If there is a better console to put a Harry Potter game on I've never heard of it. The Wii suits it perfectly, but....
One good and bad thing about this game is there are no loading screens except for when you first start it up. That might seem good, but because the Wii has to constantly stream data everywhere you go, framerate drops are evident. Despite the graphics and framerate the game offers hours on end of discoveries and exploration. There is tons to do, but be wary, the experienced Harry Potter veteran will make short work of this game, I beat it and uncovered 82% in around 10 hours. While there are various mini-games you could spend additonal time on, such as Wizard Chess, Gobstones, and Exploding Snaps which are fairly amusing. Once a majority of your environment is explored, there is hardly much there to entertain you.
And don't expect the core of the game to help you either, often you are sent from one point in Hogwarts to another on very repetitive "fetch" tasks.
Duels are rare (4-6 in the whole game), and when they do happen, they were a let down to me, the Wii remote is sensitive, but I feel the spells take to much time to initiate. Often when you try puting up a defensive block, your character stands idle for a good 1-1.5 seconds after you wave your arm to commence the spell. Duels more often then not boil down to waving your Wii remote repeatedly in directions you remember for one or two spells.
The spell where you thrust both the nunchuck and wiimote forward hits the enemy very rarely on higher levels, the developers honestly must not have test-ran this game very extensively. Because that spell arcs towards the enemy and flys over them 9/10 times. On low levels it works fine because only one beam is shot, but on higher levels, it gets more beams and makes a star shaped arc toward the enemy, if only it would hit them...
I played on normal, and never lost a duel, I don't even think you can lose in duels, and I rarely came out of one feeling I hit the enemy more than they hit me. Another gripe I have is the targeting system, what were they thinking? Often when you are trying to target one thing, your character keeps targeting another thing. Sometimes doing 180 turns almost purposely to ignore the object your trying to target. In duels, targeting is useless, you hit it to lock onto an enemy, do a couple spells, and then when you get hit and go to your knees, there not targeted anymore. And sometimes when you try to retarget that same enemy, Harry puts away his wand, because put away wand and target are the same button. So only if the game sees another object/person to target, it will unequip your wand...yes this does happen in dueling.
One thing I found amusing, was that your spells are upgraded when you find more discoveries, well, that is all and good, but when you spend hours finding discoveries, and only fight in a few minute long duels with your upgraded spells, whoop-di-do. And like the spell I mentioned above, sometimes upgrading the spell cripples it.
When they first announced this game, and some of its features, I imagined running loose around Hogwarts getting into duels with Slytherins and jinxing them and starting big fights. Unfortunately, the only area I found where you can use those spells you duel with, are in the Slytherin dungeons. That is all fine, but when you attack a Slytherin, you expect them to fight back...no, they just run away, and because the dungeon is so small, almost every time you try to fight someone, Snape catches you and puts you in detention. What is wrong with this picture? Did the developers seriously try to make this game only for the explorers and not the duelers? Apparently so, a huge let down for me. While I enjoyed exploring the game and its huge environement, that is only half of the what Harry Potter is all about to me. I want to be able to fight other students, or why give me 5 spells only allowed in dueling and then a few duels to fight with them in?
There was so much I feel they could have done, such as making a specified dueling arena, multiplayer perhaps? Put back in the collectable cards that were in the last games. Faster spell response to wiimote movements. Addition of Anti-aliasing would have helped out loads on the visual side. Removal of Hermione/Ron everywhere you go, they do more to block you then help you.
This game could have been great, and maybe is to some, but I considered it disappointing.