Hermione and Ronald, along with occasional other students follow Harry around for much of his travels, and there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for this other than getting in the player's way. The problem is that Devil May Cry featured analog stick control while this game is limited to the 8 directions of the d-pad, requiring the player to constantly wiggle Harry back and forth to travel down corridors that don't line up with those 8 directions. The developers took a Devil May Cry approach to Harry's controls, meaning that as long as the player continues holding the D-pad down during a transition between two camera angles, his direction of movement will carry over. Visually this looks dynamic, but the inconsistent location of Harry from shot to shot occasionally causes the player to get caught ping-ponging between two screens. The 3D characters scale and rotate in relation to the camera each time a new camera angle is reached. Foreground elements overlap Harry to better immerse the player in the scene, however there are plenty of locations where the art doesn't match up with the collisions, allowing Harry to walk into walls and on air. The 3D characters and objects are surprisingly low in polycount and detail, even with only a handful of characters onscreen at once. The top screen is usually used as an extension of the bottom screen, even though the characters can't go up there, which makes for a lot of pointless attic and roof shots. Ugly color blocking and general sloppiness can be seen in every shot. The 2D background images, however, are washed out, lacking in detail and heavily compressed. This should have made for a pretty gorgeous DS game. The game takes the classic Resident Evil approach with 3D polygonal characters displayed over 2D backgrounds. The in-game graphics are pretty disappointing, too. The game concludes with a battle between Harry and you-know-who, but everything before then is dull and slow going.
The story is dull enough though (and again, so chore-oriented), that most players will stop reading and start button mashing through all cinematics after the first few. The text in this game, particularly in the cinematics is almost entirely illegible, a blurry, fancy script with hard edges against the background. Most of the menus are functional but incredibly plain. The result is one character that appears to be constantly repeating himself. Confusingly, the twins (Ronald's older brothers) share the same portrait, which doesn't move in between lines of dialogue. Cinematics aren't helped by their poor visual presentation either, with soulless renders of high poly Potter characters flapping their lips in Muppet fashion and staring (and occasionally blinking) blankly whenever their text isn't scrolling by. Harry, fix these vases! Harry, find my package! Harry, grow these plants! It all feels incredibly narrow and the major plot points of the film and book get lost in the midst of all Potter's constant chores.
Harry spends the majority of his time in game doing menial chores over and over for his fellow students. Unfortunately, not much of this really comes across in the game. In his fifth year of wizardry education, Harry must balance school, his first girlfriend and the return of Lord Voldemort. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix throws everything and the kitchen sink into one DS game, but it's very hit and miss in terms of visuals, gameplay and enjoyability. Unfortunately, the team was so preoccupied with fleshing out Hogwarts and the other locations of the film that they lost sight of a focused, consistently enjoyable game. The Gryffindor gang's all back in their latest handheld outing, and this time EA has cooked up an (almost) 3D adventure that strays from the series' pixel art roots in an attempt to match the atmosphere and visual style of the console games.