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// Order of the Phoenix 
// Story: Luna Reviews the 'Harry Potter' Video Game Series 
// by BronyDan 
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“So, after the… catastrophic failure that was ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, EA would have to work extra hard to make people buy the next game. So with the release of the fifth movie in 2007, came the game as well, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.’

Now the movie was… Okay. I would not go far as to say it’s bad, but it’s not exactly great. Like the last movie, there were some important stuff that was left out that was pretty essential to the overall story of the entire franchise, but you could still follow the story fairly well, it had some decent action, the fight scene at the end between Dumbledore and Voldemort alone was spectacular, and props to Imelda Staunton for bringing the perfect amount of bitch that made us all hate Umbridge in the book. There I go again, raving about the movies, when we have a game to look at, but first, a little bit of history on it.

Like I said, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ while getting good reviews from critics, got seriously panned by the fans, so EA needed to fix this. Before the game went into production, EA actually went out, even getting an appreciation society involved at one point, and asked the fans what it was that they wanted in ‘Order of the Phoenix’, and the answers were pretty obvious. They wanted to go back to the exploration of Hogwarts like in the first three games, with fun little collectibles again, and some even requested that they wanted the game to be closer to the movie than the other instalments had been. It's a similar situation EA were once in with the 'Ultima' series, when 'Ultima VIII: Pagan' failed, so let’s see if they fulfilled everyponies wishes, or if 'Order of the Phoenix' will be the Harry Potter equivalent of 'Ultima IX: Ascension'.

So we start off, and wow they really tried to get as close to the movie. Harry looks exactly like Daniel Radcliffe, however Dudley’s face doesn’t have much detail to it. Now I don’t mind the fact that they were finally using the actors, I just wish the faces weren’t so static. Honestly, the characters’ faces so absolutely no emotion what so ever, and yeah, I know that their faces were stationary in the earlier games, but least you get a blink or the occasional eye brow gesture out of them. Plus, some of the faces looked quite… terrible, like Filch for instance. I don’t know what happened, but I think his design in the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ PS1 game has a closer resemblance to David Bradley than this does. And aside from getting the actors appearances, they actually managed to get a few to voice them as well, like Rupert Grint, Tom Felton, the Phelps twins, Bonnie Wright, Matthew Lewis and Evanna Lynch

So we pretty much start at Grimmauld Place where we learn the spells that will help in the exploration parts of the game, like Reparo, Accio, Depulso and Wingardium Leviosa. All spells are cast by moving the right analog stick in certain ways as we, really just tidy up Sirius’ house. As you progress through the game, you will also learn spells that can be performed during duelling, again using the analog stick. Some of the spells can sometimes be tricky to perform like Levicorpus and… wait, time out! Okay, I apologise for letting out my inner Potter Fanatic here, but I need to address this. Why is Levicorpus in a standard spellbook for practical usage of charms? Nobody should know about this spell’s existence, or at least Harry shouldn’t know about it at this point, because he doesn’t learn about Levicorpus until the next book, in which we discover that it was a spell purely invented by the Half-Blood Prince, that he had written down in his old Potions book. Plus, how is everyone able to get themselves the right way up again after you’ve cast it, do they also know Liberacorpus, the counter curse? Okay, rant over let’s continue.

So we start off properly in Hogwarts and… Starswirl’s beard, this looks incredible! The Grand Staircase looks exactly like it does in the movie, it’s massive, the painstaking details of the paintings on the wall, some of them even move as well! This is all because during development, they actually looked at the blueprints, and original artwork by J.K. Rowling in order to try and recreate the Hogwarts castle in every way, and it’s amazing! Can you free-roam? You bet your gems and bits you can! You can walk anywhere around Hogwarts, you can go through secret passageways guarded by portraits to get to different areas quicker, but only if you of course, have the password. The passageway to get to the Dungeons is the worst one, because it literally took me till the end of the game to figure out what I needed to do. Basically, she’ll refuse you access because you’re not Slytherin, and jokingly says go and talk to some Slytherin students, but all they do is insult you, so I try beating them in a duel, still nothing. So finally I found what you need to do, but only by accident; you have to get the Invisibility Cloak, go down to the corridor where the portrait is, and eavesdrop on some Slytherin students giving the password. The relief I got after getting that, you would not belief.

