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Despite giving players a chance to explore Hogwarts and the surrounding area as an aspiring new wizarding student, the dated game mechanics prevent this open-world game from rising above average.

First of all, the more of a fan of the “Harry Potter” franchise you are, the better experience you’ll probably have with this game. As someone that’s seen all the films but hasn’t delved into series beyond that, I still had a good time playing in this world and it definitely helped me overlook the game’s flaws. (I’m assuming people unfamiliar with the Wizarding World maybe be much more turned off by the shortcomings.) The basic story is solid, but predictable. Like most games like this, the side quests are a mixed-bag. There’s some pretty good ones and some mediocre ones.

As far as gameplay goes, it’s relatively smooth once you get the hand of things. Spells are easy to cast and having access to different spell hubs for quick access for your favorites is a nice touch. You can also que up either a potion or an attack plant, but the selection wheel is a bit wonky. The fast travel system is fantastic, easy to use and plenty of fast travel points inside the castle and in the open world. (Which is much larger than I anticipated. And very little of it is quest related, a lot is just pure exploration.) Once you get the broom, flying makes getting around a piece of cake…outside the few no-fly zones. Combat is actually pretty good, but there is a learning curve. Once you learn when to learn which spells when, you can take out your enemies’ defenses much more easily.

On the negative side, the most frustrating thing in the game is the Gear Slots and how quickly the fill up. Almost immediately, you’ll open a chest only to get a message telling you that you’re out of space. While you can add more spaces, it takes quite a while and you don’t add that many. Even worse, you don’t know what new items is in the chest. You can destroy an item in your inventory, but there’s no way to know if the new gear is better or worse ahead of time. There’s not much jumping in the game, but the mechanics are not the greatest and you tend to take wide steps after landing so there’s not much margin of error for precision jumping. (On that note, you take small steps forward when you’re launching basic attacks from your wand, so you’re constantly moving towards your target which you might not want to do, especially if you’re on a ledge.) Also, there’s very little swimming in the game, but your character swims insanely slow and there’s no way to pick up the pace. And while your broom is great for getting around, it handles like crap and makes racing a chore instead of exhilarating.

The game looks pretty good, while the graphics are kind of on the mediocre side, there’s so much detail in the environments, especially in the castle where there’s something of interest around every corner. It can be glitchy on occasion, and I’ve had the game crash a few times, but normally it all runs well. There’s a ton of collectibles, but unless you’re trying to be a completionist, none of them are really anything special and the become a bit repetitive after you’ve done a few of them. One thing that sucks the life out of the game is the NPCs. Since you can’t interact with most of them, they feel more like set-dressing then background characters. (At least you’ll see the bad guys fighting other enemies like wolves and trolls, so they feel a little more real.)

Overall, the game has open-world mechanics that were groundbreaking a few years ago but feel dated now. Thankfully, the main quest is pretty solid by itself, and the Wizarding World setting makes it rewarding for those fans.

**1/2 out of *****