Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions Review (Xbox Series X|S)

You know, if there's one thing that Hogwarts Legacy didn't do very well a couple of years ago, it was the total lack of playable Quidditch. The reason behind that was seemingly because Warner Bros. and developer Unbroken Studios were working on Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions in the background, and although it appears to have taken longer than expected to finally release, the final product is much better than we anticipated it would be.

What you're getting here is a £25 / $30 standalone Quidditch experience complete with an Exhibition mode, various tournaments to complete either solo or with friends online, and 3v3 multiplayer that plays very much like a game of EA FC Clubs. You can make your own team of characters, unlock real people from the movies, add custom emotes and clothing items... and the best part is that there are no microtransactions whatsoever.

Of course, the gameplay is what really matters here though, and that's where Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions shines the most. You learn how to play through a lengthy and well-explained tutorial in which you're taken through the main controls for playing as a Chaser, Beater, Keeper and Seeker.

All four roles are very different to each other - the Keeper, for example, is focused on making saves by strafing around the three hoops and paying close attention to where the opposition is aiming, while the Beater is tasked with using Bludgers to attack opponents and either dispossess them, stun them, or knock them off their brooms entirely. The Chaser is all about passing, scoring and tackling, and the Seeker has the sole focus of catching the Golden Snitch for 30 points (a much more balanced alternative to the 150 points in the books and movies).

Unbroken Studios has done a great job making each of these roles feel unique and important to play, and when you're competing solo against the AI, you can switch between all of them at will. Remember Rock Band Blitz on the Xbox 360 where you could swap instruments constantly in the middle of a song? That's what Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions feels like... you can save as the Keeper, and then take control of multiple Chasers to try and score a goal, and then switch to the Seeker in an attempt to catch the Snitch. It's really seamless!

What you will find here though is that gameplay is not pick-up-and-play by any means. We're going to see a lot of Harry Potter fans who are enticed by Quidditch Champions but won't have the patience to learn it - even after the tutorial, which could take you about an hour altogether, it still doesn't begin to click until you've played another handful of games at least. Each position has a lot of controls to master, and even keeping track of the action can be really difficult... there's always a lot going on at once, so don't be surprised if you end up losing sight of the ball half the time! The more you play though, the more everything starts to gel.

We'll admit we fully anticipated the online 3v3 multiplayer to be a mess because of this, and it certainly can feel unbalanced at times, but it's still good fun. Instead of the Rock Band Blitz-style gameplay structure that you get when playing solo, 3v3 tasks you with playing as a Chaser and one other position of your choosing. This keeps things a little bit more simple, but it does also mean that if you get stuck with someone who doesn't know how to play Keeper, the other team is going to constantly score with ease. Similarly, if you're paired with an unskilled Seeker, you might find yourself losing the lead eventually even if you're scoring loads of goals.

In general though, 3v3 multiplayer is good casual fun, and you can also play the Campaign and Exhibition matches online with friends if you want to. Speaking of the campaign, this is probably what will let the package down for most players - it's really more of a tournament mode than an actual campaign. You start with the Hogwarts House Cup before competing against other schools and then eventually heading to the World Cup, and the only real resemblance of a campaign is some fleeting cutscenes and occasional voice messages from opposing teams. It's pretty enjoyable to play still, and there are multiple difficulty options at your disposal, but don't expect that much longevity from what's on offer here.

That's probably the biggest issue with Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions. How many people are going to be playing this in a few months' time? The campaign is fine, the multiplayer is fun, but there's not really much here that suggests it'll generate a sizable long-term fanbase. It's all focused around the quality of the gameplay, which fortunately has surpassed our expectations by a long way, but is that going to be enough to entice the masses in 2025 and beyond?

We're not going to dwell on the future too much right now though. What we've got here is an excellent take on the game of Quidditch for a low-ish price complete with zero microtransactions. There's a charm to this game that's as magical as the Harry Potter franchise has made people feel for the past 25+ years, and even though it's likely not going to entice everyone, we've come away with the 'one more game' feeling that only a really good sports game can drag out of us.