On par with the first Lego Harry Potter...not much has changed.
Not much has changed here. It's your basic lego game, and if you've played any of them than you know what to expect. This is a great franchise(with the exception of Indy 2).
The game picks up where the first one left off and follows the movies really well. The game doesn't really follow the books, so if you're a Potter fan who wants it closer to the books you won't get that here.
The only real changes to this second outing of Harry Potter lego is that the bonus level builder is gone. YAY!!! Having to go through tedious level building to get a 100% is rediculous and boring. Especially if you can't share your end product online. So I'm glad they didn't do that here.
Unlike the first Potter game there were no glitches telling you that gold bricks exist in a place that doesn't...there's another plus.
You now don't have to keep changing your spells all the time to get the desired effect. Only occasionally do you have to do it. There are also so nifty new spells/abilities for the characters that keep it fresh and doesn't make it feel like a complete retread.
The added a new dueling spell system when fighting bossed which is really cool. But as soon as you learn it you'll probably never loss a duel. The downside to this new dueling spell system is that they used it for every boss fight. This kind of sucked because it took away any variety when fighting bosses. A few boss battles would have been okay, but it was litteraly for every single boss battle. It makes the boss battles not felt thought out and just lazy.
Another thing that bothered me is having to constantly travel from Daigon Alley, through town, through the train station, through the other train platform, then through two more dirty roads to get back to the school everytime you wanted to go to Daigon Alley to buy characters, or spells, or red bricks. It was too tedious.
They also made Hogwarts smaller. Not in overall size, but it's not as big of an area to explore. There are less rooms to go into than the first game. This does make Hogwarts less confusing to explore but it also makes it seem less grand.
To sum it up, this is another great entry into the Lego franchise. If you're a fan of Harry Potter than this is a must play. A little better than the previous Potter entry, but over all not much changed.