Hi all. We all know and love the Harry Potter franchise. As a child, each of you most likely watched films or read books about the "Boy who survived". And, I am sure, many even know about the existence of games about a young wizard.

After several months spent in Harry Potter games, I am ready to share with you my opinion about each game from the main series. Talk about the pros and cons, consider the details and find out if these games are so good, which it seemed to us in childhood, or, the sensations were deceptive, and greedy developers who wanted to cash in on fans of the series are hidden behind bright toys. The review will be divided into 8 parts, in each, as you already guessed, it will be written about one game of the series.

An important detail! It will only be about the games of the main series developed by Electronic Arts, and only about their versions on the PC platform. Well, now, I think, you can start.

The first part was released in the distant 2001 year, a few days after the release of the first film about Harry Potter in the cinemas. It is possible that many of you got acquainted with the games about the young wizard precisely from this part, because it is with her that many have so many memories, all this is a pleasant pastime in the evening at the computer, or for PS1. Because of these memories, many to this day consider this game a masterpiece. However, everything is not so smooth. Let’s in order.

I think with the plot of the first part of Harry Potter you are well familiar. In our case, the presentation is important, the game has big problems here.

As soon as we press the “New Game” button, a window appears in front of us with the text and picture that describes this text, against the background we hear the storyteller’s voice. Thus, we decided to tell us the preface what happened to Harry before entering the school of sorcery and magic.

Yes, the solution is not the most successful, but it should be borne in mind that full-fledged KAT scenes at that time were simply impossible due to the power of computers, so I had to somehow get out. As for the game itself, at first we are met by a low -polygonal professor Dumbledore and explains that there are many secrets on the castle, as well as that I should go to the lesson.

In the original and in the film, as you could notice, such a scene was absent. Indeed, with regard to the similarity of the source and the game, there are common only important plot details, such as, for example, the pursuit of Malfoy on a broomstick, or the battle with Volan de Mortia. Everything else is campaigns to lessons at which we study different spells, and then we go to special rooms, where we fix it all. So almost to the very end of the game. The plot invented by the developers is dull and monotonous (and, in principle, it is very difficult to call it a plot), and everything that remains of the film is terribly crumpled and served in tiny scenes, maximum in a small battle.

I think this section also does not need clarification, therefore, I will briefly go through the characters that raise questions from me.

Harry Potter. Let’s start with the protagonist, and this is probably the case when there is nothing to talk about the main character at all. If you are not familiar with films or books, then about the game Harry Potter you will not know anything. For starters, throughout the game, he said only a couple of phrases. When it was Harry with our Gordon Freeman? A very strange solution, and rather unsuccessful than the opposite.

Draco Malfoy. Draco seemed to me too angry. In the film and the book, he tried to contact with the main character, even make contact with him. But our first meeting in the game begins with the phrase "Do not stick to me under the wheels or I do not answer for myself". In general, Draco’s anti -Heroral personality is represented as a villainous.

Fred and George. Where are the jokes, a? Why do the most funny characters of the franchise come to me only to demand from me beans and go further to build your “brilliant plans” for the construction of a trap for Professor Snugg?

The rest of the characters, in principle, are similar to their originals. More precisely, I did not notice serious differences.

Now let’s move on to what they play in games.

We can say that https://richmoosecasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ absolutely all tasks in this game are additional quests in a very bad RPG, maybe the comparison is not correct, but it is so.

The whole game can be divided into three parts: tasks for repetition and consolidation of spells, a task to search for something for some character and Quiddich. Let’s in order.

Tasks of teachers, For the most part, they are a campaign in a small room in search of secrets, in which the star will most likely wait for us.

In principle, the stars can not be collected at all and go straight to the finish line. Then, each of these levels can be finished in five minutes, and the game in general you will pass in an hour and a half. How are we motivated to collect stars? That’s right, you and your team give additional glasses for them. And why are these glasses needed? Yes, there is no! In any case, you will lag behind Slytherin by several dozen points, and Dumbledore will still add these glasses at the end of the game, so that you will become a winner. This is brilliant! If you go through this game for the second, or even the third time, then you will do it faster for two hours, since you already know that all these quests with stars do not make sense. Yes, what is there, absolutely all the tasks where you need to collect something or bring something to someone, you can calmly skip and you, evenly, will not lose anything.

