It would be a 5 Star review, but we just opened Game 3 and it has Game 2 Dark Arts cards in it. Other than that the game is great fun.

It would be a 5 Star review, but we just opened Game 3 and it has Game 2 Dark Arts cards in it. Other than that the game is great fun.

So far we've only played 2 of the 7 games included (each game includes extra cards, mostly to be mixed with the cards of the previous game), but this has already been great fun. I feel like setup (especially first-time) is a little tedious and the cards come in an insane number of small bags (this is to help you sort them for the first game at least, so, don't do what I did and just shuffle them all together or you'll have to sort them out by hand). There are probably 10 different subsets of cards (they are all labeled, just takes a bit of getting used to). Once you get rolling, the gameplay is fairly quick. You'll probably want to play more than one round, though, so you can take advantage of being already set up. Being a co-op game it's great for kids, everybody gets to be on the same side and the 34;forces of darkness34; are symbolized by a few villain character-cards and some nasty spell cards. So far the game seems very true to the movies (no spoilers). My daughter is very into the lore and pointed out that, even though there are 7 games (supposedly following the 7 books) some characters who don't make it through the first book will still be in play in game 2. She also noticed that some of the photos for the game 2 cards are taken from later movies. This didn't harm the gameplay at all, and didn't upset her much, just required a tad more suspension of disbelief. The bad guys damage the heroes and take over locations (cards with nice screengrabs from the movies) through spells that they cast each turn (also cards with movie-quality pictures). The heroes (the 2-4 players) play Harry, Hermione, Ron, or Neville. Players track health using cardboard tokens on a track, and the villains track their control of the locations using small but fairly hefty metal tokens. Players build abilities by purchasing spell and item cards with cardboard 34;influence34; tokens. Almost all the characters from the movies are in the game, all as photos of the original actors, so, everyone can be righteously on guard when, say, Lucius Malfoy's card turns up, or happy when Trevor or Crookshanks dispatches a foe. Another big part of the fun is imagining yourself casting spells. There are lots of fun ones (although, for some reason, the game is chock full of comparatively unexciting Alohomora (unlocking) spells). If you or your kids aren't into the books or movies, then the game will seem less fun. Also, the villains use the same 34;dark mark34; skull symbols as shown in the movie and a certain dude-who-must-not-be-named is pictured in full bad-guy makeup, so if your kids are young enough to be scared by that, you might want to wait on getting this game. (For that matter, the metal tokens are easy to swallow and the game is all about magic spells (some of which wound characters, though there are no graphics of this), so there are plenty of reasons to keep young kids at a safe distance.) The look and feel of all the cards is great. I wish the tokens were all metal, stone, or a nice plastic, and I wish the few which are metal were of a more interesting shape, but those are very minor gripes. All-in-all, its a great game for game night with your Harry Potter fans.

