Recruit Dumbledore's Army
From Hagrid's Hut to the Herbology Greenhouse to the imposing Clock Tower, far from being a truly gripping adventure game the main draw of Harry Potter: OOTP is this freedom to explore without the unwanted intrusion of loading times or the need to complete a quest within a certain time period. You can attend lessons in Transfiguration, Potions and Charms where you'll work towards your exam grades, partake in mini-games, such as exploding patience or Gobstones, search around the environment, talking to students, teachers or searching for magical flying creatures in order to unlock discovery points, achievements (Xbox 360) or to pick up quests; alternatively you can simply plough through the main quest-line.The main bulk of the gameplay involves recruiting an army to fight against Lord Voldemort and his cronies. This involves finding students around Hogwarts who in turn will set you a task which you'll have to complete before they join your army. The tasks themselves range from finding items around the grounds in order to help with a fellow student's homework to helping Luna Lovegood to feed the Thestrals (large winged horse type creatures). Inevitably, most of the tasks involve the use of your wand so you have to choose from the small range of spells at your fingertips as to which one is appropriate in any given situation. The tasks themselves range from being entertaining, well designed and amusing to being a downright chore as you climb the grand staircase of Hogwarts for the billionth time on yet another collecting quest. Personally, travelling around Hogwarts has only felt a little frustrating on occasions, due to the time it can take to get from A to B and for those who have no interest in Harry Potter, make no bones about it, travelling will become increasingly boring. From a fan's perspective, visiting the various classrooms, Courtyards, Clocktower, the Owlery, Gryffindor Common-Room and those places that you’ll be familiar with from JK Rowling’s novels, will be more pleasurable than excruciating. Furthermore, travelling from point A to B and then back again is made much easier thanks to the Marauder’s Map on which you can mark a person or location and then follow footprint that appear on the ground to the appropriate location.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageThere's a number of side objectives in the game such as unlocking all of the passwords to the portraits hanging up around Hogwart's, allowing you to take shortcuts to areas (believe me you'll want to do this as soon as possible) or using your arsenal of spells to clean up the place by repairing broken crockery or statues that have crumbled to the ground. Fans of the books will recognize many familiar magical items, such as portable swamps or the monstor book of monstors, and there’s been a good deal of creativity on the developer’s part in creating dozens of interesting tasks that utilize these items.