I'm enjoying it as a timewaster.
Its definetly getting me back into HP fanfiction though.

 

Finished 1st year.

Everyone pretty much nailed everything annoying. There are ways to find more energy, about five points if you actively hunt for them, but it's a wasted effort, because it takes so much energy to complete a simple task, like learning the Levitation Charm or learning how to say "Up" so your broom jumps into your hand. About 10 points for every Star and most tasks require 5 stars to complete. So if you aren't buying energy points then it takes about 2 hours to complete a given task, sometimes more if you do the 5 hour class to earn extra points.

SO...

by the end of 1sr year I was lagging behind a little on earned house points, so I took several extra classes to earn a few more. The last few earn some pretty good points. Then I get busted after entering the "Forbidden Corridor!" and have to see Dumbledore after an 8 fucking hour wait with absolutely nothing to do. So fucking annoying.

At least they got one thing right: Dumbledore gives a massive amount of House Points for breaking the rules... after a short lecture. So, I won first place, boosting Slytherin into first place and earning me 100 gems.


2nd year looks like much the same so far. Adding Transfiguration etc. If it stays the same I'm going to get bored really quick and probably lose interest.

Meh.

 

YongYea did, as well.

Oh shiiiiiiii-

Looks like the only good thing about this chicanery is that people with the relevant fetishes will enjoy getting stuck at the vine/tentacle section, with their schoolkid avatar being bound and choked, forever.

As I commented on YouTube, though, "Still a better plot than Cursed Child."

 

Finished 2nd year.

1. There was definitely more things to do that weren't centered around just attending class and taking forever to earn enough energy to finish each one. The problem was that those other things also required me to sit around waiting for energy to build. Annoying.

2. Dueled a few times won them all, even against Bill W. who is a 4th year... yeah totally realistic.

3. There was actually an End Boss to fight, and I lost against him 3 times before finishing him off.


Things that I liked:

There were more things to actually do. Access to more rooms, different areas of the castle, etc. It was slightly more fun... slightly.


Things that annoyed:

Energy issues.

A new aspect to certain lessons is that you have to "go to class" to earn the ability to learn those lessons. So, game play slows even more. It's glacial at this point.

Snape's characterization and the points system. I'm Slytherin. He lives to take points away from me. Not just a couple, but 50 points for relatively minor things. It's seriously not very consistent with what we know from canon. Apparently, even being the awesome Mary Sue that I am, I can't earn more than a few points, usually between 4-5 in classes. They do offer things like 20 points to make up for it later for things like helping Hagrid make a potion. Still, it's lame. Even then I was still top earner at the year.

You have to pay attention to the points because there is a big payout of gems if your house is in first place. After defeating the boss and my meeting with Dumbledore at the end of the year, I checked and yes, Slytherin was first by about 50 points. Literally two seconds later I walk into the Great hall for the feast and Slytherin is dead last by well over 100. It stinks of "Plot". Everything seems a foregone conclusion and nothing you do will make a difference in the story line and even minor plot points. It pretty much sucked the last bit of what might be called 'enthusiasm to play' right out of me.

Conclusion: Yes, it's a mobile game. I didn't expect total awesomeness, but some effort to create something that would earn your money in the form of micro transactions instead of something like this. At times I'm wondering if the writers actually read the Books or got their knowledge from a random wiki or bad fanfiction.

 

In third year and suddenly I'm friends and speaking with Tonks all the time even though I never encountered her in the first two years.

This game is iffy on all sorts of levels.

 

I played literally 15 minutes, and got annoyed with the story. It's so bad, I had the impression of reading a fanfiction from 2007.

 

Even some of the worst fanfics I've read aren't this bad at storytelling. Granted, I don't tend to read a lot of fic that isn't recommended from here anymore. Maybe that's why I'm spoiled.

 

I've been getting back to it since yesterday. First thing I noticed is that they made it even more micro-transaction heavy. In the Beta/Early Access you'd start with 10/15 '''energy' and each level you went up you'd gain an extra to your total. So by the end of 2nd year you could do a 3 hour lesson with a full bar. Here you need almost twice as much to get through.

The quizzes and patterns weren't in the first one either, the only time you'd do the wandwork was once after the lesson ended on learning a new spell. Here it's more frequent but that doesn't necessarily make it an amazing addition or anything.

I want to get to 3rd year and see where the story went because I thought 2nd was a minor improvement and was hoping for continual improvement as the years progressed but still relatively meh'd out by the game

 

It's worth saying that being a video game, things like winning every duel and suddenly befriending characters you never interacted with before are somewhat to be expected. I've just started third year and did notice the sudden nature of Tonks' introduction (especially given I'm a Hufflepuff, you'd THINK we'd have met by now!) but, eh, so what. I'll roll with it. The plot does get better after the "setup" of the first few chapters, and if you ignore some of the "it's-a-video-game" quirks it quickly graduates from bad fanfiction levels to quite interesting. I'd happily read a novelisation of the game that fills in some of the finer details.

