Year: 2003
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST)
Composer(s): Jeremy Soule
Number of tracks: 16

★★★★★

Broom broom broom

A good two months ago, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions was finally released, a game that showcases the wizarding sport in a worthy manner and that was definitely not removed from Hogwarts Legacy in order to rake in some extra cash. Never before could we chase quaffles and bludgers on our broom, dodge the snitch and lead our team to victory in a very balanced scoring system.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup (2003)

You don't have to be a Potterhead to spot a few mistakes in these sentences. For all those who didn't notice anything wrong in the first paragraph, I'll go through the mistakes from back to front:

• Error 1: Many fans have always criticized the fact that a game ends when the snitch is caught, giving the Seeker's team 150 points, because this means that the actual match only becomes relevant when there is a massive lead.
• Error 2 was also answered directly in the previous correction, because of course we have to dodge the black Bludgers and hunt the Snitch as Seekers and the Quaffle as Hunters.
• Error 3: The Quidditch game was almost certainly removed from Hogwarts Legacy in order to extract some money from the franchise-hungry - what a surprise!

And the last and probably most important error is the claim that Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is the first of its kind. In fact, we were able to indulge in broom sports over twenty years ago, in a small, child-friendly game called Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup. Fortunately, it ended up under my Christmas tree and gave me countless hours of fun, which in retrospect was probably due to my tender age of eleven.

The game was of course not a hardcore simulation, but an arcade flying spectacle that probably suffered the most from the weak AI and repetitive gameplay. However, as a child you can easily spend hours doing something with very little variation, as long as said something was accompanied by enough flashing lights and loud noises, so naturally I didn't really care. And in terms of content, Quidditch World Cup was a real slam dunk:

For example, the tutorial included leading one of the four Hogwarts Houses to the Quidditch Cup, rather than just playing as Harry, as in the movie adaptations. Once we succeeded, we moved on to the eponymous World Cup, where teams from nine nations competed for the title. A total of 13 teams with 10 playing fields, consisting of well-known and less well-known characters from the original book and a bunch of collectables, which, as was usual at the time, were of course already in the game and didn't have to be purchased separately ... good times.

Overall, Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup was a solid game, but with a metascore of 68 it is only two points ahead of the recently released Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions . Is that justified? I have no idea. But since there is a bigger difference in the user score (7.1 to 5.4), I assume that many share my opinion and look back a little (too) nostalgically on what it was like to play the game back then.

Let's leave it at that in terms of gameplay and turn our attention to the soundtrack. Like all the scores for the first five Potter-games, it was composed by Jeremy Soule and comprises 15 tracks, or 16 if we include the bonus track. And we should, because Quidditch World Cup (Trailer)[Bonus] is not just the theme that greets us in the main menu, but actually Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem (Dies Irae) - and I wasn't prepared for that.

Anyone who knows the piece will be aware of the force of the music. I have no idea whether it was Soule's intention to emulate the Champions League with a classical work or whether some EA executive wanted the song to be included. In any case, the track almost killed me at the time, especially as I was expecting something along the lines of the other Potter-games. But I was hooked, so to speak. This orchestral power reinforced my childhood sports fantasy, and Quidditch was no longer just a fun sport, it was a statement! It's fascinating what music can do.

The 'rest' of the score is a little more conventional, even if Soule also breaks with tradition here. It should be noted that nine of the pieces depict real-life nations such as Australia, France, Germany or Spain. Consequently, he does what the Civilizations-series, for example, has mastered and tries to weave stereotypical sounds into the individual themes. This leads to what are probably the most interchangeable creations of the composer, who usually shines in the fantasy genre.

Meanwhile, the tracks aren't bad, but in my opinion they don't reach the usual class that we are used to from Soule's other works. Spanish Anthem sounds like something out of Super Mario , USA Anthem USA Anthem is a parade and Japanese Anthem also gets full points in the Kung Fu Panda-lookalike contest.

Moving on from the country themes, there are also pieces such as The Magic Anthem, which is most reminiscent of the previous Harry Potter-games. Other songs such as The Magic Match on the other hand, seem to be modeled on Gustav Holst's Die Planeten, Op. 32 ("The Planets"), especially Mars, der Kriegsbringer ("Mars, the Bringer of War"). In view of the trailer theme, the question arises as to whether Soule drew particular inspiration from classical music for this album?

With Field Anthem and Field Match, the historical excursion to the origins of broom sports, called “Queerditch”, a little medieval flair is added to the score, and with The Challenges the happy-go-lucky track Slug Chase / Broom Lesson from the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets-OST has snuck in. My conclusion about the score: you can give it a shot, but you don't really have to.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	The Magic Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
02	The Magic Match	Jeremy Soule	4
03	Australian Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
04	Bulgarian Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
05	English Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
06	French Anthem	Jeremy Soule	3
07	German Anthem	Jeremy Soule	3
08	Japanese Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
09	Nordic Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
10	Spanish Anthem	Jeremy Soule	4
11	USA Anthem	Jeremy Soule	3
12	International Match	Jeremy Soule	4
13	Field Anthem	Jeremy Soule	3
14	Field Match	Jeremy Soule	3
15	The Challenges*	Jeremy Soule	4
16	Quidditch World Cup (Trailer)[Bonus] / Dies Irae	Giuseppe Verdi	5

*Track as Slug Chase / Broom Lesson included in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets-soundtrack