First off let me just say that I have just read some reviews and yikes! Whose baby did the dev punt? It baffles me that too much plot and not enough sexy payoff is enough to make people ignore everything else and decide 1 (or even 0) stars is what this game should have. Harry Potter wasted that invisibility cloak in the movies by not hanging out in the girls dorms or showers, so how the fuck did the movies do so well if people think like this? Lol
Personally, I like bikinis and lingerie and getting girls to play dress up, so for me at least I feel like there's a lot of content in here.
"I'd give it 0 stars if I could" lmfao.
Art.
5/5
This is where the game shines brightest but also likely causes the most problems for development time. Environments are incredibly detailed and stuffed with easter eggs and humorous touches.
The characters are skillfully drawn with no noticeably janky anatomical issues beyond intentional stylistic choices. Initially, the body types of the girls on offer seem a bit samey with them mostly having that perfect hourglass shape and large breasts, with only the curvy Susan offering much alternative while somehow fitting a similar description but with added thickness. The introduction of a flatter more petite Ginny later into the story offers some more variety and, to me at least, seems to promise a more varied selection of body types with the introducion of the new prefects that the game hints at.
Story.
3/5
What a lot of other people say is true. This is a wordy game. It will hit you as hard as it can with exposition and then hit you again just to be sure. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion, it depends how deep you like to sink into your lore.
The game takes place in the Harry Potter universe, sure, but not as we know it. For one, Harry is a student at Hogwarts but nobody seems to give a fuck and he's barely mentioned by anyone. Secondly, things have forked somewhere in the past, Voldemort doesn't appear to be Voldemort at all and instead Tom Riddle was almost called in to be headmaster of Hogwarts.
There's a lot that this narrative throws around, and despite the protagonists initial openess about perverted goals the game quickly becomes less focused on immediate perversion and more on our hero finding a way to get back to the role he had planned for himself. Which I guess still involves eventual perversion, but it completely (for the most part) places his deviant intentions to the side for now and any ensuing lewdness can seem almost incidental to an extent. Depending on whether you believe what Redblack tries to convince himself sometimes.
Getting to the point, this means that this game places a deep narrative first and drops sexual content to the bottom of the list of what it's offering for at least the first few hours of gameplay. And even when it does start getting lewd, it may seem pretty tame depending on what your particular interests are. Before you start getting to any real content with the main girls the game become more of a paper doll experience with you playing dress up with the characters. You'll find the main story having you find ways to put the girls into various swimming costumes and lingerie as the main event as far as lewdness goes, with actual sexual content coming much later.
As of writing this I believe that Minerva sex was shoehorned into an early moment of the game while an oral scene with Ginny as a part of a side plot is found much later. Nothing else beyond some voyeurism and nudity has yet to be added as far as I can tell, the devs appear to be on a long haul tease.
Gameplay and mechanics.
3.5/5
I love that this game feels more like a point and click adventure than anything else. The exploration and puzzle solving using inventory items is fantastic and the game can be just as punishing as far as figuring out how to proceed in some places as point and click adventure games used to be. It feels like an actual game, and while I feel like that's a good thing, others looking for something more akin to a porn piñata are likely going to hate the experience and call it a grind. Only in a porn game can actual gameplay be considered a grind, huh? Well anyway, it is what it is, if you don't like having to work through the content then it isn't going to be for you. Especially since you're working to progress the plot and not specifically to reach any kind of lewd scenes.
The inclusion of quiz minigames and timed sliding puzzles is also something I enjoy that I also think others might hate since the game makes no secret about there being the coveted lewd content just beyond them. Again, I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment where others might just want the lewds handing to them. So that's something to keep in mind when deciding if this game is for you.
One thing I have had an issue with, and a game breaking one at that, is the time system. I like the time and day system and how the school has it's shedule. But I don't like that characters can try and visit at the same time and if you miss them then it just cancels the meeting completely. There are instances where a meeting is vital and if you somehow miss it then it halts progression. Susan bringing her first cake to you to try is the instance I personally found game breaking, her visit apparently coincided with another meeting I was having (I assume) and since I failed to meet with her and it was not a repeatable visit, I managed to lock myself out of her minigame and ultimately out of progression in the Helena Ravenclaw main quest. This feels like a pretty big oversight to me.
Another oversight is the save system. While adequate it's far from convenient. It has no naming system for saves that I can tell and you're forced to save on the same screen with only the time of day to indicate anything different from other saves in the thumbnail. Moving back to moments before you made any vital choices such as which girl to focus gaining trust with or to points before any game breaking mistakes (like the one I made) becomes very very difficult.
Music and sound.
4/5
I can't give this full marks entirely because I can't remember the music. If I'm playing a parody game where having any official music in the game could cause issues for the dev then I'm very likely to queue up the soundtrack from the original property in Spotify if I can, in this case (since books tend not to have soundtracks) I stick the Harry Potter movie soundtracks on to add to the mood while playing. I do remember playing for at least an hour the first time I fired the game up without turning the music off in favour of my own so I know it was at least adequate and not annoying.
The game does do very well with it's sound effects though. The sounds are suitable for the actions that are taking place, aren't annoying, and sometimes even add to what's happening in a noticeable way. I genuinely laughed out loud when a sound effect was used for humour in reference to a popular stealth game series.
With all those point in mind, I'd round that score to a 4 out of 5 for stars.
The quality of this game is high but the depth and difficulty in places can be a double edged sword and impatient people playing for the pornographic content aren't going to like it.