There are definitely flaws. Like I've said, I don't spend heaps of time gaming so I don't mind the waiting aspect, but it is annoying when I have to spend a couple of days of pretty much pure grinding just to get a smidgen of plot. The major disappointment for me is the lack of genuine choices in my character's actions and dialogue: comparing my experience with some let's plays on Youtube gives me the impression that everything works out the same way regardless of what you choose, the only difference being a few house points either way. The preview articles and interviews all said the choices we make about our character would influence the narrative and I'm feeling a bit cheated at the moment with regard to that. Hopefully that will kick in as you get older and have more complex decisions to make.

Gameplay is ridiculously simple (other than the tracings which actually get tricky after the first few, and dueling is quite challenging and fun) but I'm not really playing it for that. Ultimately the plot and world-building is what drives the game and that alone will almost definitely keep me playing to the end.
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You sure about that? Based on videos I've seen from beta access players, they have an energy bar of 31 by the time they hit chapter two of third year, the stage I'm at now: my energy bar is 30, only one less. Neither is anywhere near enough for a 3 hour lesson. If anything the new system, where you start at 24 and earn extra from flying classes, makes the microtransactions less of an issue for the first year in particular.

 

Yeah if my memory of Early Access is correct.

Each class you'd need 5* but the 8hr grind was a lot slower rather than the 1hr having 2* and the 3 having 3*.

I'd remember waiting for my bar to be full to start a class or session because once I hit 28 or so I could just rip through it in 10-15 seconds and go do other stuff. Whereas with 8 you needed to come back every two hours to keep grinding the session away

 

Perhaps three hour classes have been modified to require more energy, then. If it has changed, though, the change makes sense. No point in having a three hour limit if you can power through it in a minute. That's what one hour classes are for.

 

I tried this game for a couple days. Didn't get through First Year. Without the Energy requirements, it might have been a fine-enough low-effort visual novel whose plot we'd all have fun ripping apart. But as-is, it's just a targeted microtransaction vehicle. Which is fine. Companies gotta make money. Whatever. But it's just not fun to play. Who the hell wants to grind for a week to get the equivalent of a couple paragraphs of plot?

 

Modified is correct.

At first is was a set limit to earn each star and it was fairly low. (10 energy per star) Depending on the task it gets ridiculous. It'll add just one or two stars in order to get you a hair's width of finishing so you'll either wait for ten minutes for enough or go ahead and buy it so you can move on.

I haven't found the pattern as of yet, but then again I haven't really been trying that much.

The one I hated the most was end of second year. You go to meet Dumbledore and you actually talk to him for a second, before you are required to go through an 8 hour session in order to do so. Total transaction dig "Just buy this and you can skip this annoying wait!"

 

Yeah, I've learned to keep a very close eye on the star meter to get an idea of how much energy I need to get to the next one. Generally, though, it's pretty consistent across all lessons and tasks: a 1 hour time limit usually takes about 25 energy, 3 hours is about 45-50 and 8 hours means about 85-90. A bit of maths then tells you roughly how much is needed per star.

I agree, the end of second year was the worst. I was basically grinding classes for three or four days while waiting for the ice vault challenge to open up, and then afterwards to see Dumbledore. The game is at its best in the middle of each year, when you can basically juggle the main storyline with side-quests, and are thus always doing something interesting.

 

Why didn't you tell me to choose Slytherin? I hate all of you.

 

Yo... choose Slytherin! It makes the least amount of sense plot-wise.

BZZZZT. I'm sitting here after my Hogsmeade visit with absolutely nothing to do for an entire day, waiting for Rosemerta to hunt down a feather. I can't grind any classes ahead of time because it won't count for anything except for points, and I already know that having a billion points means absolutely nothing. The house cup is preordained. I mean... fuck. Whoever designed this needs to be slapped.

 

Was Merula written by someone else than the rest of the game? It's hard to believe such a great character was written by the person who wrote the mediocre plot.

 

Didn't Slytherin win the house cup six years in a row? And doesn't Dumbledore give your character a hundred house points at the end of every year? It makes sense your character to be in Slytherin if he's the one who carried them to victory.

 

second year, Dumbledore gave me 50 points. 50 more wouldn’t have made any difference. We were dead last. slytherin apparently doesn’ Match up with proper canon

 

In order to be canon compliant, Slytherin would have to not win in the first year, then win every year from then onwards. Having the results predetermined to that degree would render the game's house points mechanic completely pointless. So I don't blame them for straying from canon in that aspect. It was that or think up an entirely new (and equally non-canon) rewards system.