Three years after Pokémon Go captured the hearts of many, Niantic is back trying to replicate the hype with Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Like its predecessor, Wizards Unite is a location-based AR game. This time, however, all the elements are taken from the popular books authored J.K. Rowling.
Pokémon Go fans will find Wizards Unite quite familiar, but there are some differences here and there. The overworld and the maps have similarities to them because Niantic shares information between the games.
Pokestops and Portals have a direct counterpart to greenhouses and inns in Wizards Unite. Moreover, Niantic brings some common gameplay elements to the new Harry Potter AR game.
Those who have played Pokémon Go know for a fact that you must interact with greenhouses and inns. Inns produce spell energy that is used to interact with the world. It's the same concept as Pokeballs.
Without inns, players can't interact with Oddities, Fortresses, or Confoundables. They need the energy to use magic and overpower Confoundables, which is the core gameplay loop. Defeating these phenomena release Foundable Fragments, which are the equivalent of Pokemon that are added to a Registry (aka Pokedex).
You can't throw Pokeballs in Wizards Unite for sure, but you get to cast magic by tracing patterns on the screen. Your accuracy and speed in tracing will determine the strength of the spell.
Another similarity with Pokémon Go is the Fortresses and Portkeys. In Wizards Unite, Fortresses are like your gyms. You get to team up and battle enemies here. Portkeys, meanwhile, unlock the artifact using a golden key, which has unlimited uses or a silver key, which is a consumable. The keys are essentially incubators and Portkeys house portals that will take players to Foundables that they can't get in the wild. Players need to walk certain distances to unlock them.
Perhaps the biggest difference between games is the addition of Professions in Wizards Unite, which is activated once players reach level 6. They appear to have different roles in a group and specialize in different types of enemies.
There are three types of Professions available: the Aurors, the Magizoologists, and the Professors. In the simplest of terms, Aurors do the most damage. Magizoologist is the healers. Professors are a support class. Each profession has its skill tree and boosts to player stats. A great thing about Professions is that you can switch between them any time you wish, so that eliminates the difficulty of choosing which is which.
