Title: Harry Potter and the Game
Author: Concept101
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Humor
Status: WIP
Library Category: The Alternates
Pairings: None so far
Summary: With his life turned into a Game, Harry now has to raise a Phoenix, uncover the Founders' darkest secrets, deal with political manipulations and live through Hogwarts in this story full of heart, humor, and spectacle. And the occasional swear word.
FFN Link


So, I just stumbled into this story a few hours ago and am very surprised to not have found it anywhere on here(I looked through the library and the rejected story list - and by looked I mean I ctrl + f'd the name and searched the forum for the story title, if it's already in here somewhere my bad.)

Anyway I'm pretty shit at this so I'll just list what I like;

-I always enjoy anything that has a Gamer setup, this one in particular is handled well, Gamer's Mind can invalidate a lot of the emotional growth of the character but it's handled well.

-It's not a re-hash of the books, even though the same events happen, ie Philosopher's stone debacle and the whole Chamber of Secrets stuff, the events surrounding it are pretty damn different. There's also the pre-Hogwarts events that are making an impact in the latest chapters.

-Even though the GreaterGood!Dumbledore tag is added to the summary(which I removed so you wouldn't be disgusted and hit x on the tab immediately) it's actually handled very well, Dumbledore is very much into the Greater Good and manipulative but it's somewhat logical and doesn't let his paranoia completely control him.

-The Flamels show up a bit later in the story and even though their interactions with Harry are minimal, they're fucking hilarious.

-The small bit of history we know of the founders so far, I'll spoil the following but it's nothing major and I loved it when it was revealed

Spoiler

Rowena Ravenclaw created the house elves in order to stop the genocide of British wizards by the Celts by ritually sacrificing 2 newborns and her own mother. The whole scene was fucking dope, let me tell ya.

-Harry's growth and abilities as expected of these types of stories is quite fast and he has a few bullshit abilities and items he can shit on people with, but their use seems mostly relegated to the dungeons rather than the real world(mostly due to the way Voldemort goes about executing his plans.

-Voldemort is more capable/smarter/better than in the books, which is a relief since harry would be able to shit on him easily by the time they got around to their 1v1 in the Graveyard. It's not AS apparent during the events of the 1st book but Jr from the Diary fucks some shit up and shows exactly how capable Riddle can be with a bit of prep time.

I'm sorry if this is far longer than it should be, but I really liked this story, there's a bunch more stuff I didn't mention above(Harry especially I feel is written pretty well), as well as some things that irked me but to me are pretty damn minor and don't detract much from the story.

I will say though that the pacing is kinda shit here and there, but that may be coz I had no patience for the schoolyard stuff. Oh and ignore the aboslute bullshit way he gets the Gamer ability, shit was just lazy tbh, dude may have some grand plot in store for it but just ignore it for now.

 

You might want to include a link, and don't worry about the length of your post. More information is always good.

 

lol, I noticed a few minutes after I posted, woops. All good now.

 

I enjoyed this in the beginning but both the character and author's voice just became too grating with the swearing and immaturity. Harry also became incredibly OC, I remember quitting when he randomly decided to go on a swear filled rant at Fawkes because he thought that Fawkes was his phoenix's boyfriend...

I understand that this was supposed to be humorous but its just not done well and breaks my SOD. I stopped at that point so if it gets better or the author tones down on this I do not know.

I liked the concept and the beginning was interesting enough but the whole story just went into poorly written crack territory imo.

 

Yeah, that and the quest failure prompts sometimes take you out of it, but it's definitely not crack, more like hamfisted attempts at light-heartedness that he gets better at as the story goes on(it's what makes the interaction with the Flamels so fun)

The swearing and immaturity if anything made it easier to believe I'm reading a story filled with 11-12 year olds.

 

Yeh I actually like it, has some really great ideas that I'm not too sure how to spoiler tag on a tablet. The resolution to the chamber of secrets arc genuinely felt quite fresh and unique. 3.5/5

 

So I decided to take another look and am enjoying it enough to up my vote. Following the phoenix thing I am not seeing much of what I mentioned. Still in first year so will continue reading and see if it continues to improve.

