay is so boring.

Everyone in their mother heard at this point that, for some insane reason, EA decided to make the Deathly Hallows games for mainline consoles be third person shooters. What some may not know is that the shooting is very bad. You unlock spells as you progress the game (There is a level system. Yes, a level system), and while there is only one strict upgrade, they all feel either awkward, look silly, or both. You can make comparisons to guns in other shooters, Stupify is a pistol, Confundo is a sniper (which zooms in Sniper Elite-style when shot by the way) and there is even a rocket launcher. Some spells cause the enemy to fall over, which is incredibly effective as it takes them out of a fight for a time. Others simply deal damage. Confusingly, however, some spells cause a paralyzing effect... like the shotgun one. That's right, you PARALYZE with a SHOTGUN instead of DOING DAMAGE WITH THE SHOTGUN SPELL.

When I said this game is confusing, this truly extends to nearly every aspect of this game. Some things are passable, the music is nice (they even reuse a melody from the very first Philosopher's Stone video game soundtrack very early on, which I found very heartwarming after this whole binge) but it all fails when you just look at what you're doing. Worth noting is that every boss fight is also very weak, you just kinda spam the same spells as always, sometimes literally spam as you just have to press the button a shitload of times aiming at a specific spot. This just wasn't the part that needed this sort of a game. The second has the Battle of Hogwarts, that's where these systems could shine perhaps, but this mellow, character-driven story of part I just doesn't fit, and that's why so much nonsensical content was created, to make it more gamey. The stealth sections in particular stand out, just such a horrible mechanic, though it is kinda cute that, even in the last part, there will always be stealth in Harry Potter games in one way or another.

I had this realization somewhere around the mid-point that I am playing a shitty shooter that is a Harry Potter movie tie-in game, and the location I spent the most time in is an abandoned nuclear powerplant. Again, in a Harry Potter game.

Why?

Can you believe that this game has the rights to some of the best music from the series but they only use music 4 times or something like that?

The DS version is almost entirely played using the stylus, with only pausing and a very specific, sparingly required action requiring the use of buttons. This, combined with the silence and the short length, makes the game feel incredibly cheap. It's comparable to a mobile game.

You kinda just run past enemies or spam your overpowered spell. You don't need to use any special abilities to completely destroy the game without much issue, aside from, once again, rare, specific situations requiring their use that need to be interacted with.

One of those is a potion which gets rid of tall grass. This means that that potion-making is back, and it is entirely based on the great minigame from the PC version of Half-Blood Prince. It's limited to three specific potions you make over and over again, but it's ok, the game isn't that long that it would becomes an issue in theory. Unfortunately, one of the potions is too crucial to not make over and over again: The Wiggenweld potions, or simply the health potions. The game is very easy, but it requires making them more than any other potion, which does get quite tedious.

Another one of those "nothing" video game adaptations of a HP movie which have been more prevelant since Goblet of Fire. Pretty sad to see the state in which movie tie-ins were by the time 2010s rolled around.

The DS version is exactly the same as the PSP version but with touch controls, so I cannot really justify completing it for the binge I'm doing. I played through every minigame just to test out whether they are different, and no, not really. The rail shooter section has enemies a bit further away sometimes because it is easier to aim at smaller objects with the stylus, but that's about it. The spells generally work better here, as button and analog combination tends to be a bit wonky in comparison. I had about half an hour of the game left before finishing, but my goal is to play the different versions of these games, not just play the same game several times for the sake of seeing, like, a different texture.

A nothing game. Takes the approach of Order of the Phoenix, in that it's mostly about running from one place to another, always doing fetch-quests specifically this time around, with only the occasional minigames serving as gameplay, but doesn't have that many minigames, and the ones it does aren't great. They are more difficult, however. On average at least, nothing really beats that one Gobstone minigame from Order. You do get rewarded with an occasional rail shooter segment or two (Half-Blood Prince really likes its shooter comparisons that's for sure), though it isn't much. Regardless, the gameplay is really mindless, and you'd really benefit from using the speedup option on an emulator.

Instead of going for prerendered backgrounds, the game has its own artstyle and environments, though it obviously takes a lot of the assets from the other games. It generally looks unimpressive, sometimes kinda funny, like a handheld JRPG from that era almost.

What is a bit frustrating is that the game does have spells for overworld use, and chooses to use them only for furthering the minigames. There is an Order-like game somewhere in there, but the minigame focus goes too far and upsets an already poor balance those games had.

(As of writing this, the most popular emulator hangs up on a loading screen early on. If you really want to play this, do try another emulator, and even if it has graphical artifacts you should still be able to get past the train sequence and yoink a savestate that you can use. The rest of the game works fine.)