A history of Harry Potter video games

The story leading up to the release of Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy releases soon, and turns the tables on all other Harry Potter games by giving you completely free reign around Hogwarts. It takes place 100 years before The Boy Who Lived’s story, and as such doesn’t feature many characters from the books. While people are excited to tell their own wizarding story, it’s important to know where the franchise has come from. Here’s a full history of the nearly 30 Harry Potter games that have come before.

Harry Potter and the books that made him

For almost every year from 2001 until 2011, a Harry Potter video game was released based on a mix of both the books and the movies. While they mostly followed the story as told in the movies, they would add extra flavor from the books such as the poltergeist Peeves. In fact, they often added a lot of extra scenes, giving everyone the chance to try out classes, learn spells, and solve puzzles. They also released on almost every console under the sun, with each being very different from the others.

Sorcerer’s Stone released on consoles from PlayStation to Game Boy, with each version being shockingly different. Surprisingly, almost every version of the game received roughly the same reception. We’ve all seen the Hagrid meme, and the graphics for the first game meant it was destined for mediocre reviews despite some interesting puzzles. The Chamber of Secrets mostly did away with the puzzles, in favor of boss fights and received a more positive reaction.

Prisoner of Azkaban changed genre to RPG and allowed you to play as Ron or Hermione for the first time. It also tried to include gimmicks such as eye toy features, which is one of the reasons it went back to mediocre. Goblet of Fire didn’t help this. Despite having multiplayer, so you can play all three with your friends, it stopped you from roaming the school and stuck to linear levels.

Order of the Phoenix tried to go back on old mistakes, the school was free-roaming again, the actors were motion captured and J.K. Rowling had more involvement. Despite all these efforts, it was the worst-reviewed game of the series so far. That was until Half-Blood Prince came along and took the title, after retaining the same formula from Phoenix.

Like the movies, the games split the Deathly Hallows in half. These games tried to bring a darker tone to Harry Potter and changed the style to be similar to first-person shooters, with stealth and combat. As you might guess this didn’t go down well with fans, and while the second did slightly better, they both scored terribly.

Verdict: Play the first two if you want the nostalgia.

Harry Potter and the building bricks

The next big group of Harry Potter games are the Lego ones. These fall under three main categories. The ones most people probably remember are the Lego Harry Potter: Year games, and there is one for each book in the series. These were later released as two collections: Years 1-4 and Years 5-7.

If you’ve played a standard Lego game you know the drill here. Quirky humor, set levels, platforming, and combat. These are considered some of the better Harry Potter games and can be quite fun in multiplayer with your kids. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but if you like Lego games, they’re some of the better ones.

The next set of Lego Harry Potter games are the Creator games based on the first two films. These play a little bit like Minecraft, where you build different set pieces from the games. You can take on the forms of different animals and reach new areas. However, it’s clear these games are made for children, and if you’re an adult you’ll probably want to give them a miss.

The last set of Lego games are DLC packs for Lego Dimensions, two based on Harry Potter, and two based on Fantastic Beasts. If you don’t know how Lego Dimensions works, they are kind of like amiibo, in that you buy a physical Lego figure, and it unlocks characters in the game. Lego Dimensions was generally well received, but to collect all of the Harry Potter characters you’ll need quite a bit of cash (and space).

Verdict: Years is worth your time if you like Lego games.

Harry Potter and the altered reality

There are also a number of Harry Potter games based on AR and VR that aim to bring you as close as possible to the wizarding world. These are mostly gimmicky games that are made to be compatible with what was the latest tech at the time. Book of Spells and Book of Potions, were both designed to be used with the PlayStation Move, and had users standing up and waggling around the controller in order to learn spells and brew potions. Both of these were exceedingly short, and more like a proof of concept.

Harry Potter for Kinect was a similar concept for the Xbox 360. Only this time it tried to let you see all that Hogwarts has to offer to its detriment. The thing is that both Kinect and PlayStation Move were difficult and frustrating to use, as games didn’t usually read your movements properly. The game was a disaster. There is a similarly disastrous Fantastic Beasts VR game, which uses a fixed camera perspective instead of letting you move to change the angle like the majority of VR games.

Fans thought that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite would turn the tables, as it was a mobile game developed by Pokémon Go developer, Niantic. However, that's only partly true, and WB Games still took part of the development, and the end result was free from any of the hooks that PoGo has. The game was only around for less than two years before it was shuttered.

Verdict: Just don’t.

Harry Potter and those that remain

The remaining games are a mix of things, so we gathered them all together here. The first is Harry Potter and the Quidditch World Cup, which, as you can guess, is based around the wizarding sport. While people enjoyed the gameplay and ability to fly around, it left fans wanting more. You could only play as Harry, meaning that you had to be a seeker. People who wanted to try out other positions such as Chasers, Beaters or Goalie were left with nothing.

Harry Potter: Find Scabbers is a mobile game where you find Ron’s rat, Scabbers. You walk around Hogwarts and look for the rat and it’s about as fun as you think it would be. On the other side of mobile games is Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells which is basically a match three puzzle game. It’s meant to be a fairly decent one, but at the end of the day it is just a match three game with Harry Potter characters plastered all over it. Harry Potter: Mastering Magic is a similar mobile puzzle game, which, to its credit, has a number of puzzle types in it. This is also meant to be fairly decent.

The worst Harry Potter based mobile game, and perhaps the worst Harry Potter game period, is Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. This was a big-budget game with many of the actors of the film lending their voices to the project. It is horrendously predatory, filled with microtransactions that block your progression at every turn. It reportedly made over $100 million in its first year, and as such will not be the last of its kind.

Verdict: The best game in this group is a match three which tells you everything.