Recent reviews by Redkitties

The story is great, the arcs are great, but i don't like the auto save feature, and the dice health mechanic. There should be a mode without this, like the first game, because with it, it rushes the story and the game where you feel like you can't enjoy it fully.

cute combat and fun- great for new gamers or if youre in your cutesy game era

my first and most favorite game always and forever. what a great studio.

cute little short game, hard to get npcs to take pics of you (the cat), and the other achievement i didnt get was knocking over 40~ more objects and breaking them. Loved it, great physics, easy and fun to steal from the hoomas!

good little game to give yourself something to do, with a story.

i played this on baby mode and it was so amazing- great lore, great mechanics, everything feels natural, nothing is too much on the screen, the maps aren't overwhelming, and i felt like i could explore naturally to my hearts content. loved every npc. thank you <3

the best little "one more go" game you'll ever have

REVIEW SCORE: 3/10

WHY:

Combat:

No invincible frames while casting. Want to use the tools/utilities the game encourages you to use? Interupted while using plant bombs, doesn't go off, no invinc frames. Want to use a potion that'll help with the 5+ mobs the game throws at you during main and side quests? You click it, drink it, and get interrupted, doesn't go off, damage taken because no invincible frames. Want to cast a spell to break an enemies shield? If you can SEE it- these things flicker in and out of existence- wondering why it's taking no damage? the INVISIBLE shield it has! guess you'll just have to squint and try the 3 different types of spells you have- but WAIT, as you cast a spell, it gets interrupted because there's NO INVINCIBLE FRAMES. Want to cast your own shield? it lasts half a second! because unlike the enemies, it WORKS DIFFERENT, for some unknown reason, it's more like a parry than a shield! But thank goodness you have a dodge that you can be hit out of rolling/aparating (with the talent upgrade), and even when you complete your dodge roll, the enemy has blinked to where you come out of it and hits you with such a short warning simple- THAT DOESN'T PROC/SHOW MORE THAN HALF THE TIME- that you can't even dodge again, or cast your shield spell. On top of that, the enemies have lazer focus on you, so you get double hit by a spell and the melee enemy!
And that's not even mentioning the enemy AoE effects! Like the warning prompts to shield or dodge, these ground AoE effects are so faint! In every situation where you're thrown 5+ enemies in a gauntlet, you can use this AoE lightning potion that is SUPER helpful- it breaks enemy shields and deals damage! But wait! the enemy (ONE enemy, as far as i can tell) has a lighting AoE spell as well! and it DOESN'T show up at all when you're using this potion! So you just get one shot!

Oh, and your spell range is very short. so for big enemies, you still feel like you're in their face and you can't effectively kite.

EDIT: i forgot to add, when you play on PC/keyboard+mouse, it's frustrating to have like 20 spells, and only be able to cast 4 at a time/have access to 4 spells. You have to swap between 4 different groups of 4 spells. makes it incredibly difficult to have fluid combat. I wish there was an option where i could just have a spell bar, honestly. ( I ended up using a mod from nexus that let me rebind the other keys so that when i hit "5" it would swap spell group and cast number 1 of that spell group. It was nice, i just had to commit the spell slots to memory during my 70 hours of playing,MonkaS.)

0/10 FRUSTRATING COMBAT.

Note: I did play on the Hardest difficulty, and all it did was promote me stacking health potions. Get hit once? health pot because all my health is gone. Even with the best gear upgraded and slotted with this games form of "gems".

STORY:

Honestly, the side quests were WAY more interesting than the main quest. NO, it's not because of hate crime. Although playing through this game, at every turn I did have moments of joking with myself, going "Wow, Hogwarts promotes teaching children to steal, break into peoples houses, never go to class (as they were always short cinematic that did nothing and didn't add anything to the story) endorses slavery with house elf's still, enforces racial biases are cultural norm with how goblins and centaurs are seen by the character world," just all in good humor of pointing out these big no-nos.

Talking about the spells, as someone who played all of the harry potter games as they came out, I already knew all of them! including some that weren't even in this game! So as I found myself doing the pre-quests to unlock the spells, i found myself, a seasoned harry potter gamer, frustrated and low on patience, because these pre-requests to unlock the quests were filler- they offered nothing to enrich the experience of playing the game, and barely added any lore to the known universe.

The side quests, as I said, were fantastic. I liked the side characters, and I wish that there were more. Some classes let you talk with other characters, and I wish each of them, who had names and I recalled their faces/models, got the same character/friendship quest lines as three of the side characters did. As someone who played Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I am down to do 8 character side quests that adds and expands on not only the main story, but the characters themselves, as well as the universe around me, the player character.

The main story was short, disappointing- but only because it was boring. Go here, do this, big battle royal and boss fight, all x 4. Then, another, and then, the last boss fight. Which, had the same combat problems as I listed above that i'll list/summarize here so it's easier to digest: AoE prompts too quick to respond to, no ground AoE warnings, no invincible frames when I cast, No STUN reward on the boss when I complete mechanics that diffidently seem like they should- at least in every other video game I have played.
Honestly I have no idea how i would improve on the main quest besides adding real choices that aren't just "Keep things the way things are" or "Do the bad thing that x,y,z, but not really, because I'm still the main protag, so I have to be morally good." No ambiguous choice, no morally gray, not even a "RED" option that would be "DESTROY". Something that I was actually really surprised of, because in this case, I DO want to destroy the reapers- and I'm not given the option?! Crazy.

Side quests: 5/10, Carried the game hard.
Main quest: 1/10 was okay, eh, could have made the game without it and I would not have missed it. Honestly. It's okay to just make friends and stop "petty" crime as a 15-year-old, I don't have to save the world every damn time.

EXPLORATION:

Not as bad as what assassins creed as become. Yes when you complete something there's still that annoying unstoppable cut scene, like every time you would take down stealthily someone in Deus Ex except 5 times longer. Yes, there's flying. Yes, there's collecting. Yes, there's marking things off the map and feeling satisfied. Yes, there's clothing shopping and transmog. Yes, there's even breeding animals in your broom cupboard! But does the things add any lore or imagination or thought to the world? not really, no. So...It's just things to do and things to unlock. Minimal satisfaction, and luckily, there's enough that you can staggar the side quests and main quests with the exploration so you don't feel like you're dead, awake, and just doing chores.

Overall? Maybe a 4/10. Water textures kept bugging and threatening to crash my game.

I read ahead online and saw there was a checklist to graduate your school year after you complete the main quest- as i'm writing this critique on a break from the last boss. I think from exploring throughout my 51 hours of gameplay, I have that checklist done except for the remaining two(?) post-game quests. So that's nice, I guess.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this game, and If I did, I would tell everyone to buy it for around 30% off, and play on the easiest difficulty, because the hardest one is not satisfactory, especially with how the combat is. Still, I did enjoy seeing a new harry potter universe game, and I hope that this low scoring and the problems I have listed do not discourage but instead encourage a better next video game, whatever this company might make. And that we don't always need to be in High School to be a wizard/witch, the world/universe exists outside of Hogwarts/childhood.

And if anyone is wondering HOW I COULD BUY this video game because of who receives the money?
I'll humbly service my fellow Queer people until the good orgasms out way the whatever 40-some percent goes into the coffers of someone whose far richer than the Late Queen of England.

Just finished everything except 4 achievements (seperate playthroughs required)- absolutely wonderful, would recommending playing this by yourself or streaming it to friends. Very chill game, zero stress (the game tells you when you have a deadline for something). I love the lore and concept this game brings, and I'm excited for the further story updates they have planned! If you like this game, also play Disco Elysium!