
Controlling the game is fairly self-explanatory. You'll have a tilted top-down view of the events transpiring through the game's four chapters, and you'll be able to navigate Harry and his friends through all sorts of environments, episodes and predicaments that will be familiar to the Harry Potter faithful.

Most of the game's advancement is through fetch quests, mild combat, puzzle solving, and of course, the endless collecting of LEGO bits known as studs (of which there will be no shortage of as I had over 500,000 by the time we made it through the first year). The gameplay itself is traditional action fare but not exactly the LEGO title you've probably played before. LEGO Harry Potter tells its namesake's story in much the same way LEGO Star Wars did, in that there is a minimal amount of voice acting (especially in cutscenes) and there's an overarching assumption that the gamer who's experiencing the title is already familiar with the source material.

That's OK because there's a story to be told here, albeit a loose one. You'll have to do so in order for instance, you can't jump directly to the Prisoner of Azkaban sequences without first getting through the Sorcerer's Stone and the Chamber of Secrets in their entirety.

So, you're going to play through the adventures found in the Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 covers the first four books in the Harry Potter series.
