Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery for Android

Your Hogwarts acceptance letter has arrived: You can now play the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery game, have the sorting hat place into a house, learn spells, brew potions, make friends, and slowly unravel the mystery of your family.

Pros

Familiar to Potter Fans: If you've read the books or watched the movies, the setting for the game will be familiar. The story starts 11 years after Harry Potter's birth but before he enters Hogwarts.

In the first chapters of the game, you receive your acceptance letter and travel to Diagon Alley to pick up your school supplies and make a friend. You then travel to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where you get sorted into a house and start your first year. Along the way, you encounter familiar members of the school's faculty and visit classrooms, offices, and other rooms in the castle.

Engaging to play: To progress through the school year, you complete tasks, finish quests, take classes, master spells, and learn potions. As you move through the game, you gain experience and earn gems and coins.

It's not all about studying: Because of your family's past, some of your classmates are wary of you. To complete some quests, you can duel others and choose your style of dueling: Sneaky, Aggressive, or Defensive. One style is better for fighting another style, for example, Sneaky can overcome Defensive, so choose wisely.

Branching storyline: The game offers lots of customization, from your character's sex and physical characteristics to wizarding clothes. And you make make choices in the game -- from which house you join to how you approach school and interact with others -- that affect how your story unfolds.

Cons

Pay to immerse yourself in the game: You earn coins and gems by completing activities in the game, such as finishing quests, completing classes, and winning the House Cup. And you spend the coins and gems to refill your energy, interact with some characters, or upgrade your outfit. The more coins and gems you have, the smoother the game progresses. But they run out quickly, so you may find yourself buying them through in-app purchases to keep playing at a pace you like.

No offline play: The game requires a wireless connection, preferably Wi-Fi, the game suggests.

To sync across devices, you need to link the game to your Facebook account: While you can play the game and save your progress on your phone, if you want to sync your progress across different devices, you need to link the game to your Facebook account. Which 'we'd rather not do right now, to be honest. It would be better if the game let us sync with our Google Play Games account, instead.

Bottom Line

If you can't spend enough time in the wizarding world, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery game, is a fine way to become a witch or wizard at Hogwarts. Along the way, you'll make friends, learn spells, uncover secrets, and probably spend a few silver sickles to keep the game moving.