In an attempt to diversify my analysis journal, I decided to play a mobile game. I usually avoid most mobile games like the plague due to their sleazy design/business practices. However, when I heard about a Harry Potter RPG game, my interest was piqued enough to check it out. Unfortunately, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (HPHM) is absolutely no exception to all the other mobile game garbage that floods the online markets.
HPHM is an “RPG” where it sets the player up as a new student at Hogwarts, during a time before the events of Harry Potter (except the part where baby Harry Potter lived, and Voldemort was “defeated”). I found this an interesting premise. Fantastic Beasts had already proven that you don’t need Harry Potter and his lackeys to make a good story in this world created by J. K. Rowling. So, if nothing else, the story had me intrigued.
As a player, you are allowed to create a character, although most character design choices are blocked behind various forms of paywalls (more on that later). Once you’ve created your character, you get your official acceptance letter, then it’s off to Diagon Alley to get your wand. They always say, “the wand chooses the wizard.” But in HPHM, the wand is chosen by answering a single question that has nothing to do with anything. Luckily, your wand type has no impact on the game. So, it really doesn’t matter. I don’t even remember what type mine was… Also, while in Diagon Alley, you meet your new best friend, your “Ron Weasley,” Rowan Khanna. Just one of many one dimensional, boring, stock characters you’ll encounter in the game.
After chatting a bit, you’re off to Hogwarts. Suddenly, you’re in the great hall and it’s time to be sorted into your house. There are (I would imagine) hundreds of sorting quizzes online, including an official one on Pottermore. So, how does the game sort you? They show you four boxes, each one representing a house, and you click one… This is the most unimaginative way to be sorted into a house that I’ve ever seen. Very early on, it’s made very clear that the developers put absolutely no effort into this “game.”
Once all that’s done, the game really starts. The game is more visual novel than anything else, so the story is set up early, and is a constant focus. The story is mildly interesting, and is really the only thing that kept me going. But getting to see the small snippets of story took a whole lot of patience and a whole lot of mundane tasks…
I truly hesitate to call this a game, because once the gameplay really starts, about 90% of it is just tapping glowing blue objects and people a set number of times. That’s it. Tapping is not a mechanic. A mechanic requires skill. using this game’s main “mechanic,” I might as well be checking the weather or liking a post on Facebook. Just tap, tap, tap.
You’re a student at Hogwarts, so, naturally, you attend classes. As I said earlier, this consists of nothing but tapping glowing blue objects (all of which represent you doing something, but in reality, you’re just tapping glowing blue objects), until you fill up a meter with the required amount of stars. I’ve attended actual classes that were more fun and engaging than this garbage. But wait, there’s more! Once you fill the aforementioned meter to one (of usually five) star, then the gameplay gets a bit varied. You will then need to complete yet another thrilling task. Which boils down to one of three things. Focus: tapping the screen when a growing and shrinking circle fits within a larger, still circle. Question: Where you answer a Harry Potter multiple choice trivia question. These questions ranged from ridiculously easy to bizarrely niche. But don’t worry if you miss one, because the game will be sure to ask it again. And again, and again, and again. And finally, the last one, Line Tracing: a deceptively simple task of tracing the line on screen. This should be easy, but the mechanic is so finicky, I often found myself failing. And when the lines got more intricate, I failed even more. I was basically being required to trace Walt Disney’s signature at some points.
Failing any of these extra tasks won’t spell failure for the class you’re taking, though, you just won’t get bonus points to your attributes. Attributes are an odd inclusion, and have very little impact. There are three: Courage, Empathy, and Intelligence. Certain classes will give you points in certain attributes. Having a high score in any attribute will sometimes randomly give you an extra dialogue option. They will also give you bonus points in the game’s other two main activities: talking with friends and dueling.
On extremely rare occasion, the game gets slightly more varied by including these other two activities. When talking with friends, you’re usually trying to convince them of something. They will ask something or make a statement, then you are given three dialogue options to respond with. A bad choice, an okay choice, and a good choice. The reason there are three choices, is because to finish the task, you need to fill yet another meter. Bad choices don’t fill it at all, okay choices fill it a little, and good choices fill it a lot. Believe me, it’s just as dull and boring as it sounds.
Then there’s dueling. This is where you can actually use the spells you learned to fight your fellow students (when the game allows you to, which is almost never). Dueling could not have been handled worse. All it is is a game of rock paper scissors. And as I said in my analysis of Paper Mario: Color Splash, rock paper scissors is never fun. In a duel, you choose one of three types of attacks: offensive, defensive, and sneaky. One will always beat one and be weak against the other. Once you choose, you just hope that your opponent chose the one that is weak against your choice. If that happens, you select a spell, do more dumb line tracing, and take down your opponent’s health. If it’s a draw, then the one with the least amount of health gets a small heal. If you lose, then your opponent attacks while you do nothing. It’s all terribly boring.
And that, in a nutshell, is all the game has to offer. Mostly just tapping glowing blue objects, while being fed small snippets of story a little at a time. And if that wasn’t enough to deter you from playing this monstrosity, let’s get into the fact that the game is riddled with sleazy free-to-play designs all meant to get you to shell out money. See, everything you do, requires energy. Energy starts at a limit of 25, and recharges at a dismally slow pace. On average, my time spent playing this game was around one minute. After that minute was up, I’d have to wait two hours to let my energy refill. You can, of course, buy gems (the game’s currency that can be bought with real money). And that’s exactly what Jam City wants you to do. They know full well how frustrating it is to wait as long as you need to, just to play a little more. So there are temptations for microtransactions everywhere. I will never fall victim to these sleazy traps, however. So, I waited. And played the game patiently. And boy did it take a long time to play that way. I started playing this game at launch, and only now am I doing this analysis because it took me a month to finish the game’s content.
I say “finished the game’s content,” as opposed to “finished the game” for one specific (and hilariously sad) reason. The game isn’t even finished. Not remotely. The game brags about how you can play throughout all seven years as a student at Hogwarts. But the sad reality is, you can only get up to about halfway through year three before the game runs out of content. Apparently Jam City saw no problem in releasing a game that wasn’t finished. And why not? Nothing else about the game is good or fun. Why should it be a finished product?
Mobile games can be so much more than what they’ve become. Corporate greed and sleazy practices continue to plague the genre, however. And not even a big name like Harry Potter can save it. I implore you, don’t waste your time on this garbage. Or at the very least, don’t waste your money. With every tiny microtransaction you purchase, it solidifies this deplorable practice as a sound business strategy. And when that happens, whether you win the game or not, you ultimately lose.