Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – GBA – Review

Play begins with a fairly long introduction to the story, ending with Harry’s arrival in Diagon Alley where he meets up with Hagrid. His first stop is Gringott’s Bank, which serves as a sort of tutorial for the rest of the game. This part of the game is actually somewhat boring, and is basically a dungeon crawl. Harry Potter will learn how to use basic spells, how to move objects and how to defend himself against various enemies. The object is to find five jewels, before he can leave the bank and get on to the much more interesting task of shopping in Diagon Alley. From here it’s off to Hogwarts, where Harry and Ron end up in trouble because of being late and being seen by the Muggles while en route in Ron’s dad’s enchanted car. While at Hogwarts, Harry can explore the school inside and out, with some rooms restricted at first, but as play progresses, these will become available.

Harry will be given many quests, which must be finished before moving on – this is an extremely linear game, despite the freedom of exploration. Most of these quests involve finding certain objects, or finding his way to a certain locality to meet up with a friend or classmate. There are lots of hazards which include enemies like fire crabs and some kind of goblins (the goblins are on the school grounds), plus dangerous knights in armor, fire hazards and many other things. At first, these hazards are easily avoidable and easily killed, but as the game advances, so does the power and number of these dangerous foes and other obstacles.

The interface is a little complicated at first, but this is necessary due to the extraordinary amount of information it conveys. Players can access how many frogs, stars, money and beans they’ve collected, count their wizard cards, see what potions and spells they have, read old owl messages, check on mission status and once the map is found, check on their location! Players can only save one game at a time, which means only one person can play at a time, which is unfortunate. Also, the save spots in the game are few and far between, which can mean a lot of territory to recover if the game has to be suspended before reaching the save point.

The gameplay for the most part is fairly smooth, but the collision detection could be better. Poor Harry expired tons of times when not even touching the hazard at all. But, besides from often having to laboriously retrace a long, winding route through numerous corridors, Harry doesn’t have to redo the mission challenges (which mostly consist of opening doors) and also gets all his health points back, so sometimes this is a good thing. Harry also only moves and casts spells diagonally, which can mean some time spent trying to line him up just right so the spells will land on their targets. Many times he’ll cast a spell just to the left, then when moved, cast it just to the right, never head on; he has to face the object sideways to score a hit.

Note that word “laborious”. It describes the feeling players will get when running through endless doors and tunnels, dodging teachers and enemies, and moving switches and pushing things to open doors. It’s really mostly a long, drawn out dungeon crawl, with occasional breaks to report back to friends and teachers, and gain another quest.

The graphics are very nice and are evocative of Hogwarts. Everything you would expect to be here is present, down to the moving portraits. The characters look exactly like they should, too. The music is adequate, but nothing to get excited about.