LEGO 71043 Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle

I had the pleasure of building both this set and Diagon Alley, so my first thought: I love how COMPLETELY DIFFERENT they are. Both are amazing and intricate, but Diagon Alley is actually something you can play with (minifigure scale), and Hogwart set is perfect for display and wonderful for architecture freaks that like tiny bricks, wonderful details and staying true to the source material. Speaking of which...SOURCE MATERIAL. Of course, there are some things that don't stay true to the book (prefects bathroom right next to Moaning Myrtle? I don't think so), but I guess some things had to go differently;) I love how the authors managed to put the little nods to the different parts of the story through the castle - we get the Philosopher's Stone with mirror of ... MoreI had the pleasure of building both this set and Diagon Alley, so my first thought: I love how COMPLETELY DIFFERENT they are. Both are amazing and intricate, but Diagon Alley is actually something you can play with (minifigure scale), and Hogwart set is perfect for display and wonderful for architecture freaks that like tiny bricks, wonderful details and staying true to the source material. Speaking of which...SOURCE MATERIAL. Of course, there are some things that don't stay true to the book (prefects bathroom right next to Moaning Myrtle? I don't think so), but I guess some things had to go differently;) I love how the authors managed to put the little nods to the different parts of the story through the castle - we get the Philosopher's Stone with mirror of Erised, Chamber of Secrets, THE DRAGON, Umbridge's PINK ROOM...it's nice and I enjoyed building it, pity we didn't really get the dormitories. I mean, we have the dorm of Gryffindors, but truly - it's worse than not having it, sort of squeezed in at the last moment.DETAIL. The whole thing is impressive - building the rocks themselves takes probably an hour, the windows are made of a couple tiny tinted see-through bricks EACH...it's really a masterpiece and as I love all the architecture sets, I really enjoyed building something bigger from all these tiny parts. Not great if you hate tedious building, it can take days to make, but it's worth it! Also, the whole thing is rather sturdy, so that's a plus, I'm not scared that I will accidentally make it fall apart. That's what also makes it heavy - a lot of tiny pieces and a lot of construction inside.THE MINIFIGURES. I absolutely LOVE the founders. It's nice to have a collectors figure made especially for the set, but that's not the only reason - they are simply wonderfully made, and as we have seen a lot of depictions of other characters (10 minifigures of Harry through different stages, anyone? Remember that Snape from 15 years ago with green skin?:)), it's nice to see different characters that didn't show up earlier.THE MICROFIGURES, on the other hand, ARE A DISASTER. Sorry, they are just so unnecessary. I don't see the point. They are rather ugly and to me they spoil the overall image - the intricate build and these...things xd. I didn't even open the bags - it's not really a set made for playing, so I don't see why we should need the characters in this scale.ADDITIONAL BUILDS. I love the Whomping Willow along with the Ford England, it's a nice touch, same thing goes for Hagrid's Hut, it's really well made considering the scale, but THE BOATS. They aren't half as good. They are too big in comparison with the building and the "microfigures", I don't see why we should have 5 of them (I know there were a lot of them in the story, it just seems to me that they could skip the boats in general) and as the whole building process starts with them it just sets this weird frustrated mood to me :PTHE STICKERS. Oh dear. We all hate stickers. There isn't as many as in the Diagon Alley set, but still - the abundance of stickers is a nightmare of the HP sets. And in such a big and expensive collectors set these things should be printed, even for a slightly higher price. The whole thing would look better and so on. I would gladly get rid of the microfigures and the boats and get printed bricks instead. Especially considering that many of these could be used in the other HP sets as well, for example the square tiles with the houses (for the founders' minifigures).Overall - I like it very much, I loved building this set. There are just a couple of tiny things that could be better.Also, If you like playing with your sets in minifigure scale - it's better to get the Diagon Alley or just Hogwarts in separate sets (the astronomy tower and so on) - 4 of them for the same price and maybe your castle wouldn't be as true to the book, but at least there is some sort of the story going on instead of a (gorgeous) model.

