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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another AWESOME game, July 21, 2002
Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't look at this and say "Oh no, another Trivial Pursuit game based on Harry Potter!"! This game goes way beyond Trivial Pursuit. True this game is based on the BOOK "Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets", and does have trivia questions, that is only a side point to this game.This game is more like a real life Quidditch match (much better than the card game was). The game includes 8 quidditch players (a beater, seeker, keeper, and a chaser). These pieces have WONDERFUL artwork on them and are made of hard plastic (makes them very durable). The seeker on the Gryffindor team looks like Harry Potter, and the seeker on the Slyterhin team looks like Draco Malfoy. You will also get 2 sets of trivia cards, one for each team. These cards are well designed and extremly durable (I dropped one in a glass of water, wiped it off and it was as good as new). Ths trivia cards have 5 questions on them: quaffle, keeper, bludger, beater, and snitch. (explained below) Other pieces include a dimand shaped dice, a small quaffle piece, one golden snitch piece , and two bludgers pieces. These pieces could be easily swwallowed, so you may not want to give this to little kids. Finally you have the two scoreboards (the only pieces that feel like cheap plastic) and the game board, designed like a Quidditch pitch (MORE EXCELLENT artwork). All the pieces are easy to store and there is NO ASSEMBLY required. As for gameplay, the goal is to move your pieces around the board, until someone catches the golden snitch (which scores 150 points and ends the game. I have been told you can lower that to 50 points and make the game MUCH MORE competitive). This game is meant for 2 players or teams and be quickly understood by children and adults. Every time you want to score 10 points using the quaffle, you have to maneuver your chaser to the quaffle ball, and then to a scoring space. if your opponent has the quaffle, you can steal it by going past the space next to them. After your chaser is on a scoring spce with the quaffl, you then answer a "quaffle" question (2 multiple choice answers). If you get it right, then your opponent can answer a "keeper" question (as long as the keeper is behind the goal line) to block the goal. The keeper questions are a little more diffuclt with 3 multiple choice answers. Whether you score or not, the quaffle returns to the middle of the board. If you want to bludger an opponent, you must move your beater to a bludger square. Then you answer a "bludger" question (medium difficulty with 3 multiple choice answers). An opponent can stop the attack by answering a "Beater" question (as long as their beater is on the field somewhere). The beater questions are difficult, and have 4 multiple choice answers. Any player hit with a bludger, gets taken off the field and must make their way back onto it using 10 squares set to the side. When a playing piece is bludgered, you can not use them until they are back on the field (for example, if your keeper is knocked off the field, your opponent can score without you having any chance to stop it). The golden snitch is moved by icons on the bottom of each card. Sometimes, you can move it 3 or 4 spaces, but it starts off the board. Once you get a card with a golden circle & a number of it, you can move it around the board. Other times a black dot appears on the card, forcing you to take the golden snitch off the board until another golden number appears. This makes catching the snitch quite a challenge (like it should be), so the game will take some time. Of course, the only piece that can catch the golden snitch is the seeker. These are the most difficult questions of the game, giving you NO multiple choice. As you can see, this can sound complicated and a waste of your money, but trust me, it's all worth it. After playing a couple of minutes (and having the actual game in front of you), it makes much more sense than reading this review. We have played this game several times already and it has been fun every time. Unlike the first trivia game, just becuase you know everything about Harry Potter doesn't necessarily mean you will win the game; I lost sevearl times to friends who know much less about Harry Potter than I do. There is a lot of strategy and a little luck involved, which will make the game exciting to everyone; including people who don't know a whole lot about the Harry Potter world. Does it teach you anything? Well, it will test your reading comprehension of "Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets", how well you know how to play Quidditch (but that's easy to learn), and your logic skills (as this game does require some strategy). The price may seem just a bit high, but it is well worth it for this quality of game. A lot of thought went into the design & gameplay of this game and it refelects that.
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