Edit: Finished reading it and I have to say the author finds his stride in this. Most of the problems I mentioned are not present later in the story and the writing is quite good. I give it a 3-4/5 rounding up to 4 for the noticeable improvement and gamer genre.

 

Hooh, where do I even start with this one...

In the first chapter, right in the AN, the author states that this is the first thing he ever wrote. And it shows.

It really really shows. Like, wow, it shows like a punch to the face.

When I came to the chapter where he has his first transfiguration lesson, I had to put my cellphone down for a minute. What he did here is not a homage, it's not a reference, it's not a subtle jab. He copied a snippet from Methods of Rationality word for word. The exact same situation, the same lines and the same setup.
Transfiguration itself, or anything related to it, is so far (chapter 26) never mentioned again. As a whole, the entire sequence was a pointless rip-off.

Randomly during the fic, we get to see my favorite trope in HP fanfiction: The badass version of Harry Potter. Unfortunately, it's also coupled with my least favorite trope: Angsty 11 year old Harry Potter. In other parts, we get the Lord Harry James Potter trope, which of course turns him into a miniature super-politician, capable of swaying the Wizengamot by sneezing in their general direction, and have Super-Serious talks with his other Lord and Lady friends about deep topics such as equality and death and intricate political plots. All this while being an 11 year old kid who has not reached puberty yet.

At the later parts of "Book one", the author seems to have read some more gritty fanfiction, and appears to have become inspired by this. We then get these awesome scenes showing Dumbledore pissing himself (in great descriptive detail) and Nicholas Flamel informing Harry that he finds anal to be boring. While I'm all for gritty fics with gritty details that smells of piss and vinegar, this just seems forced and does not fit with the overall setting of the story.
There's also a lot of plot threads just laying around, which gets mentioned once, and then never gets any form of investigation. Even the main "sidequest" got ignored for most of book one.

And now this has turned more into a rant than a review, so i'll stop doing whatever it is I'm doing here. This fic gets a 1.5/5 from me, with half a point added for being a guilty-pleasure-while-hungover read.

Also, hello, my name is Geremino, and I registered on this page about five years ago to read The boy who lived. I have been patiently waiting for an update on that fic ever since. This is my first post on this forum, and i'll see you guys in another five years for my next post.

 

This fic is unashamedly what it claims to be. There's probably a limit to how good a gamer fic can be, and this is as close to it as I've ever read. Harry's a bit OP, but that's a trope in gamer fics so it gets a pass. Instead the story focuses of character relations and twisting the original story, which I like. The humour is sometimes a bit heavy handed, but I know some people go for that.
In short, as good as it could probably be (minor typos aside), and does credit to the genre. 4/5

 

I've got to say, despite how much I like OP Harry, this was ridiculous. Generally, the story is based off of a piece of disaster that somehow manages to be worse than the copycat, and the original was based off of some wanky teenage power trip Web comic (or whatever it calls itself).

For being better than Percy Jackson and the Gamer, it gets points. Point. A singular point. Because I have seen thirteen year old girls deal better with unlimited power than this stupid trope does. (Real talk though do not try to read the PJO version it is everything that is wrong with this fic, multiplied tenfold, with none of the redeeming qualities of on par narrative.)

As for the good part, the writing is technically sound the majority of the time, and every character that is not Harry is interesting enough. Its humour is what got me invested, but that fades and everything gets stupidly serious. So, overall, I'd give 2, except the gamer info takes up way too much space and doesn't alway match actual stats because the author is bad at proofreading.

Honestly though if you're looking for a good time and have low standards then go for it.

(Also sorry for posting more than a week after the last post but I had to justify the 1 I gave it for consuming so many hours of my life.)

 

Ahh, it's for lambastings like these that I keep coming back to DLP.

 

I hate 'Gamer' Harry Potter fics. While hate is a strong word, I do mean it with every ounce of my being. Harry already exists in a magical world, with tons of already established magical abilities (and some that you could infer exist by the very nature of the world), so why on earth would you go making a 'Gamer' story? The webcomic itself is already poorly written, not to mention the fact that the ability is meant to be the thing that gives you powers in itself, adding it to magic seems like overkill (as you can literally learn spells by increasing INT.)

