LEGO Harry Potter Collection

Genre: Compilation / 3D Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

LEGO Harry Potter Collection, released on PlayStation 4 in 2016, and on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2018, is a Compilation of two family-friendly 3D Action-Platformers originally released in 2010 and 2011 on a variety of platforms: LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 and LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7, with both games together covering the characters and events of the entire film series (or if you prefer, the book series, though this game’s contents are clearly directly inspired by the films). Both of the games included here are still kept separate in the menus, with no crossover in terms of unlocked content, characters, and so on – both games are selectable from a main menu, but beyond that they are wholly distinct and disconnected to one another, despite featuring similar gameplay, characters, and locations.

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. If you’re looking to play this game but trying to avoid any of your money going to said author, I recommend that you track down a used physical copy of the game – no risk of your money going to that author in that situation.

Despite the original games in this Compilation being over a decade old, they still look pretty good, though there are a few caveats. There’s a lot of activity going on in this game’s detailed environments, with the various characters all wonderfully-animated and with lots of little Easter eggs strewn about. However, this game also has occasionally blurry textures in places, and what’s worse, it suffers from slowdown in busy areas. This is quite noticeable in the opening area of LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7, where the game seems to be having trouble with all the rain that’s pouring down.

These visuals are joined by sounds that 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. I also have to take a moment and recognize the wonderful humor present in this game, which repeatedly had me chuckling as I played it, adding a lot of character into the game and also playing on expectations of those who have seen the films.

When it comes to the gameplay, this Compilation features the standard Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO game formula, which is mostly unchanged here, complete with the series’ signature excellent drop-in drop-out multiplayer co-op. However, 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.

If you’re a fan of LEGO and/or Harry Potter, I think you’ll find that this Compilation is a good package, but it’s not great. Given the age of these games it’s really disheartening to see that they still suffer from performance issues. In addition, it would have been nice if this release adapted the two games in a way that allowed for some continuity between the two – the way that they’re still separated into two volumes seems unnecessary at this point. However, there’s still a lot of great co-op fun to be had here, if you can look past these flaws.

tl;dr – LEGO Harry Potter Collection is a good Compilation of the two LEGO Harry Potter games, but it’s not a great one. Some performance issues persist, and the preserved lack of continuity between the two included games is disappointing. If you’re a fan of LEGO and/or Harry Potter, you’ll likely still enjoy this, but it definitely feels like it could have been better, especially after all these years since the original releases.

Grade: B-

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