LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7

Genre: 3D Action-Platformer

Players: 1, StreetPass Supported

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Review:

LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is a family-friendly 3D Action-Platformer released in 2011 on the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, and Wii, with slightly different but similar versions also released on Nintendo DS and on Nintendo 3DS in 2011, and with a later release of the game coming to mobile devices and PlayStation Vita in 2012. This game was also packaged together with LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 in the Compilation release Harry Potter Collection on PlayStation 4 in 2016, and on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2018. As this game’s title implies, its gameplay and characters come from the final 4 films in the original Harry Potter series (or if you prefer, the final three books, though this game’s contents are clearly directly inspired by the films).

Before going on, I want to take a moment to recognize that I know there are some players who will balk at buying this game due to the hurtful views of the author of the Harry Potter books. However, since this game is only available in physical form on the Nintendo 3DS, and realistically the only way you’ll be purchasing this game at this point is by picking up a used copy, you can take comfort in knowing that at this point, not one dime you spend on this game will go to that author.

This is the third LEGO game on Nintendo 3DS, and once again I feel like it isn’t as visually-impressive as the first game on the platform, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, with decent but unspectacular 3D visuals, and with lighting and shadows looking good, but only in night scenes. This is once again joined by sounds that once again feature mostly non-linguistic grunts and yelps along with the zaps and explosions that come with the use of magic spells, with this all backed by music from the films.

And when it comes to the gameplay, you once again have the standard Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO game formula mostly unchanged here, though now in addition to needing to swap characters, wizard characters must shift between different spells they use in puzzles that require a specific spell to be used. It’s not a particularly difficult element to add to puzzles, but it’s something interesting nonetheless.

The Nintendo 3DS version of the game once again lets players quickly swap characters by tapping L&R, and unlike console games in the series, this just transforms your character rather than having these other characters trailing behind you in the environment (a setup I find to be preferable). However, on the downside the Nintendo 3DS version once again has some issues with the camera (even nastier than usual this time), issues aiming ranged weapons, and the biggest issue, a lack of the LEGO franchise’s central multiplayer gameplay. Again.

Once again, we’ve been delivered a LEGO game on Nintendo 3DS that’s enjoyable, but that lacks multiplayer, one of the biggest elements of the console games, and which still largely suffers from the lack of originality that most LEGO Traveller’s Tales games suffer from. If you’re a fan of LEGO games and/or Harry Potter, you may still enjoy LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 on Nintendo 3DS, but I think most will still find it to be underwhelming.

tl;dr – LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is yet another game to feature Traveller’s Tales’ family-friendly LEGO game formula, but it doesn’t do anything truly transformative (and I’m not talking about transfiguration or animagus wizards), and meanwhile the lack of multiplayer in this version makes for even more disappointment. There’s still an enjoyable game here, but nothing we haven’t seen countless times before, and in better form.

Grade: C+

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