Throughout the game, you can earn Discovery Points, by interacting with various items around the school, like mopping the floors, lighting candles, and repairing broken items. So you’re essentially doing Filch’s job. You can also gain points by finding Hogwarts plaques and Chess pieces, and if you collect enough, you will automatically by upgraded to improve your spells, and it can also unlock bonus items, like screenshots from the movie, and behind-the-scene footage into the making of the game. All of these can be found in the Room of Rewards, where you can also keep track of the other things you need to find in the game. 

Now in terms of the story, there are only two main goals of this game; finding the members of Dumbledore’s Army and creating havoc around Hogwarts after Umbridge becomes Headmistress. And this is what is probably the game’s biggest problem, it’s really repetitive! As much as I love walking around Hogwarts, you really won’t be doing anything else but this, and when you do find members, you will have to do a mini-quest for them before they will come to the Room of Requirement, and that’s really what takes up the majority of this game, just doing mini quests for different people, so if that’s what you like then this game is for you. And do you know how many members of Dumbledore’s Army you need to find? 18, out of 28! And some of their tasks are just really annoying, like doing Zacharias Smith’s homework for him, while he just stands around with his smug and obnoxious attitude and bossing you around. As you could probably guess, I hate this character. 

Now despite listening to what fans wanted, there were some things EA didn’t put in the game. For example, you can’t take your O.W.Ls, although they make up for it a little bit, by having you do homework, and get your grades from those. You weren’t allowed to swap between characters whenever you wanted, but you do play as Fred Weasley, Sirius Black and Dumbledore near the end. They also didn’t include Snape’s worst memory, which I feel was a huge mistake, because if you went into this game, without knowing anything about the book or film, then the moment where Snape throws Harry out of his office after one of your Occlumency lessons won’t make any sense, it makes it seem like he’s pissed off at Harry for doing a good job.

The Battle at the Ministry, like the end of the 'Prisoner of Azkaban' game, feels rushed to me. You don’t even get a chance to walk around anywhere, the game pretty much takes over for a few minutes as it plonks you straight in the Department of Mysteries and then it heads straight to Room of Prophecies, where we get another cutscene hearing the prophecy, and then… oh shit, Death Eaters! Have we got to fight them like we did in the movie, because that was a great scene and… no, the game takes over again as we arrive in the room with the archway, get another cutscene, and then we finally get a chance to play again! Like I said, here you play as Sirius as you fight Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix. There isn’t really much of a strategy, just keep firing spells at them until one of you is defeated, you still get the same cutscene of Sirius dying anyway. Then after that, we eventually get to the showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort! It’s okay. It starts out like every fight, but in the second round, Voldemort changes his tactic and while he tries using your spells against you, he’ll try and throw the furniture at you, but that’s really it. You get one more Occlumency segment, and that’s really the end of the game, if you don’t include the cutscene.

And that’s really it. So was this game the big return that EA had promised us? Well… Not quite. Ok, the game does have some good moments in it, like I said, the graphics are really well done, the design of Hogwarts is incredibly accurate to the movies, and it does feel like it has returned to the style of the first three games, however there really wasn’t enough here to make me forgive them for ‘Goblet of Fire’, even with the help of the fans. The repetitive nature of going back and forth around Hogwarts gets a little old, the mini quests take up the majority of the game instead of the actual story, and there really is no way to lose in this one; if you’re in a fight with the Slytherins and even if they beat you, the game will still continue on and not give you a chance to try again. But it can be entertaining if you’re in the right mood, and there are a lot of mini-games like Exploding Snap, Gobstones and Wizard Chess that may keep you coming back. So overall, it’s like the movie, it’s okay, but it’s certainly not as great as one would expect it to be.

Well, five down, three more to go. Next time, we look at the last Harry Potter game released for the PS2, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”