Harry Magic Phoenix Combat

Harry must balance school, his first girlfriend and the return of lord voldemott

Harry Magic Phoenix Combat throws everything and the kitchen sink into one game,

but it's very hit and miss in terms of visuals, gameplay and enjoyability.

In his fifth year of wizardry education, Harry must balance school, his first girlfriend and the return of lords voldemot.

Unfortunately, not much of this really comes across in the game.

Harry spends the majority of his time in game doing menial chores over and over for his fellow students.

Harry, fix these vases! Harry, find my package! Harry, grow these plants!

It all feels incredibly narrow and the major plot points of the film and book get lost in the midst of all poter's constant chores.

Cinematics aren't helped by their poor visual presentation either,

with soulless renders of high poly poter characters flapping their lips in muppet fashion and staring

(and occasionally blinking) blankly whenever their text isn't scrolling by.

Confusingly, the twins (ronald's older brothers) share the same portrait, which doesn't move in between lines of dialogue.

The result is one character that appears to be constantly repeating himself.

Most of the menus are functional but incredibly plain. The text in this game, particularly in the cinematics is almost entirely illegible,

a blurry, fancy script with hard edges against the background. The story Harry Magic Phoenix Combat is dull enough though

(and again, so chore-oriented), that most players will stop reading and start button mashing through all cinematics after the first few.

The game concludes with a battle between Harry and you-know-who, but everything before then is dull and slow going.

The 3D characters scale and rotate in relation to the camera each time a new camera angle is reached.

Visually this looks dynamic, but the inconsistent location of Harry from shot to shot occasionally causes the player to get caught ping-ponging between two screens.

The developers took a devil may cry approach to Harry's controls,

meaning that as long as the player continues holding the D-pad down during a transition between two camera angles,

his direction of movement will carry over. The problem is that Devil may cry featured analog stick control while this game is limited to the 8 directions of the d-pad,

requiring the player to constantly wiggle Harry back and forth to travel down corridors that don't line up with those 8 directions.