Developer: Unbroken Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions – Review
Hogwarts Legacy was a raving success back in 2023, but many gamers felt a bit disappointed that Quidditch was omitted from the final product. A lot of fans were hoping this popular competitive magical sport would be added at a later date, but alas, it became apparent that this would be a separate game in the future. In comes Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, a Harry Potter sports title that only revolves around the fast-paced wizarding world sports. While we would have loved to see Quidditch in Hogwarts Legacy ourselves, we were not disappointed by this standalone Quidditch title.
Story
If you dive into this Quidditch-centred title expecting to find a fleshed-out narrative, you’ll end up quite disappointed. Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions doesn’t have an actual story to play through. The campaign mode does offer a bit of additional commentary and a few famous characters of the Potterverse do the occasional cameo, but other than that, there is just about as much story here as you’d find in Mario Kart. The game is all about the gameplay, and that’s just fine.
Graphics
Where Hogwarts Legacy was extremely detailed, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions keeps things quite a bit simpler. We reckon the developers chose performance over realistic graphics, which seems logical. The character designs look a bit like comic book characters, with more round features and exaggerated facial expressions. There is only a limited variety of options in the character creation screen, but you’ll be able to spruce up your characters with the many cosmetic items in the game. These cosmetics can be earned by simply playing, rather than having to dish out additional cash. The arenas also look good, but you won’t be gazing upon your environments that much as you’ll constantly be trying to score points.
Sound
The sound design isn’t too bad. The music doesn’t stand out, and you’ll mainly have to make do with the sound effects and the commentaries during the matches themselves. The commentary is okay, albeit nothing too special. The sound effects provide decent audio feedback, and the SFX can also give decent audio cues for certain actions.
Gameplay
As you may have guessed, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is all about Quidditch. The game lets you play through short Quidditch matches, be it online against other players or offline against bots. The game is quite straightforward. If you play solo offline, you’ll be able to dive into whatever role you want on the field, be it Chaser, Seeker, Beater, or Keeper. If you decide to play online, you’ll have to juggle between your chosen role of Beater, Keeper, or Seeker as well as Chaser. The online format currently only allows 3v3 PVP. The offset is quite straightforward, as you earn points by throwing the Quaffle (the ball) through one of the other player’s goals. You also gain additional points by catching the Golden Snitch, which appears several times throughout the 5-minute matches.
If you’re unfamiliar with terminology like Quaffle, the Golden Snitch, and the different roles you can pick, the game actually does a great job by covering all of this via its extensive tutorials. You’ll go through all the roles, and you’ll play through a few matches while gradually introducing the new roles and mechanics. With quite a few tutorials you’ll have to go through in a row, things may feel a bit daunting at first, but the game is actually extremely accessible. We found our footing quickly, delving into offline and online matches easily. The online matchmaking isn’t that great at the moment, however, as we kept getting paired against players who were miles ahead of us in terms of level. Higher levels have more advantages, as they have more skill points to strengthen their players on the field.
As you play more and more matches, you’ll gain more level-up rewards as well as season rewards. You can get different currencies for the different items on sale, and you also earn skill points. With these skill points, you can choose offensive, defensive, and team skills per team role. These upgrades are passive upgrades, often revolving around dealing more damage, getting speed boosts, increasing buff durations, and so on. You can swap skills at any given time, meaning you can invest in the role you prefer to play online and then swap to different skills when playing solo offline. It’s a fairly interesting system that does offer a lot of options. The aforementioned currencies in the game, and all the items you can buy, are via in-game currency only. This currency is earned and not bought with real money. We can only commend the developers for not adding microtransactions to the equation, which is a common sales tactic for games such as this.
Conclusion
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is a fun title that offers the closest thing you’ll get to becoming a world-renowned Quidditch player. The game offers fast-paced action, a decent progression system, free rewards, and entertaining online gameplay. While we did enjoy this one more in short bursts, we can imagine more competitive players sinking a lot of hours into this one. If you’re quick, you can still grab this one for free via PlayStation Plus.
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