Lego Harry Potter Collection Review – PlayStation 4

Traveler’s Tales has released a lot of Lego games over the years and has steadily made each one better than the last usually. If you play a Lego game today versus one that was released several years ago you’ll be pleasantly surprised by just how much better they look and feel. That is why I was surprised when I heard that Double Eleven and WB Games were releasing The Lego Harry Potter Collection on PlayStation 4. With the new Fantastic Beasts movie releasing soon it makes sense but these Lego Harry Potter games don’t hold up so well in 2016.

The collection bundles both Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 together in one package with some improvements. These games were originally released on the last generation of consoles back in 2010 and 2011. Together you’ll get to experience the entire Harry Potter story in this one package. If you’ve played these already or pretty much any Lego game you know what to expect and that is lots of collecting items, studs, and a good amount of puzzles to solve. There is a lot of content here to play through and the DLC that was released for the games which included a few more characters is included in this package as well.

Now as far as improvements go the game only looks slightly better and you probably won’t even realize it unless you boot up your old copy of the game. The resolution is slightly better as are the textures. Screen tearing that was present in last gen versions also seemed to be fixed in this version. Now when I mentioned that Lego games have improved over the years one of the biggest areas was in the addition of voice overs for the characters. You will find none of that here as this remaster stays true to the original version when Lego game characters could still only speak in grunts and other assorted sounds. I’ve gotten so used to the characters having voices in recent games that it’s a bummer to have to go back and be stuck listening to grunts again. The in game cutscenes also suffer from an issue we’ve seen with other remasters in that they haven’t been improved at all. This is very noticeable as here you are playing through the game with the updated graphics and then a cutscene kicks in and it looks last gen again. It’s really too bad that they couldn’t touch them up too.

Another new addition is the fact that the Dualshock 4 lightbar changes color based on the type of spell you cast in the game but that’s not like a major feature or anything. I can’t help but feel like this remaster is a tad overpriced for the small amount of improvements that have been made especially considering some other recent remasters that have done so much more. The gameplay is solid for the most part and it was fun to play as Harry and all of his friends again through these seven years but it all just doesn’t hold up so well in 2016.

If you haven’t played any of the Lego Harry Potter games before then I’d recommend picking this up at some point. If you have played them then I personally don’t think you need to return to Lego Hogwarts. I don’t feel that it’s worth the current asking price but maybe you will and you do get a good amount of content in the package. I just feel like more could have been done to improve this collection when other HD remasters have set the bar higher.

*Review Copy of this game provided by the Publisher