As for the passage of these rooms, all tasks of this type are insanely monotonous and after the second such such I began to feel sick. All of them act according to one scheme.

And the worst thing is that they are not allowed to take a break from them. Very often, tasks with fastening spells go one after another, only you collected these swearing five stars, as you are given the same in five minutes.

A separate mention is also worth a acquaintance with each of the spells. I sincerely despise a person who came up with a study system. What am I talking about? Before going to the room with stars, you, first, need to study the spell that will be your assistant in the same room.

You are shown a movement that needs to be made so that the spell works, and in order to study it, you need to spend four times its contour. These are four circles of hell! Not only is it terribly inconvenient, for some reason, the mouse twists all the time to the right, and it will not let you draw a perfect line without going out of the edges, so if you spend everything perfectly, the game can decide that somewhere you have broken down and take a few percent, and these same several percent can very often solve everything very often. And how great my disappointment was when at the end of the game I realized that all this was in vain.

Tasks of the characters. This is a little more fun and, moreover, more diverse. Let’s analyze this type of activity on the example of the task of Hagrid, in which he asked to bring us fiery seeds for his egg.

We are immediately shown the road that leads directly to the seeds. On the way, we meet toxic tentacles, which we have to euthanize the Intendio spell. Also, we come across hidden rooms in which you can find cards, beans and chocolate frogs. After finding all the seeds, we return to Hagrid and look at the cat-scene. Ready! Plus, all tasks of this type are of interesting and diverse locations, or it will be a dark dungeon, or it will be a green forest, hogvarts circles and everything else. Let me remind you that all tasks for repetition of spells we took place in dull rooms, almost in no way different from each other.

Quiddich. This is non -working garbage! Yes, the idea is interesting, but the implementation … The camera turns like a frantic, Snitch, like a frantic one, pulls from the side, it is very difficult to keep track of him, and when Harry almost grabbed him, most likely he will simply fly by and you will have to look for it again. This. Very. Hurt. Your opponent, a catcher of the opposite team, is not able to catch a ball, he just flies behind him with his tail. I’ll say from myself that the commentator terribly annoyed, the eternal repetition of the same phrases strongly pressed on the brain.

Additionally. There were also a couple of tasks that are very different from the main. For example, once we attacked Draco, throwing in us with bombs, which we will have to beat off. Given that it was only once a game and does not have time to get bored, then this is a pretty good branch from which you even relax a little.

But what task you do not relax is from the task in which we are hiding from Filch under the Mantia invisible. This, in my opinion, is personally the most disgusting mission in the game Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone. I spent a mission on this damn about an hour of real time, and no, not because the difficulty in the game is high and I will have to sweat. Definitely not. It’s all about the damn Filch, namely in its artificial intelligence. This old man clamps you in a corner and does not allow you to run away, manages to notice you three meters, despite the fact that you are under the mantle and did not use magic. Also, his cat … I hate her, she notices you even more and does not make it possible to escape. At the same time, she rests on the wall all the time and does not want to go along the route given to her. I had this near a narrow exit, and, of course, I was noticed and I had to re -relay the location. This is a terrible, unprofitable mission, because of which I will separately remove the score for the gameplay, since it will take a fairly large time, relative to the total duration of the game, and this is from three to five hours.

In principle, there were no more such missions, therefore, we proceed to the next aspect of the game

Cards. The game has elements of collecting, namely, we collect cards. There are twenty -four of them. We can find them in chests hidden in the "secret" rooms, and also, these cards can give us characters on the plot, for example, who constantly appear from nowhere Fred and George. Cards are a pentagon with a picture and a small description of the character, which is depicted in this picture. The information is quite interesting, about most of the characters that were written about there, I did not know. The amount is quite small, and this is rather a minus than a plus. To collect cards and learn something new about the characters is quite interesting, fortunately, in the next part this moment was corrected.

The only really big minus is the animation of raising a card. For a very long time, every Harry card will twist five or seven seconds, until he dares to collect it. And again, this minus was corrected in a secret room. Given the number and frequency of their hit, in principle, you can survive.

