Harry Potter Wizards Unite - what fresh hell is this

Posted by on

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite ... sigh.

Okay, I don't really like to bash things in reviews at all... but holy ... this Harry Potter game is a nightmare.  Almost worse than that other game.

For those of you who are HP fans, you've probably waited for this for a while.  I pre-registered and everything.

And then I got in.  Thinking it was going to be a Pokemon Go clone, or Ingress... it's made by Niantic afterall.

But it's just a horrid mess.  I'm usually something of a patient gamer... but I just couldn't.


It starts by saying that "hey, somebody's making these 'confoundables' which are bothering wizard 'things' making them potentially viewable to the general public.  We can't have muggles seeing things like Hagrid or flying snitches... so you have to get rid of them.

Walking around on the map you see the confoundables and you tap them, and wave your magic wand to get ride of the thing that's causing the problem.

You have to trace a pattern (remember Ingress' glyphs?) and similar to a chance on Pokemon if you do okay you get rid of it.

Saving the 'item'/person/thing/etc... now puts it in your 'registry' ... get enough of the registry items you 'rank up'... there are ten different registry 'types' each with 3 or so levels.

Starting to get confusing?  Just wait.

Now there's potions too.  You find ingredients on the map that you use to make potions, you have to go to special 'stops' to get other ingredients (seeds and water) and places to plant other plants so you can make more potions in my menu.

There's 5 different types of potions I can brew now, another 4 or so that I could if i level up.  Each taking an odd type of recipe, meaning there's dozens of different ingredients you have to go out and search for.  Let alone you can only carry a limited amount, so you constantly have to be figuring out which ingredients to toss (of course you can buy more space).

Then once you have a potion it goes into your inventory (with again, limited space).

Then there's a currency for your spell abilities ... level up, but also skills get levels.

Then there's Runestones for battles (yeah, there's also battles, I was so confused).

Daily actions (there are 4 kinds), portkeys (think eggs from Pokemon Go) ...

Games that aren't simple, that have too many mechanics just makes it confusing.  I'm usually a patient guy for games, but good lord this is a hell of a mess.

Let alone they are trying to tell a 'story' throughout that you're going to try to understand.

I do not recommend this game in the least.