Movie tie-in games tend to get a bad wrap; developers often have to contend with tight schedules to work with to ensure that the game’s release date coincides with the corresponding film’s. Despite this, the Harry Potter series has been able to churn out several solid games, helped in no small part by having industry giants EA publishing and developing many of them.
J. K. Rowling’s wizarding world provided developers with the perfect base for a video game to be built upon, with the wand-waving combat, strong narrative, and beautiful castle grounds that appear in the books and films. Although a handful of games have managed to capture the franchise’s magic, there have been a few that fell flat on their face.
Updated January 23, 2021 by Jack Pursey: Since the first Harry Potter film hit cinemas in November 2001, gamers have been crying out for an open-world role-playing adventure set in the wizarding school Hogwarts. After years of waiting, Potter fans have finally gotten their wish, as Hogwarts Legacy was announced in 2020 with the promise of letting players explore an 1800s rendition of the castle’s grounds.
Sadly, it was announced at the start of 2021 that the game had been delayed in 2022. So to give Harry Potter fans something to keep them busy in the meantime, we have expanded this list to include every Harry Potter game that has been rated by the review aggregator Metacritic.
14 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (38)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 isn’t just the lowest-rated Harry Potter game to date, it’s also one of Electronic Arts’ lowest-rated games, with only NBA Live 14, Dead Space: Ignition, and FIFA 21: Legacy Edition rated lower.
EA seemingly had the Gears of War and Uncharted series’ on their mind when making the 2010 game, as Deathly Hallows – Part 1 ditches free-roaming Hogwarts exploration for a third-person shooter that replaces guns for wands. In fairness to EA, Deathly Hallows – Part 1 is by far the toughest film to recreate as a video game, though the execution of the action-gameplay could and should have been much better.
13 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (43)
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a role-playing game that released on iOS and Android devices in 2018. The game was developed by Jam City, who are best known for their puzzle-game Cookie Jam.
A role-playing Harry Potter mobile game may sound like an ideal stop-gap while waiting for the similarly titled Hogwarts Legacy, though sadly the game suffers greatly from excessive and intrusive microtransactions. It’s unlikely that Jam City will be easing the implementation of microtransactions anytime soon, as Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery grossed an eye-watering $110m in just its first year.
12 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (44)
In stark contrast to the aforementioned Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 which was the toughest game to make a tie-in game for, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 is almost certainly the easiest thanks to the Battle of Hogwarts. The Battle of Hogwarts didn’t seem to light much of a fire under EA Bright Light though, as Deathly Hallows – Part 2 scored just a few points higher than its direct predecessor.
Among the sea of poor reviews was a brutal half star score from Games Radar’s Jordan Baughman who listed “Turning the game off” and “Getting your money back” as two of the game’s three Pros.
11 Harry Potter: Kinect (54)
Whereas most Harry Potter games are sold on giving players the ability to free-roam Hogwarts castle, Harry Potter: Kinect condenses key moments from the books into a collection of mini-games.
Although the game is a unique Kinect release in the sense that the Kinect controls work fairly consistently, it’s mainly because the game only requires simple movements from players. This simplicity made Harry Potter: Kinect a fun mini-game collection for younger audiences, but far from worth its $60 launch price for anyone else.
10 Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
The huge success of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery unsurprisingly saw another game release shortly after. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was developed byNiantic, who are best known for work on Pokémon Go. The game was intended to be a wizarding interpretation of the groundbreaking Pokémon Go, though it struggled to reach anywhere near the heights of its once-booming success.
Although Niantic’s game struggled to garner much of a player base, it did win the accolade of Technical Achievement at the 2020 Webby Awards, as well as a nomination for Family & Kids.
9 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (64)
Unlike most of the Harry Potter releases which focus on spell casting action, Sorcerer’s Stone is predominantly a platformer; spellcasting does feature, though much of it is reduced to situational rhythm-based mini-games.
Despite Hogwarts not being as vast as in other releases, developers still offered players the chance to free-roam the castle, which is commendable given the PS1’s limitations. These limitations are evident with the character models, though, with their distorted faces frequently being turned into memes in recent years. PS1 Hagrid, anyone?
8 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (66)
Although Sorcerer’s Stone takes the crown as the most meme’d Harry Potter game, Half-Blood Prince is a close second. From awkward character animations to poor voice-acting, to a literal record scratch when Ginny rejects Harry at one point in the game.
