Hi everyone! So I know I’ve talked a lot about this game, but I wanted to do a review of it! I haven’t done a review in ages so hopefully this one will be the one to get me to do more of these!

First up, about the game! Hogwarts Mystery is a mobile game set at, of course, Hogwarts! This game takes place in the 80s I believe, after Harry Potter’s parents but before Harry himself. You’re in school with the older Weasley siblings, Bill and Charlie, to give you a better sense of the timeline.

The character is able to be customized a bit so you can choose if you’re a boy or girl, name the character, and then change the appearance a bit. Not all the hairstyles or accessories are available right away unless you want to pay money for it, more on that later.

I’ve shared my character already, but here she is again! This is Ava Samwise Quagmire, second year Ravenclaw. I had another first name in mind but the game didn’t accept it so I picked Ava as it was recommended when I did the random name generator a few times trying to get ideas. Next I chose Quagmire for the last name as I’d just watched A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix and I love the Quagmire triplets. Lastly, I thought Samwise was the perfect middle name so I had to come up with a reason for why that would be her middle name. In my mind, her dad is a half-blood and huge fan of Lord of the Rings (I have only seen each movie once myself and I thought that was plenty) so he suggested the name to her mom. Her mom loved the name Sam and thought “wise” was perfect for a future Ravenclaw (her entire family has been Ravenclaw so she’s just assuming now) and is none the wiser where the name came from.

Of course, the game could give Ava, as the main character, a different back story but I like this one so far. She’s quite sassy and studious, and quite annoyed that people like Merula keep distracting her from studying. But she’s very concerned for her friends and committed to helping them while balancing her extra lessons. She’s amazing at Charms and Transfiguration so far as a second year. She’s good at Potions and Flying because she’s just naturally gifted at everything but she doesn’t care much for those.

As for the backstory, we haven’t gotten much. We only know the main character is the younger sibling of a character named Jacob who was obsessed with finding the “Cursed Vaults” during his time at Hogwarts. Eventually he was expelled as his investigations caused quite a few problems. After being expelled he ran away and disappeared so the main character is trying to find out what happened to Jacob, learn more about the Cursed Vaults, and dealing with the repercussions of this at school. Many students will bring up that it’s rumored Jacob joined Voldemort or that he was just mad. I think Ava isn’t bothered that much about what people say about Jacob but she does really want to know what happened. If it was up to me though she wouldn’t be poking around so much for the Cursed Vaults as it feels the investigation revolves a lot around that.

As I mentioned, I’m in the second year right now and I believe the third year is available right now as well. The castle can’t be fully explored yet but they do get unlocked as your progress through the story.

The game mechanics are like the Kim Kardashian game if you ever played something like that. You spend energy to do the actions required for the game. You slowly increase the max number of energy you can have and there’s 8 things you can interact with around the castle to get an energy a few times a day. Otherwise each energy takes 4 minutes to recharge. At this time I have a max of 28 energy I believe and it takes almost 2 hours to fully recharge which is annoying. You can spend pink diamonds to get a full recharge but that costs real money. And that leads me to my next point.

About the energy and money system… It sucks. If you’ve played or heard about this game I’m sure you’ve heard about this. The game can quickly become expensive if you’re paying for the diamonds to refill often to move through the game fast. I’m personally taking it slower because I do not want to pay money for the diamonds and I want to enjoy it. At the beginning when I wanted to experience the game and dive right in it was very frustrating but now I’m okay with the speed and like that the game stops me from playing too long. The game itself does state it recommends playing on wifi as it would use a lot of data if not connected. I haven’t played it off wifi so I don’t know how much it would use but I’m not that curious!

Overall it’s a fun game for Harry Potter fans although it is either a time or monetary investment. It’s not an open world game as most Harry Potter fans have dreamed of, but the other Harry Potter game is supposed to release later this year so hopefully that will let us live out the ultimate dream. I do recommend trying it out if you haven’t already as it’s a fun little story and it’s nice exploring the castle, even in a limited capacity.

Have you played Hogwarts Mystery? Let me know if you have and what house you are!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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