Aside from my dislike of the concept itself, the story does so-many-things wrong. The writing is shoddy at best, most of the time I feel like I'm reading some overly-specific Twilight fanfiction, and then at other times the author try's too hard to maker Harry look like a Ravenclaw, so we get Nigh-Omniscient!Harry; it ends up becoming one big mess. And then we get the Classic !PheonixFamiliar in the first year trope. (1/5)

 

I'm actually a bit of a sucker for this genre, but I know that most of its ilk are not that great, so I went into it with lowered expectations. It was surprisingly fun for a novice fic ... for the first ten or so chapters.

There are a few grammatical or formatting mistakes here and there, but ones that could generally be ignored (like missing a comma in dialogue tags or mistaking one word that sounds similar to another). I'm a little more forgiving when the writer has just started out. The writing is actually funny now and again, unlike some humor fics. The idea of Harry taking to grinding like a duck to water is amusing by itself, and he's sassy towards the Dursleys in the earlier chapters. Character descriptions in stats are amusing. Also funny:

Spoiler

pound notes as loot during Harry's first dungeon raid.

At the same time, the stat pop-ups wears as this fic goes on. Harry also gains levels and stats too quickly for my taste. I mean,

Spoiler

he kills a werewolf by chapter six. C'mon.

The consequences of things like that second spoilered example don't really seem to stick with him for too long, either. And the swearing was too much after a while -- the summary lies. Sure, gamers can sound like that, but having to read it so often is tedious.

The writing is mostly average, with the occasional gem; it steadily improves the deeper into the story you go. The author seems to enjoy writing fights, which shows in the level of writing in those scenes. Character descriptions, not the status ones, stand out too. But there are also instances of recycling, like the (ugh) Sorting Hat song. None of the good points are enough to elevate this from most other fics -- that's down to the storyline, the gamer gimmick, the worldbuilding, and the humor.

Those aren't enough either.

The worldbuilding is decent enough -- for example, magical items, spells, and creatures often receive little explanations of their properties or abilities, either by characters or Harry's status observations, which is neat.

But the gamer gimmick is leaned upon too heavily and used too lightly. That might seem like an odd complaint for a gamer fic, but I would have liked to have seen a story with a more thought-out plot. Those mechanics need to have bigger consequences, stuff that makes up for and becomes challenges to Harry's overpowered state. A boy who defeated a Dark Wizard and is now showing unusual powers of his own would start quite a few rumors too, not all of them good.

There are just too many missed chances with stuff like that.

More negatives: The laughs grow (sadly) rarer as time goes on. Moments that should be character-building aren't used as well as they could be. Nothing seems to affect Harry emotionally for very long. Everyone likes him too much. The writer fails to have characters act believable for their ages.

In sum, okay-to-average writing is brought down by lack of follow through and obstacles.

2/5

 

For the most part I actually enjoyed reading this. It had plenty of flaws but I never attempted to take it seriously. However eventually I just kind of got bored with it and couldn't be bothered to read any more, which was around chapter 30. I can't pinpoint exactly what it was though, perhaps the novelty wore off. I did like the take on the origin of house elves though, that was new (I hope...).

I think the only real reason I read it was because I've only come across 3 or so fics with this idea and the rest were much worse and much shorter.

Side note: I hated MoR, I hated its take on Transfiguration and I hate that some other story thought it was good enough to include in theirs. I hate that more than the fact they just copied it almost word for word.

3/5 because it entertained me well enough for a fair few hours and was actually quite readable (unlike some which literally hurt your head to read) even if it was flawed and full of tropes.

EDIT: 3/5 for what I read, it probably gets worse as it goes on and I'd be forced to lower my rating for sure.

EDIT2: Don't feel entirely comfortable with my rating, 2/5 is probably more fair for what it is, but I still feel 3/5 as far as how much I enjoyed (didn't feel I was wasting my time) reading it is fair. So 2.5/5?


This fic also had one of the best lines I've read in fanfiction, however I wouldn't be shocked if they were taken straight from somewhere else given that it happened before... (I just hope it wasn't ripped right out of the books and I've forgotten about it).

 

I'm like 60% sure it's from somewhere else, since I know that one and I think I haven't read this. 60% it is.