Half-Blood Prince made up for this by having the series’ largest and best-looking Hogwarts to explore. Furthermore, the game featured an incredible soundtrack, making use of the iconic music that accompanied the films. Something that was unfortunately overlooked in the other games.
7 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (67)
The developers were in an uphill battle with Order of the Phoenix from the offset, as the corresponding film focused less on the action and more on the characters and politics in the wizarding world. Instead of opting for a Telltale style game, developer’s EA UK worked around this by focusing on the recruitment of Dumbledores Army.
Order of the Phoenix also saw a fundamental change in the game’s mechanics, using the joystick to control Harry’s wand wielding hand, which replaced the simplicity of pressing a spell-assigned button. The change in gameplay seemed to be geared towards the Nintendo Wii release, which replaced the joystick with motion controls. Although fiddly at times, the joystick implementation added to the immersion and made the gameplay richer as a result.
6 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (68)
Goblet of Fire took the somewhat bizarre move of removing free-roaming, replacing it instead with a rudimentary level select screen. Moreover, the game felt very limited with just eight levels to choose from. This is presumably indicative of the Goblet of Fire movie releasing just one year after Prisoner of Azkaban, giving EA UK little time to work on the game.
Despite this disappointment, Goblet of Fire was the first mainline game in the series that featured local multiplayer. Playing with friends was an excellent addition and made the levels far more enjoyable to play through.
5 Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup (68)
Since the first Harry Potter film hit theaters in late 2001, a Quidditch video game seemed like a money-making idea just waiting to happen. EA capitalized on this in 2003 with Quidditch World Cup.
The game’s pacing was excellent, with competing for the Hogwarts Cup acting as the game’s tutorial before challenging national teams in the World Cup. Quidditch World Cup also managed to intelligently solve one of Qudditch’s main issues, chief amongst them being that, in the books, Quidditch is simply a plot device created to give Harry his moment in the sun when he wins games almost single-handedly.
EA UK solved this issue by splitting the gameplay into two sections. The first consisting of a basketball-style game where teams try to score as many points as possible by throwing the quaffle through the opposing team’s hoops which directly affects the second style of gameplay, catching the snitch. Depending on how many more/fewer points players score than their opponent would determine how much boost they would have available when chasing the snitch.
4 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (70)
From a game all about Quidditch to one with none whatsoever. EA presumably decided to leave Quidditch out of the game as they didn’t want to hurt sales of Quidditch World Cup. In a first for the movie tie-in games, players were able to control both Ron and Hermione, giving the basic action-adventure gameplay that Chamber of Secrets introduced some welcome variety.
Prisoner of Azkaban predominantly focused on taking classes, which gameplay-wise took inspiration from dungeons in The Legend of Zelda series. Although the puzzles and action sections were far more linear and simplistic than their Zelda counterparts, they were still enjoyable, nonetheless.
3 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (71)
Chamber of Secrets is a very similar game to Prisoner of Azkaban, indicative of their near-identical scores. Chamber of Secrets deserves its spot above Prisoner of Azkaban though, as it took the bones of what PS1’s Sorcerer’s Stone created and fleshed it out into an excellent PS2 adventure game.
Although players were unfortunately unable to control Arthur Weasley’s flying car, they did get access to Harry’s Nimbus 2000. The broom allowed players to fly around the castle grounds at will. Not only did this give Harry’s legs a much-needed break, but also allowed players to discover well-hidden secrets all over one of the best castles in the series, as well.
2 Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (76)
When Star Wars ushered in a new era of Lego games, it was only a matter of time before Hogwarts was given the Lego brick treatment. The game took what worked from Lego games that came before it and adapted the formula to the wizarding world. Although difficult to compare to its more realistic counterparts, Lego Harry Potter‘s take on Hogwarts is the series’ magnum opus, with a multitude of secrets to discover and unlockables to collect littered around the iconic school.
The game narrowly misses out on the top of the Metacritic pile, likely due to the game offering little innovation from the preceding Lego game.
1 Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (79)
Lego Harry Potter earns the top spot on the list by being not only the best Harry Potter game but also by being one of the best Lego games, period. Whereas Lego Star Wars rewarded progression through unlocking characters, Lego Harry Potter rewarded players with new spells. Players received the excellent replay value synonymous with Lego games through unlocking these new spells and abilities.
Much like Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter greatly benefits from having multiple movies to base its stages on. The amount of content that the developers had to work with ensured that there was no filler. Just one iconic level after another.
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