LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (Part 3)

LEGO Harry Potter

Introduction

Years 1-4: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Years 5-7: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Still got a lot to say, so let’s jump in.

Deathly Hallows: Hogwarts VS the Death Eaters

"Neville! Here's explosives. Now be the hero that
you've tried to be in the first six books."

Hermione: Dead snake dentist.

The students and faculty of Hogwarts set up defenses against the enemies. A protective shield is placed over the school, McGonagall animates the statues. She asks Neville as well as Seamus, whose story arc is “spells blowing up in his face”, to set up bombs across the bridge leading to the school. Meanwhile, Harry is looking for Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem, turned into a Horcrux, and gets help from Luna to interrogate Ravenclaw’s house ghost. Elsewhere, Ron and Hermione go into the Chamber of Secrets to take another poisoned fang from the basilisk and destroy Hufflepuff’s Cup. (Once again, no explanation is given as to how Ron spoke Parseltongue to get in.) Their quest is a success and they destroy the Horcrux, which Voldemort feels from a distance. Progress! And yes, this was all one level.

Oh, it's time to beat up a bunch of bullies
for the last time!

Harry learns that the Diadem is in the Room of Hidden Things, so he runs in there, unaware that he’s followed by Draco, Goyle, and… Blaise Zabini? Yeah, in the film, the actor playing Crabbe is absent, so they had to improvise with another Slytherin, which sticks in the LEGO version. In this tenth level, Ron and Hermione come to Harry’s rescue. Ron shoos the bullies away while Harry and Hermione get the diadem.

That’s when Ron comes back, screaming, because Goyle unleashed a Fiendfyre (an immensely powerful fire spell) setting the place ablaze. The trio gains height to escape from it but sees Draco in danger, and Goyle falling into the fire below. The heroes choose to do the right thing, and rescue Draco. Once outside the room, they toss the diadem into the Fiendfyre, which destroys the item. Just one left (well, two, but the heroes don’t know that yet)!

So we're really gonna save the little Malfoy
crap? Gah, being a hero sucks sometimes.

Then again, killing someone just for taking
the last cookie... that's in line with Voldy's
pettiness, really.

By this point, even giants have invaded, so the courtyards are dangerous. Harry gets a vision of Voldemort and Snape in the Shrieking Shack, having a tea time (because Brits, Heck if I know). In the eleventh level, they head out towards them, and run through the invaded grounds, with attacks by Death Eaters, giants and spiders. They get to the shack and see Voldemort ordering Nagini to kill Snape; we know why it happens in the original (Voldemort thought Snape had won the Elder Wand from Dumbledore). Here? Snape took the last cookie in their tea time. Yeah, that’s a murder-worthy offense.

"Onion? No! My greatest weakness! Waaaah!"
(Seriously, so many scenes in this game are
insanely meme-worthy, it's nuts.)

"Harry is a Horcrux so he'll have to die", I'm not sure they
could have done any better conveying that information
without a single word actually uttered.

After Voldy has left, Harry and his friends do everything they need to get to Snape, then get a tear from him so that Harry can see Snape’s story in the Pensieve. A tear? More like, they make him cry a damn river. Using just an onion. Uncut. Telepathically, Voldemort requests for Harry to come alone to the Forbidden Forest. The trio heads back to school and Harry uses the Pensieve to see the details we were missing, which the BricksNotes attempts to explain: Snape loved Harry’s mother Lily but she went with James Potter. Snape went down a path of dark arts with the Death Eaters. After Lily was killed by Voldemort (despite Snape’s attempts at having her spared), Snape went back to Dumbledore and waited for Harry's arrival in Hogwarts. He and Dumbledore arranged most of the events to take Voldemort down; unfortunately, the Dark Lord left a part of himself in Harry, making the hero a seventh Horcrux. Harry doesn’t just have to die; he has to be killed by Voldemort. (The same flashback also reveals Nagini as the sixth Horcrux.)

Deathly Hallows: The Final Confrontation

At the forest's entrance, Harry explains his situation and tells his friends to stay behind to look for and kill Nagini. Using the Resurrection Stone, Harry sees ghosts of his family and friends who encourage him on the upcoming trial. As soon as he shows up, Harry gets Avada Kedavra’d by Voldemort, which kills the piece of himself within Harry. The teen half-dies, seeing a limbo where he meets Dumbledore, who explains a last few things. The two encounter a diminutive representation of the remnant of Voldemort’s soul, small like a newborn. Harry kicks it away before returning to the land of the living.

