Customer Reviews

Clue Harry Potter

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this board game thinking that the only allure it would have for my 8 year old son was the fact that it was Harry Potter based. I was happy to be wrong and surprised . I love that there is an added level to the old style clue with the dark mark deck and help cards. The most challenging part for my three boys is not losing all of your house points before you can rescue the lost student. If your child is a Harry Potter fan or not i think this toy is a very smart purchase and very worth the price paid for it. I would only say that you should be aware this is definately not for anyone younger than 7 reading is a big must.(my 4 year old was broken hearted he couldn't play too, so he became the dice thrower!)

I must confess I am a Clue fan first and a Harry Potter fan second. So, while I'm really happy with the adaptation of Hogwarts into a Clue board, I'm a little disappointed that the "whodunit?" aspect sometimes takes a seat to another gameplay aspect - House Points, which, when completely lost, cause a player to lose the game.

As far as Clue goes, it's still pretty standard - players need to determine the who, where, with what of a kidnapping mystery. Players take turns moving about Hogwarts, making and disproving suggestions. In terms of other versions of the game, it feels closest to the recently released Clue.

On the Harry Potter front, the game is really fun. More often than not, someone gets to turn a dial under the game board on their turn, which opens and closes doors and secret passages in Hogwarts. A very fun twist. The suspect and player cards adapt likenesses from the movies and are nicely done.

One aspect that can bog the game down, though, is the appearance of the Dark Mark, which exists on one side of one die, as well as within Hogwarts as the dials under the board are turned. When a Dark Mark appears, a card is drawn and players can lose House Points, and when a player has no more House Points, they lose the game. There are "Help Cards" that can prevent the loss of House Points, but there are just sooo many of them that no one ever seems to have the right one. In each game I've played, at least one player loses simply because of these unlucky die rolls and card draws, which is unfortunate. (Clue games are less fun when you've lost but still have to sit there to disprove suggestions!)

Longer story short, this is a neat and different version of Clue that should please Clue and Harry Potter fans alike. But thanks to the House Point aspect, it's the first version of Clue I've seen where so many people lose before the game is over!

It's fun to have the Harry Potter theme within the Clue game, and the house points aspect can be fun. However, the board is difficult to work with because the rooms are not distinguished by color or design. The board is a pen and ink drawing, like the Marauder's Map. While a clever idea, you have to read the room names, rather than glance at the room and know where you are. Playing at a table, I found I had to half rise from my seat every turn to read the room names. I wanted to use markers to color the game board somewhat, like a coloring book, to give the rooms a recognizable character. However the game board's shiny coating prevented the marker from absorbing so that solution was quickly abandoned.

Also, very disappointing that the weapons are just disks punched out of cardboard. In regular Clue, the charm of the miniature rope, knife, lead pipe, etc. are part of the fun. Who would want to play Monopoly, for instance, without the little hat, iron, racecar or dog? I know, it is hard to come up with a 3D version of a weapon when it is a potion or a spell, but somehow using little cardboard disks takes away from the fun of the game. It's all so two dimensional. Maybe instead they could have made the Suspects little 3D characters, so we'd have something interesting on the board. There is just no visual aspect of the board or pieces that make this game appealing. Great concept, disappointing artwork that gets in the way of the fun.

My 8 yr old son got this game for Christmas and we love it as a family. There are some creative changes from the original Clue game but still the same overall strategies. We definitely recommend this game! The only flaw is the house points that you get, they are easy to lose and when you run out you can ultimately lose the game. We decided to change that rule to losing a turn and not the game. Otherwise, a lot of fun!!

I don't think the makers of this game played it before putting it on the market. If they had, they would have seen it is almost impossible to not lose your house points (and lose the game) before you find out the answers. You are constantly losing 15 points at a time, starting with only 60 or 70 and no way to get more. You spend all your turns trying to get on the stars so you will get help against the curses. What happens is people lose their points very, very fast but still have to continue to show their cards to the opponeents for a very long time, which isn't fun for ANYONE. We had to alter the game to start with more points.

My sister bought me this game for Christmas and we had so much fun playing it (we are both Clue and HP fans). I really liked the idea of the board being the Marauder's Map until I started playing: Another reviewer mentioned the same thing - it was hard to tell where I was without getting half out of my seat and craning my neck to read; although with helpful playmates it's not such a big deal.

I was disappointed that the characters you play with were generic pieces and not specific to the game: the directions go out of their way to tell you that you are playing as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny or Neville and that each character corresponds to a color and yet they couldn't fashion tiny figurines to go with the game?! Another design flaw is that you can only have up to 5 players b/c one character is kidnapped.

This is where thinking outside the box comes in handy: I used colored dot stickers (very small) in each room in an obscure place that can quickly identify where I am. We use Harry Potter Legos for characters instead of the game pieces and sometimes we don't even bother with House Points (It depends on the mood we're in) - we'll just lose a turn if a Dark Mark appears. Lastly, if in need of a 6th player we make up a kidnapped victim (i.e. Cho Chang,Katie Bell,Cedric Diggory[:'( , etc)

I'm a stickler for design so these microissues really stick out for me but my friends and I still have a great time playing (with or without House Points) and we still love rescuing our fellow student from the CLUTCHES OF EVIL!!!!

We have played this game several times, and really like it!! It has all the fun of the original clue, plus the added spells and revolving secret passage ways.

The first time we played this game, we felt the same way as many of the other reviewers for this product. That the house points were rather meaningless, If we had followed the rules, all of us would have been out before we even had the opportunity to solve the game!! My husband wanted to throw that part of the game out completely, but my daughter loved the reading of the Dark Mark cards, and wanted to keep it.

So, the next time we played it, we started everyone with 100 house points (instead of 60, since there were three of us). And instead of one Help Card, we started with seven.

What a difference that made!! It was just enough of both to make that part of the game relevant. You still had the "harry Potter" part of this game to make it fun!

If anyone else has any other suggestions on how they changed the game, I'd love to hear them!

My 8 year old son got this game for Christmas and I must admit trying to play it while the buzz of Christmas is around was difficult. We tried again today and it was not nearly as complicated as I had thought. We both loved it! It takes Clue to the next level. It may be more difficult if you haven't played regular Clue. It is so cool how passages change and spells are collected to battle the dark events. My son would have loved it if the pawns were the Harry Potter characters instead of just coloured tokens and I agree with others that the house points are a little disappointing but you can always just give out more in the beginning. If the help cards had ones that added points that could cure the problem too. Overall, we can't wait to play it again and show his grandma too!

Love this game! Not the biggest fan of the house points though. We've had a few games where people run out of house points by the third turn so we just don't play with them anymore. The secret passageways changing add a great twist to this classic game.

IT WAS TOO CUTE... AND THEY LOVE IT...
HARRY POTTER FANS WOULD LOVE THIS GAME... WE PLAYED IT AND IT WAS HOURS OF FUN