Douglas's game of the week: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone (GBC)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Or Phillosopher's stone if you read the european books like I do) was pretty much the Lord of the Rings of the 90's and early 00's. Eventually, they made a movie about it and the games followed the movie. As expected, the games were so terrible you'd want to shoot yourself but for some reason, the Gameboy Colour version, a dying system, had the best version-And the only version that was actually good and worth your time.


The graphics of Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone were pretty much what you would expect out of a gameboy game-The backgrounds remain the game's strongpoint as they have been in alot of RPGs, and the backgrounds are very detailed for a Gameboy Colour game-They're even more colourful than the Gameboy Advance version which should have been used in the Spanish inquisition to torture people. Of course to produce backgrounds as colourful and detailed as this, something had to be sacrificed-And that would be the character designs. Not only are the ghosts next-to-impossible to see but it's hard to tell if Harry Potter is wearing glasses or not and Quirrel...Bleh. The characters look kinda mutated, but thank god they aren't mutated in the way those poor animals in those awful Quizno's Commercials are. (I HATE THE ADS!!! THE ADS ARE AH-NOY-ING!) In a nutshell, great backgrounds, so-so character designs.

The music is pretty much just what everything else on the gameboy is, the 8 bit techno music. It's not really much of an issue on the gameboy colour unless they use no sound at all. The music does fit the scene-I like the Dungeon theme, but some of the music is a bit drab and boring. The battle music is pretty good though.

The game is pretty damn easy-I mean, seriously, you can see the enemy encounters (Which are clouds) floating around and can choose to approach them or not. Of course, it's only Harry in the battles, even when Ron, Hermione, and Neville are following him at one point, it's still him. How come they are just standing there going "Duuuuuuuuuuh". One of the problems with the difficulty is the fact that sometimes you're fighting like 3 really strong enemies you accidentially walked into and will have to find a way to successfully beat them while you are running out of MP to cast spells other than Flipendo Uno. And speaking of spells, they level up by using them. Flipendo is pretty easy to level up because Flipendo Uno doesn't take any MP to cast but other spells like Vermillious or Verdimillious take up MP and can be pretty hard to level up. There are also spells like Wingardium Leviosa and Mucus Ad Nauseum. The spell names are one of the high points-They are actual spells in the book and aren't anything as uncreative as "Fire" or "Water" or "Thunder" like in Final Fantasy. And while we're off topic, the Cards in the game are neither an asset or a hindrace. Some card combos are really useful like cause you to regain your SP or make spells cost half MP but others hurt you. You can choose to use the Card Combos in battle to help but you can easily beat bosses with just your spells.

The biggest drawback from the game aside from it being too easy is the fact that you can beat the game in like 2 and a half hours-The first time I played the game, that was literally my time (And I'm not just using that as an excuse to say 2.5 here). And there's almost no replay value except for trying to get all the cards or playing with your stats. I don't know if anyone has gotten all the cards because some people won't even touch this game because a) It's based on a movie which do tend to suck with the exception of the Lord of the Rings game and b) it was released in a time where people wouldn't really play anymore GBC games except for the classics that can be bought for less than 10 dollars.

Overall, Harry Potter does a few things wrong for everything it does right but in the end, it is the only Harry Potter game that's actually good. You're better off renting it because you can beat it in less than a weekend, because Easy and Short do NOT mix, and this happens to be a great game for beginners to the RPG genres and it is something to do on a rainy day when you don't want a cat in a hat running into your house and making a mess of things. 8.02/10

Pros:
-=Very detailed backgrounds=-
-=Great battle music=-
-=Cool spell effects and names=-
-=One of the very few RPGs based off of a movie that's actually good=-
-=Great battle music=-

Cons:
-=Cards can be a big hindrace=-
-=Very easy=-
-=Too short=-
-=Somewhat mutated character designs=-

The license to Lord of the Rings should belong to Squeenix. It's hard to see that Harry Potter games are RPGs.

Just the GBC versions. the others are very badly done adventures.

^The PC version's ****.