LEGO Harry Potter Collection Switch review - "Just as simple and fun as ever"

If you've played the LEGO games before, you probably know what to expect by now. Whimsical storytelling, a nice sprinkle of humour, bouts of exploration, platforming, and solving environmental puzzlers as you go, to say the least.

In LEGO Harry Potter Collection, it's all of the above plus the re-telling of Harry Potter's seven-year escapade. What was originally sold in two parts, Years 1-4 and Years 5-7, have been joined together to make play even easier.

Has it changed since its 2010 release? A little bit visually, but it's still just as simple and fun as ever.

Stop it, Ron

If you couldn't guess it Harry Potter Collection features Harry Potter, from the moment he discovered he was magic all the way to the bitter end. Well, in LEGO form, of course. This is a simplified telling which uses visual humour and carefully constructed scenes rather than dialogue and picks out the major points of each year.

That just means you'll be skipping all of the friendship-building stuff and focussing on beating up trolls and following the spiders and such. Rather than just dumping you in and letting you work through all of its secrets, the game purposefully paces you with obstacles that can be overcome in time.

Since you're at Hogwarts, the fastest way to get around these blocks is by going to class and learning how to be all witchy. You'll pick up a bunch of spells and skills initially that help you break, rebuild, and aid your way through blocked off parts of the area. This might be in Diagon Alley or just wandering about Hogwarts.

The character you pick also helps you in tricky situations, like being able to deploy Ron's rat, Scabbers, into small spaces and tunnels or take to a broomstick with ease as Harry. You also collect mountains of coins as you go, trying to smash 100% for each level and earn gold bricks for your trouble.

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape

I guess the one area where older players might struggle is with its lack of challenge. Everything feels a bit too easy overall with no way of changing up the difficulty, bar turning off the hints. In a lot of cases boss battles are over before you've even realised you're fighting, let alone taking on more meagre foes.

It's also appropriate to add that if you've played the game before, there's not much use playing it again unless it's one of your favourite games ever. Sure, it's had a tweak to its graphics and the light effects are a bit nicer, but everything else has been copied over with little more than a smidgen of HD Rumble to make it a Switch port.

Am I bothered though? Nope, not really. Despite what it lacks, it's still a dream for completionists and has a lot of gameplay, secrets, and story to sift through. It's just a nice game to play either on the go or docked on the TV.

If you've played LEGO games before and enjoyed them, odds are you'll rather enjoy this one too. If you're looking for an action-packed, rootin' tootin' spell shootin' time though you might be left wanting.