Harry: Okay Voldy, it's Kick the baby!
Voldemort: Don't kick the goddamn baby, Potter!
...of all places to quote friggin' South Park...

Bellatrix has the high ground! Worry not, she'll come
down from it to duel Molly. And that's why she loses.

Voldemort arrives at Hogwarts with Harry’s body in Hagrid’s arms to declare victory. Harry reveals himself alive, giving the students a second wind; Neville even gets Griffindor’s Sword from the Sorting Hat. The last level: Hermione, Ron and Neville get knocked away from the center of the battle so they first have to rejoin it by making a path through the debris with a potion, while attacked by Death Eaters. As they get there, Voldemort grabs Harry and the two go flying, which takes us to the second scene. Molly Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt see Bellatrix threatening Ginny, so they give chase. This culminates into a boss battle and duel against Bellatrix, in which Molly defeats the mad witch and blasts her into pieces. “Not my daughter, you BITCH” in all its glory.

Ron, dammit! Now's not the time to cower in fear,
now's the time to be a hero! These aren't even spiders!

The final wand duel - no need to even cast a spell!

When Harry and the Dark Lord reappear, we control Ron, Hermione and Neville in a boss fight against Nagini. Can’t attack her outright, you first need to incapacitate the snake by throwing spiders at her. Death Eaters and even Dementors join in to make things harder. Finally, Neville slices Nagini’s head off with the sword, leaving Voldemort vulnerable. Between rounds of Harry and Voldy’s wand duel, the others have to fend off threats around the courtyard. When Voldemort’s been struck four times by Harry, he is defeated for good, dropping the Elder Wand and disintegrating. Harry snaps the Elder Wand in two, and everyone celebrates. The great evil is gone. Cue a distant finale nineteen years later, with Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Draco’s children leaving for Hogwarts, still on Platform 9 ¾. Happily ever after. …well, if you forget Cursed Child… whatever… Roll the final credits.

Final thoughts: The story

This took forever! I’m almost sick of Harry Potter after writing about the franchise so much. Although in all fairness, I’m not really here to talk about the plot of the franchise, but rather the treatment of it by this LEGO game adaptation. One could make an entire analysis of the stuff that was cut out, added, or changed in the film adaptations of the novels. And even more can be said after those movies were adapted into games, especially the two I’ve been reviewing  for a month, which massively cut down on the story.

Also pay very close attention to the cutscenes;
most of the important details are visual.

Traveller’s Tales have done wonders trying to convey as much of the plot as possible without voice acting, only grunts and sound bites. Visuals help a lot, but as the plot got increasingly complex, and in need of actually explaining what’s going on, a point comes where you actually need to know the original story to understand the events portrayed by the LEGO version. I do appreciate that, although a lot of scenes are cut out, others are hidden and you can find scenes that were adapted, but not necessary for the abridged version (examples include the transmutation class in Year 1, or when Mad-Eye Moody turns Draco into a ferret in Year 4).

On the topic of unique changes for this adaptation:

Can't have blood? No problem!
A minifig in pieces says a lot on its own!

-Since all 48 levels of both games are built to make multiplayer possible, there’s always at least two characters playable at any given time, even in situations where it contradicts canon (like Hermione helping in the first Task of the Triwizard Tournament);

-Some peculiar abilities work differently from the original story (Lupin being able to change into his werewolf form at will, as an example);

-LEGO has to cut out a lot of elements that don’t fit its universe, like blood or some of the more brutal forms of violence, though it gets away with a lot even within those limitations;

-The films were already quite often criticized for cutting out a lot of details, making their plot inconsistent; as you can imagine, the BricksNotes version cuts out even more. It gets to a point where the game assumes you already know the story. Though as a result, it allows itself to indulge in fun foreshadowing every now and then. Still, it means that if you rely solely on what you see in the game, you’re missing a ton of information.

And of course, the comedy, omnipresent. Not that there wasn’t already a lot of humor in Harry Potter, but LEGO kicks it up a notch. And much like I had guessed in my very first article about them, the added humor remains very child-friendly, per the target audience of the games. But it still works! Like Harry’s glasses ending up on Voldemort during their final scuffle, and the Dark Lord politely handing them back before they have their last duel.

