A Mobile Game Where Magic, Community, and Card Strategy Collide
In the ever-evolving realm of mobile MMORPGs, Harry Potter: Magic Awakened presents a captivating blend of nostalgia and novelty, brilliantly transporting the cherished world of Harry Potter into an immersive mobile MMO experience. By assimilating elements from the PC game Hogwarts Legacy and streamlining them into a card-collectible MMO-RPG hybrid, Magic Awakened distinguishes itself through its charming, cartoonish design and engrossing gameplay.
Starting the game feels like you’re stepping into a Harry Potter memory but with your own unique adventures added in. The game does a great job of bringing the Harry Potter world to life, and it also adds in fun new features that make it really exciting to play on your mobile device.
Set in the aftermath of the Harry Potter events, Magic Awakened places you in the role of a new student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, progressing the narrative arc from Hogwarts Legacy. Like its PC counterpart, your character receives a personal invitation from Rubeus Hagrid to attend the school. As your journey unfolds, you unravel the stories of your schoolmates, the crux of the game’s campaign narrative, embellished with vibrant animated cut-scenes and riveting dialogue boxes that enhance the storytelling.
The Harry Potter game as an MMO + RPG
Harry Potter: Magic Awakened offers you character customization options at the onset, providing you with a unique look as you begin your adventure at Hogwarts. You are given a chance to choose your desired hairstyles, hair colors, skin tones, and some facial features as you unfold a variety of options to distinguish and stand out your character amongst other players. #costumeislife 😀
Magic Awakened’s unique combat system revolves around the strategic use of cards for attack, defense, or buffs, tailored meticulously for mobile platforms. You may engage in story campaign battles or challenge other players to duels in a 1v1 or 2v2 format. Immersing yourself in various card combinations and strategies will lead you into deeply engaging and tactical battles. With over 70 collectible cards and the option to brew beneficial potions, the game presents extensive strategic potential.
Replacing a traditional pet system, Magic Awakened introduces an owl companion that accompanies you throughout your magical journey. This creature is not merely a delightful aesthetic touch, but also aids in gameplay, providing essential notifications and assisting in certain tasks. This feature unquestionably elevates the magical ambiance of the game.
Magic Awakened’s RPG elements offer thrillingly addictive exploration in a semi-open world, either on foot or by broomstick. As you go, you can level up your cards, find new cards, and work through the story or complete tasks. There are daily rewards and a card gacha system for even more progression. The daily tasks don’t take up too much time, so you can play at your own pace. But if you want to do well in the PvP ranking system, you’ll need to really think about your strategy and commit to playing the game.
The MMO elements of the game provide a vibrant community, enabling you to meet other players or friends online in the magical world of Hogwarts. You may also join a social club to bond with other players, make friends, and compete with the ranked leaderboard.
Is it free-to-play friendly?
A notable feature of Harry Potter: Magic Awakened is its gacha system, introducing an element of chance when acquiring new cards.
This system, while prevalent in mobile games, involves using a “Lucky Key” to unlock various rewards, such as rare, epic, or even legendary cards that can bolster your strategic advantage.
On the surface, this might give an impression of Magic Awakened being a pay-to-win game. However, the game offsets this by implementing a robust ranking system that matches players with similar skill levels, ensuring competitive integrity and a level playing field. Besides, PvP is not the sole focus of Harry Potter: Magic Awakened but, with a narrative-rich campaign that offers an immersive experience, providing numerous story-driven quests and missions at your own pace.
Final Thoughts
Harry Potter: Magic Awakened offers a captivating MMORPG mobile gaming experience, fusing the enchanting essence of the Harry Potter universe with the thrilling dynamics of MMO gameplay. Seamlessly borrowing and adapting elements from Hogwarts Legacy, it offers a platform that introduces a unique card-collectible battle system and a rich MMO-RPG environment, destined to captivate both Harry Potter enthusiasts and MMO lovers alike.
While it might seem indicative of a pay-to-win structure initially, it is expertly balanced by a fair ranking system and a focus on not just PvP, but also a story-driven campaign. This combination delivers a well-rounded gaming experience that surpasses the potential pitfalls of a gacha system, by ensuring a level playing field and significant emphasis on the narrative.
Playing this game I had fun, but I stopped playing after fun ended and it was around 20 days of being rather active. I downloaded it on my pc, worked smoothly, many activities and story quests are top notch, many events are very well designed and art style is simply memorable – nice to look at. But after I reached lvl 50 and gameplay loop began to bore me many disadvantages became too visible. Social club is done in a lazy way, club adventures were challenging only first week and they are the same five weeks in a row, there’re activities in this game that were probably implemented at some point during development (quidditch, headmasters office) but now they are simply out of sight, forbidden forest gets boring and repetitive fairly quickly, classes and dancing don’t give any incentives to be any better than average.
Actually the only activity in this game that is designed very well in terms of constant challenge and excitement is duelling club. For players who like quick strategical duels this game might be dream come true. On average one fight lasts around 2 minutes, starting from golden rank (which is fairly easy to reach) most fights will be against real players and to reach higher ranks player needs to really understand cards and synergies they create.
Number of cards in the game is another thing that makes me lose interest, at launch there were 75 cards – I’ve got 73 of them and there was no way to unlock more cards than 75. That’s why I began to gather keys (items that give cards) for near future in hope at least a few new cards will be released with each bigger update. And with update releasing third year of story two new cards were added – possible to obtain in premium draws. I really think this game will be better in a year or two after all this planned content and cards will be added. With third year of storyline “Obscurus” and “Minerva McGonagall” were added – no real corelation with anything about third years – Minerva could be added anytime.
My recommendation would be to play this game slowly, watch cutscenes, spend on it 2 hours a day – not more. It’s really good to play from time to time, to see how it grows but I’m a little too occupied with incoming game releases.