Quote Originally Posted by danzibr View Post
Holy smokes. This thread has been, uhh, informative. I somewhat grew up with HP, and young me reading these books never thought, “ahh so X represents Y.” I just like… read the books and enjoyed them for what they were (or what I thought they were). Kinda gotta wonder if the X-represents-Y folks are right though.
Depends how you mean represents. If you mean in the sense that the author genuinely hates group Y, thinks they are subhuman scum, and wants to stealthily indoctrinate their readers, no. People who harbor deep-seated conscious hatred of other groups generally aren't subtle about it. If you mean are there aspects of fantasy thing X that resemble stereotypes about real world group Y, yes. How much that bothers you is, well, up to you. I think it's fair to say not at all, or its a bit uncomfortable, or you won't touch it with a ten foot pole.

ANYWAY, considering getting this game (primarily for my wife, an avid HP fan). How’s the broom flying?
Broom flying is good. Not super absolutely spectacular in terms of controls, but soaring around the map is tremendous fun. Later I believe there's also a hypogriff, but I haven't got one yet.

There's no quidditch though, just FYI. I'll bet dollars to donuts its in the sequel. (Do I know there will be sequel? No, but this is going to have made approximately all the money, so there will be a sequel.)

In general, if you/your wife likes HP, this is a super easy recommendation. The game is very good on its own merits, but you get to do tons of fun HP stuff, and it is translated extremely well to game form. Go wand shopping, brew potions, deal with strangely homicidal plants, explore the castle - which is everything an enchanted castle should be - its all here and its great.

Importantly it feels like good Harry Potter stuff. By which I mean the better movies and the books, but not those gawdawful Enchanted Beasts films. So stuff is fun and whimsical and a bit silly and sorta mostly consistent in the important bits if you don't poke too hard, but it isn't dour and stupid and falling apart scene to scene.

There's some stuff I wish they had managed to do, like quidditch and more interactions with students - a Draco type rival would be excellent - but the amount of content the devs have packed in is kinda jaw dropping, and it all works together really well. I'm kinda gushing I know, but the game is honestly just a joy.