Harry Potter and the Money Grabbing Game
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The prospect of a Harry Potter themed smartphone app has long been anticipated and now, it’s finally here. With graphics that are a great improvement but still reminiscent of the original Harry Potter PlayStation games, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery should be every Potterhead’s dream- should being the operative word.
For the first half an hour or so, the game is a fun and wholesome blast from the past. It opens with the player receiving their Hogwarts letter, purchasing their school goods and being sorted into either Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Gryffindor.
There’s also quite an interesting storyline that unfolds right from your first interaction with another student, Rowan, who quickly becomes your closest friend. You discover that your character is the sibling of runaway ex-pupil ‘Jacob’ who wrecked havoc upon Hogwarts before vanishing. From the start, his reputation is passed onto you as the teachers and other students are very cautious around you.
Everything runs fairly smoothly until your first ‘challenge’. This is when you realise that the app is less of a fun throwback for lifetime Harry Potter fans but rather another money grabbing endeavour.
As Merula Snyde, the school bully, locks you into a room full of Devil’s Snare, your task is to escape. To do so, you have to tap different parts of the plant a certain number of times to free yourself.
The only problem is, you only get 25 ‘presses’ and once you’ve ran out, you can either pay for more, or wait 100 minutes for them to reload. So really, you can only play this game for a few minutes every hour making it nearly unplayable and a shameless attempt at pocketing 99p an hour for some virtual ‘energy’.
That’s not all. Even if you have a full energy bar, you have to wait hours to be able to even start a task:
That is, unless you fancy paying a few quid to buy some gems to unlock the task quicker.
To vent my frustrations in a less aggressive and more creative manner, I summed up my feelings towards Hogwarts Mystery in this meme:
For anyone thinking of downloading it, I would still recommend it as long as you’re happy to play it casually and infrequently. No matter how much you enjoy the game though, you just can’t get over the annoying fact that this nostalgic remake is just an unreasonable and scandalous money maker for the developers.