"Worse than being a prisoner in Azkaban."

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good". The opening line of the game, and I'm guessing that was EA talking. Why? Because they released this lackluster Harry Potter game. It's an adventure type game that resembles the Legend of Zelda series. Let's see why it doesn't succeed.

STORY
Based off of the movie and book of the same name, The Prisoner of Azkaban follows Harry Potter in his third year at Hogwarts. News about an escaped convict known as Sirius Black has the kids scared and in a frenzy, and because Harry's a nosy little kid he's gonna help solve the mystery and blah blah blah. I'm guessing if you're reading this review you at least have an idea of what the story's about. So let's get into it.

GRAPHICS
The game looks amazing. Seriously the amount of detail put into the building that is Hogwarts, and the area surrounding it is for lack of a better word, beautiful. Seriously the graphics are too good for this kinda game. However the cost of great graphics is a terrible framerate. The game will slow down a lot, nad it gets to the point of being annoying. And there are lots of load screens. Even with pausing and entering your items list. They all have their own tiny loads as well. It looks good, but constant loading is a real pet peeve of mine. It kills the action easily.

SOUND
The music and voice overs are okay. Harry sounds like Harry. Ron sounds like Ron. Are they the stars of the movie? No, but whatever. The music and voice overs and other stuff are actually reused from the game Chamber of Secrets. So great job there EA. Like it's sports series they just reuse the same stuff that worked last time...again! I'm not saying there aren't any original pieces of music and dialogue, but I noticed that and I found it interesting to say the least.

GAMEPLAY
Now we come to the lame gameplay which tries to be a Zelda clone but actually plays like a recreation of waiting in line for a movie to start. It's an adventure game where you go around Hogwarts, explore dungeon areas, solve puzzles, and battle enemies with your magic. This game's controls are terribly clunky. Right off the bat I noticed that trying to go in a diagonal direction is harder than it needs to be. I just wanna go Northeast! You can't handle that Harry?!

Harry and his friends are not flexible at all. And yes you control all three of the stars. Harry, Ron and Hermione are all playable. Too bad managing them all becomes a chore. While it makes the puzzles interesting, it makes for some clunky moving. You can't push your friends aside, and anytime you get backed into a narrow path guess what? You're stuck sometimes and they won't ever move. It's the same with the populous in Hogwarts as well. This is annoying stuff that bugged me back in the day of 2D RPGs. I wanna knock down people in my way!

They give you spells to memorize and play with but you can only hold 2 at a time during gameplay. Anytime you wanna switch to a new spell you have to open up your item book thing and switch them. This is alright at the beginning but annoying later on when you have a plethora of spells to choose from. And what's worse is everytime you set the spells a certain way and you're forced to advance to the next day or whatever, the spells become unset and different again. What the hell!? I didn't ask for that! The game never gives you a clear direction or clear objective on what to do.

The worst example is collecting ingredients for Professor Snape's potion class. They tell you to find ingredients. They don't give you any useful hints where to look, and so I looked all over the damn school. Tons of walking for no reason, I must've spent 25 minutes wandering Hogwarts. They modeled and made the outside of the building huge and it looks beautiful. But there's nothing there! Why make a big area if there are no secrets to find or people to talk to? It's stupid. And the worst crime? They got rid of the broomsticks. The best part of the 2nd game...was riding the broomsticks. But no, they took it out! That's blasphemy.

IN THE END...
This was a complete disappointment. Do not rent this game. The graphics are nice but the rest is awful. Frequent load times, clunky controls and an overall lame experience kill this game. So sad too bad.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/06/06