I bought this set over a year ago with bonus money for 20 years of service, and had been waiting for a good moment to start building it. I got a relatively easy form of covid and decided to do it during quarantine once I could get out of bed, slooooowly. It took me ages, and I loved it. I am the weird kind that cannot build one bag after the next. I need to sort ALL the bricks first, then only I can start building. Double feeling: being rid of the growing pile of plastic, and the immensity of the task ahead is visible. Double plus, for me,I loved the idea of having a model Hogwarts. I love it that there's scenes from nearly all the books, and there's also trees and the cliff on which the castle stands in the films. The four Founder minifigs are amazing. The way ... MoreI bought this set over a year ago with bonus money for 20 years of service, and had been waiting for a good moment to start building it. I got a relatively easy form of covid and decided to do it during quarantine once I could get out of bed, slooooowly. It took me ages, and I loved it. I am the weird kind that cannot build one bag after the next. I need to sort ALL the bricks first, then only I can start building. Double feeling: being rid of the growing pile of plastic, and the immensity of the task ahead is visible. Double plus, for me,I loved the idea of having a model Hogwarts. I love it that there's scenes from nearly all the books, and there's also trees and the cliff on which the castle stands in the films. The four Founder minifigs are amazing. The way the stained glass windows are made is really clever, along with many other features. I learnt a lot about building with this set.However, I am wondering why the end of the Great Hall windows are not visible from the inside, and I couldn't figure it out myself. The other down is aesthetic: why in the name of Merlin's most baggy pants are the stairs in the highest tower white?? Isn't this railing piece available in that sand/tan colour? It really attracts the eye and you lose the awesome holistic view this set provides.Apart from that, I think this set is just brilliant. Thank you Lego for this one!One last down which is particular to my set: one piece was missing, and that was not one for which there are usually extra ones. It was a 1x8 dark grey plate n°4210998, meaning my last tower roof is not finished... I will write to customer service, because it's a bit of a shame that such a big set (or any set, as it is) gets unfinished because of one piece missing. I cannot replace it with another one I have because it's visible from the outside and it would be a shame if there was a mismatch in colours since the rest of the castle looks like new though it is over a millennium old.

I felt compelled to write this review before September 1st when the set becomes available to other buyers. PLEASE do not buy from these people selling it for over $400 on Ebay and Amazon, don't do that to yourself. I specifically joined the VIP to access the early buy date, on the 15th of August, and have had ample time to reflect on what I think about this. I gathered opinions from my family members and friends, young and old, and we all have a general consensus on the matter, and I'm guessing Lego didn't even dive into that much research when they created this, lol. As an avid Harry Potter fan, I was ecstatic that they are resurrecting another Hogwarts attempt with Legos. I have grown up with both being quite meaningful to me. The castle is labeled as 6000+ ... MoreI felt compelled to write this review before September 1st when the set becomes available to other buyers. PLEASE do not buy from these people selling it for over $400 on Ebay and Amazon, don't do that to yourself. I specifically joined the VIP to access the early buy date, on the 15th of August, and have had ample time to reflect on what I think about this. I gathered opinions from my family members and friends, young and old, and we all have a general consensus on the matter, and I'm guessing Lego didn't even dive into that much research when they created this, lol. As an avid Harry Potter fan, I was ecstatic that they are resurrecting another Hogwarts attempt with Legos. I have grown up with both being quite meaningful to me. The castle is labeled as 6000+ pieces, so I assumed it would be ideal, but I definitely jumped to the wrong conclusions and did it far too quickly. I have an engineering and business background and building Legos has always been pleasurable, so let me first state that the building experience was the only entertaining part, but the way Lego has approached this particular set was not up to my personal business standards. The first thing I failed to notice was the "micro" figures. I have actually not seen this before, and therefore wasn't even prepared to extract what I probably missed at a glance. I always assumed Lego figures were the same size, other than the large constructable replicas. I may attach some photos later, but one "mini" figure is about as big, if not bigger, than all the rooms in this castle. My ultimate point being this, the castle is NOT for playing, it is strictly for building and then setting aside to stare at occasionally. It offers little to no imaginary experience for children, or playful adults, to enjoy their new masterpiece or recreate Harry Potter scenes. Lego sets used to focus more on allowing a stage for imaginary concoctions but now they focus on being models to build and then collect dust. This tactic has created younger children so adverse to anything else that they refuse to even try to build their own things without instructions. For $400usd, I think this is as deceiving as it gets. The microfigures are comparable to a grain of rice with far less distinctions than the regular sized actionable characters you probably thought you would get. The rooms, for the most part, are so minuscule that it eliminates the ability to even move about within them. Upon assembling parts of the castle, you try and step into the mindset of the developers and what they were thinking when they did this. Was the marketing goal to be aesthetically pleasing or was it to build useless bases to simply cover them with substantially sized pieces that render the bottom construction useless, therefore just adding to building time and complication so it seems you got your money's worth? Who knows? However, here's the key takeaways. It is smaller than expected with rooms too small to create any sort of imaginable play experience with. There are many parts you build which attribute nothing to the structure and simply end up being covered (which Lego should have eliminated and given us BIGGER USEABLE structures instead of more intricate little pieces). The microfigures are A JOKE, and the 4 regular sized figures are the house leaders, which I'm going to venture a guess that the statistics ratio of the majority does not really care about. The price is too high for what you get. The good things are that it's still Harry Potter, it is nice to look at even though the size renders it useless, and because it is a Lego set, it still holds precedence by being fun to build. Without rambling on, the cons outweigh the pros by marginal amounts, and with that being said, this thing is not worth the $400 you pay for it. It's a one time deal and after it's built, it's BORING. If you have already bought this, I sure hope you didn't pay over $400. I suggest buying the regular sized MINIfigures on Ebay, they have a 20 person set for about $15. I personally would return this in a heartbeat if we didn't open it. I would go for the full sized sets (the separate ones) and just compile my own castle. If you lack imagination and just want something to sit on your shelf to admire, buy it. Just for the record, if Lego had charged double the price, yet made this thing to par, I would've bought 2. Keep hope for the next one. Good luck