"Here, have your glasses back.
Now, I can kill you!"

Final thoughts: The gameplay

This is where I have more criticisms. For starters, progression: You play the levels in order, obviously, and can even follow Nearly-Headless Nick, Gryffindor’s ghost, who leaves ghost studs for you to follow. If there are mandatory plot beats between levels (classes around Hogwarts to learn new spells or potions, or scenes necessary to make sense of the events), Nick will direct you to those first. Between levels, you can explore Hogwarts, using the abilities (and later, characters) unlocked to find everything you need.

We always need Cat-Hermione. Always.

That said, progression, while possible, is tedious until you’ve actually finished the game or gotten close to it. Eventually, you'll need to rely on unlockable characters with special abilities (someone evil, someone with a key, someone with super strength, etc.), and some of those aren’t unlocked till very late. Worse even, several are mandatory in order to achieve full progress in most levels, so those will also require multiple playthroughs. I’m told that most LEGO games work that way, so that's a franchise-wide system.

Gold bricks, character tokens, students in danger, House emblems; grab the easy ones, get the rest at the end of the game. Thankfully, the game is cleverly designed; when you enter Free Play in a level, the game will pick characters with abilities you’ll need to get everything in that level. In the Years 1-4 Hub, you might need some knowledge of HP to know which characters to pick in order to find stuff once you’ve unlocked Polyjuice potion, but it’s not too bad.

Where else could you get Harry disguising as Bellatrix?
(Outside of fanfiction, obviously...)

On the topic of spells and potions, since those are tied to progression, it makes sense that you’d repeatedly encounter exactly the threats they’re the answers to; However, perhaps because of how it goes in the original versions of HP, some are… clunky. That’s why we get Immobilus and Riddikulus in Years 1-4, which serve little purpose other than to deal with blue imps and Boggarts respectively, and as a result both the spells are removed alongside their obstacles early in Years 5-7. (Know what else is gone from Y5-7? The Mandrakes, thank God. I fucking HATED those.) We keep Expecto Patronum because of how important Dementors become. 

Strength, Invisibility, and Polyjuice. Three important tools
for a wizard. Or so we're told.

The spells in Y5-7 are more useful/practical, and the gameplay around them is streamlined; as an example, there are lots of fire hazards, so Aguamenti is super-useful. Focus, the spell Harry learns from Snape during Occlumency, is barely-used, however. Also, Expelliarmus isn’t even a major spell, really? The bonus spells you can purchase are fun, but that’s about it. I appreciate that the potions system was improved between games; instead of each cauldron serving a single purpose in Y1-4, in the sequel you can brew any potion in any cauldron, making stuff like Polyjuice or invisibility accessible everywhere. (That said, one potion we learn, the Draught of Living Death, is useful once and nowhere else.)

Use WL. Switch to other spell. Switch back to
WL to move something around. Switch to
other spell. Move back to WL. Yeah, in Y1-4,
that's a pretty tedious way to do things.

A.I. in the game is a mixed bag; CPU allies might stand in your way when you move or blast around, which is impractical. However, anytime you actually need them to do something (like casting Wingardium Leviosa on something), they’ll be fairly quick to do so. I assume that’s pre-programmed depending on the room/level/situation. Also a quick note on the game regarding WL: In Y1-4, you have to switch back to that spell to use it, while it’s a default action in Y5-7. In some rooms with a lot of potential spell targets, the game will struggle to actually find the target you want to interact with, forcing you to reposition your character (though thankfully, the developers thought of that and, thus, you can choose a precise target with a cursor using the H key).

The enemies tend to be rather dumb, and a lot of bosses wind up feeling rather unimaginative. Many will rely on a “tennis” fight – they throw something at the player, and the player grabs it in midair and throws it back. Not necessarily a bad idea but by the time you see it again in Y5-7, it’s feeling overdone. The duels in the latter years first help make battles feel fresh, but once again: After a while, they become a part of most important fights against enemy wizards. The strategy for them rarely changes and, as a result, once you’ve mastered how duels work, you’ll never lose one again.

Oh, and as I said, Voldemort is a joke in Y1-4.
Easiest final boss ever.

For some reason, while I set controls once in Y1-4 and never had to change them again, they got changed around for Y5-7 and me setting new controls would NOT stick, so I'd have to reset them every time I reopened the game. Which keys? The same ones that were set in Y1-4… When you offer Control Options, the controls you set are supposed to stick, dammit.