So far we've only played 2 of the 7 games included (each game includes extra cards, mostly to be mixed with the cards of the previous game), but this has already been great fun. I feel like setup (especially first-time) is a little tedious and the cards come in an insane number of small bags (this is to help you sort them for the first game at least, so, don't do what I did and just shuffle them all together or you'll have to sort them out by hand). There are probably 10 different subsets of cards (they are all labeled, just takes a bit of getting used to). Once you get rolling, the gameplay is fairly quick. You'll probably want to play more than one round, though, so you can take advantage of being already set up. Being a co-op game it's great for kids, everybody gets to be on the same side and the 34;forces of darkness34; are symbolized by a few villain character-cards and some nasty spell cards. So far the game seems very true to the movies (no spoilers). My daughter is very into the lore and pointed out that, even though there are 7 games (supposedly following the 7 books) some characters who don't make it through the first book will still be in play in game 2. She also noticed that some of the photos for the game 2 cards are taken from later movies. This didn't harm the gameplay at all, and didn't upset her much, just required a tad more suspension of disbelief. The bad guys damage the heroes and take over locations (cards with nice screengrabs from the movies) through spells that they cast each turn (also cards with movie-quality pictures). The heroes (the 2-4 players) play Harry, Hermione, Ron, or Neville. Players track health using cardboard tokens on a track, and the villains track their control of the locations using small but fairly hefty metal tokens. Players build abilities by purchasing spell and item cards with cardboard 34;influence34; tokens. Almost all the characters from the movies are in the game, all as photos of the original actors, so, everyone can be righteously on guard when, say, Lucius Malfoy's card turns up, or happy when Trevor or Crookshanks dispatches a foe. Another big part of the fun is imagining yourself casting spells. There are lots of fun ones (although, for some reason, the game is chock full of comparatively unexciting Alohomora (unlocking) spells). If you or your kids aren't into the books or movies, then the game will seem less fun. Also, the villains use the same 34;dark mark34; skull symbols as shown in the movie and a certain dude-who-must-not-be-named is pictured in full bad-guy makeup, so if your kids are young enough to be scared by that, you might want to wait on getting this game. (For that matter, the metal tokens are easy to swallow and the game is all about magic spells (some of which wound characters, though there are no graphics of this), so there are plenty of reasons to keep young kids at a safe distance.) The look and feel of all the cards is great. I wish the tokens were all metal, stone, or a nice plastic, and I wish the few which are metal were of a more interesting shape, but those are very minor gripes. All-in-all, its a great game for game night with your Harry Potter fans.

Bought this game for our 15 yr old son for Christmas and spent a month playing it as a family along with our 9 yr old daughter. For the most part we really loved it. It was difficult at first with all the instructions but you get the hang of it once you start playing. Games 1 - 3 were fairly easy and fast, which was fine cause you are building to make the game better. Games 4 and 5 were extremely difficult to beat and we had to play them over and over. Kind of frustrating but really rewarding and fun when we finally beat them. It took a lot of working together. Then we moved on to Game 6 and then 7. These last two games were ridiculously easy and the reason I'm not giving this review 5 stars. We finished Game 6 in one try with all of us having full health and no skull tokens on the 1st location card. There was no challenge to it at all. Game 7 was fairly the same with beating the game with all health remaining and still on the 1st location card. I think the difference was in the special abilities cards that were introduced in Game 6 and also some of the Hogwarts cards in Game 6 that were added. They allowed the Heroes to gain more attacks and influence in order to defeat the Villains faster and easier. So while my family will play this game again and again, we might choose to change it up and take out some of the cards and abilities in order to make it more challenging.

Bought this game for our 15 yr old son for Christmas and spent a month playing it as a family along with our 9 yr old daughter. For the most part we really loved it. It was difficult at first with all the instructions but you get the hang of it once you start playing. Games 1 - 3 were fairly easy and fast, which was fine cause you are building to make the game better. Games 4 and 5 were extremely difficult to beat and we had to play them over and over. Kind of frustrating but really rewarding and fun when we finally beat them. It took a lot of working together. Then we moved on to Game 6 and then 7. These last two games were ridiculously easy and the reason I'm not giving this review 5 stars. We finished Game 6 in one try with all of us having full health and no skull tokens on the 1st location card. There was no challenge to it at all. Game 7 was fairly the same with beating the game with all health remaining and still on the 1st location card. I think the difference was in the special abilities cards that were introduced in Game 6 and also some of the Hogwarts cards in Game 6 that were added. They allowed the Heroes to gain more attacks and influence in order to defeat the Villains faster and easier. So while my family will play this game again and again, we might choose to change it up and take out some of the cards and abilities in order to make it more challenging.

My wife and I love this game. We just finished game 5 of 7 and it took a while and was relatively challenging. We are excited to finish all the games. My one critique for the game is that the quality of the pieces are not great. The cards are lower quality and can be difficult to shuffle and the dice have stickers that are off center. Otherwise, very fun cooperative game that we love playing.

We really love this game!! It is a very good cooperative game! Very challenging and fun. I would have given it 5 stars but it should have 4 dice 1 for every house. We only have 3 colors. We have 2 dice of the same color. Each house dice are different so it is not as effective with only 3 colors.