Secret rooms. The game has problems with this. For some reason, they are insanely easy to find, they are very brightly illuminated, or highlighted. You can write off this on the fact that the game was created for children who will play Harry Potter, but I can dispute it in two ways at once. First, these rooms are absolutely not necessarily created for collecting. The second for some reason in the other games of that time, also designed for children, there were a lot of secrets, not only that, these secrets prevented the plot, not only to collect a useless card.

Final. Before Professor Quirrell, we are given several mini-games, namely, the mysteries of several Hogwarts teachers.

These mini-games include the key to the key, magic chess and a riddle with potions. If a little more, then the flight behind the key is a regular quiddich, but instead of Snitch we chase over an oblong crap with wings that will help us go to the next room. Magic chess, in fact, is also ordinary chess, but with a highly reduced complexity. Snape’s task. This is a task in which we need to find a potion that will help us go through a magical fire. All tasks are insanely easy, however, they are a good addition to the game.

There were three bosses in the game, namely: flill, troll and professor Quirrell, some aspects in fights with bosses are funny, while others are not. The good side can be called diversity. Each of the three bosses is unique and is won by different methods, but this does not always benefit the game. For example, the whole battle with the troll is the jamming of the left mouse button. It is generally very difficult to call the gun to call the boss, since we pass it in a minute, just in turn we sleep each of the heads, but the main boss … my respect! It really was great. For starters, we are trying for several minutes to drop the columns on Voldemort, not always successful, and having made a large number of mistakes, you risk applying much less damage, and from this, sweat a little more.

When the columns are pumped, we move to the second method of murder and begin to twist the mirror towards Quirrell so that it would beat himself with spells. It was a cool boss, and it was very good that they thought about it, since the sensations of the game very much depend on the final boss, many developers, for the reason unknown to me, forget.

With gameplay, we finished. A very controversial thing. On the one hand, the whole game is haunted by either tedious and monotonous or very poorly realized tasks. On the other hand, we have a good collective element and an excellent finale.

Of course, it is difficult to say something, since the game was released in 2001, so you have to build on the other games that came out at that time. In addition to Harry, all the characters have very angular faces, this also applies to Ron and Hermione, although we constantly see these two characters next to Harry. Of course, I am silent about the rest of the characters.

As for the world, everywhere sharp textures, soap buildings, but this is an absolute norm for the 2001th year.

For example, Max Payne 1 also came out this year, and its graphic component was approximately at the same level. But in Harry Potter, we also get beautiful Hogwarts, the beautiful bright surroundings of the castle, the Hagrid hut and a few more locations with a wonderful design. Therefore, I can say that at the time of its release, the graphics were more than acceptable.

She is wonderful! While we are traveling on Hogwarts, we are haunted by a very pleasant melody, which is a great addition to immersion in the game. In the dungeons, it will already be more gloomy music, during fights with hostile creatures will be more peppy. I am generally silent about the main menu, this music can be heard over and over again and it will not bother you. Of course, there are rather controversial melodies that do not cause any emotions, but the majority is a masterpiece! If you want to enjoy music from the game, then this is you!

Owner and localization. The original voice acting is pretty good, the voices are quite suitable, they do not cut their ears. Russian localization from Soft Club, unfortunately, cannot boast of the same, the voice is disgusted, almost all the actors clearly do not have oratory, and most importantly, a good voice, therefore, it is impossible to listen to them. But both our and the English version have one minus that will dream of you at night. I’m talking about spells, or rather about a constant reminder of the name of this Harry spell. This is unbearable! This child is silent when he is not asked, but he constantly yells “flipendo!"When he is asked to close his mouth. If you spend a dozen hours after this game, then one day you will wake up in the sweat and you will quietly repeat the Flipendo.

CONCLUSION
That’s all. This was the first part of the franchise, seven more are waiting for us ahead, and I am ready to give the game Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone of my assessment.

Despite the fact that the gameplay of this game is very controversial, and the plot is generally crumbling into the ball, I really advise you to plunge into this game, feel the atmosphere, make cards and just relax in this tube toy toy.

P.S. Don’t be angry if you write something wrong. This is my first experience. It is better to describe what exactly did not suit you and I will try to continue to prevent such errors. Thank you for reading! Expect a review for the next part of the series.