Admittedly, yes, the game is geared towards kids, but in some instances (and especially in Y5-7), you can’t make two steps without having a hint or some advice appear on the screen. Thanks, game, I know I can use Aguamenti on dead plants! Ironically, there ARE things that are poorly-explained and that we could have gotten advice on, but we don’t get that luxury. It’s an issue in Y1-4 that’s resolved, perhaps a little too well, in Y5-7. One example is the message that “only dark-aligned characters can interact with items covered in red sparkles”, a message that appears only once in Y1-4, then never again; and in Y5-7, the message will ALWAYS appear on the screen when you walk in the vicinity of red sparkles. Overcompensation.

Thanks, Dumbledore. I already friggin' know.

The games all contain a lot of little bonuses, whether it’s alternate costumes for the characters or bonus levels – the 10 of those in Y1-4 are basic but a lot of fun, whereas there’s only one in Y5-7 but it’s huge. I failed to mention that Y1-4 also comes with a level editor in which you can build LEGO models, and put them into a level afterwards; Y5-7 is missing that feature, however.

You see this right. 649 MILLION studs.
Thanks, insane stud multipliers!

One big issue I have with the games is that they’re meant to be played without the modifiers you can obtain from the unlockable Red Bricks (see them like cheat codes), but some of those are pretty much mandatory to use for 100% completion. Obtaining True Wizard in a level is a task that’s tedious as all Hell because you have to a) interact with everything on your way and collect every single stud you find, and b) avoid dying or you lose enough studs to make that goal impossible to reach. It can take several minutes per section of level to do everything. It's a chore. The stud multiplier red bricks are the only way you can go about without having to lose hours and hours getting True Wizard everywhere. Heck, a lot of character tokens are so expensive that you’d need to run through levels several times to get enough studs to unlock them all; you pretty much HAVE to turn the stud multipliers on in order to get enough money in a reasonable timespan. And that goes the opposite way, too, as those multipliers stack (X2X4X6X8X10, meaning a maximum multiplier of X3840), so if you activate them all at once, in a few minutes you’ll have billions of studs in the bank, hundreds of times more than necessary to unlock everything.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 repeatedly crashed on me at various points of the game, usually on screens with too many moving pieces. I don’t know why it happens, the game is older than my computer and should run fine. (Oddly enough, I didn't have any of those issues with Years 5-7, even though that game is far more ambitious. Hey, at least I didn’t have to replay entire levels in that one.)

Only Weasleys can walk on walls.

Each of the main characters is given a couple of special traits, making them unique among all the options for characters to use throughout: Harry has Parseltongue, his broom-flying abilities and the Cloak of Invisibility; Hermione has Crookshanks, can read runes (mandatory to complete some sections), and has the Time Turner in Y1-4 and the magical backpack in Y5-7; and Ron… has Scabbers at first, loses that, but does get access to the Weasley Boxes and, later, the Deluminator. Makes for a lot of interesting (albeit repetitive) puzzles.

More free-flight scenes would have been nice.
Uusally, when you have something in the first
level, it means you'll be seeing it a lot in the
remainder of the game... Not broom-flying!

Finally, one underutilized mechanic is broom-flying, which is used for a handful of puzzles and scenes, but otherwise forgotten. Shame, too, as the few broom-flying sequences (like the one in the first level of Y5-7) were impressive and the game could have benefited from having more.

So, perfect games? Heck no! Plenty of issues, be they minor annoyances or bigger problems, to be found; but the games are nonetheless a lot of fun if you don’t mind their gameplay very strongly focused on picking up studs and interacting with absolutely everything, which does get old after a bit.

So, do I recommend those games? Well, if you already own them but haven’t tried them, you should! If you want to purchase them, well, it is entirely within your right to do so as well. I’ll close my entire spiel on Harry Potter with this: No matter what you may think of JK Rowling’s social stances now, if you find it difficult to leave a franchise like Harry Potter behind because you enjoy it… I get it. I enjoy the franchise too. I made my decision to not send a single more cent to Mrs. Rowling, but I still do try to enjoy whatever I already own. …mostly the films on DVD, really. I don’t know whether I’ll play these two games again; I might 100% them and call ‘em done with, that would sound fair.

I will hopefully resume the Quick Reviews soon. In the meantime, goodbye and good gaming!