We Build LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle - The Main Tower

The Main Tower, out now, is the second major set in this interlocking system, which also includes an assortment of ancillary buildings and classrooms sold separately, such as Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class (Set #76431), Hogwarts Castle Owlery (Set #76430), Hogwarts Castle: Flying Lessons (Set #76447), and Hogwarts Castle Boathouse (Set #76426).

But the Main Tower also works as an independent playset, especially if you're a fan of the first book and its movie adaptation, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Main Tower, like the Great Hall before it, opens in the back to reveal a number of rooms and dioramas that depict the movies' events. The bottom-most rooms, which you build first, are underground chambers that lead to the Sorcerer's Stone. From left to right, you have the Devil's Snare room, then the Flying Keys room, and then the massive Chess Set room.

Each room has interactive, movable elements. The Devil's Snare flips up or down from the room's ceiling via a cleverly disguised switch that's built into the rock facade. The Flying Keys rotate on a pedestal to create the impression of flight. And the giant pieces on the Chess Set are independent and movable.

You get LEGO minifigures for Harry, Hermione, and Ron, which is good – these rooms look their best when the trio is directly interacting with them. LEGO did not design this part of the castle with functionality and facility in mind; each room depicts a specific book scene, rather than functioning as a neutral roleplay area for new scenarios. In addition to the trio, the set contains nine more LEGO minifigures for a total of 12: Neville Longbottom, Dean Thomas, Marcus Flint, Percy Weasley, Ernie Macmillan, Lisa Turpin, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Kettleburn, and Nearly Headless Nick.

Directly above the Devil's Snare room is Fluffy, Hagrid's three-headed dog. He's lying on top of a trap door, which opens to reveal the underground chambers. In the back-right corner of Fluffy's room is a harp, which Professor Quirrel plays to put Fluffy to sleep. The harp's design is especially creative; two separate builds come together on hinges to create the instrument's signature shape. A door opens on the right-hand side, which leads into a narrow hallway, which in turn leads to a balcony/vista on the building's exterior.

Above Fluffy's room is the Gryffindor common room, decked out in its signature red and gold trimmings. It includes a bedroom with two beds, and to the right of it, two easy chairs and a fireplace. The floor is uneven, so that the living room appears sunken into a well in the floor, which gives the room a more intimate, cozy feeling.

All of these individual rooms are separate builds with separate instruction booklets, which means that if you want to build with a partner, or a friend, or as one half of a father-son team (as I did), you can easily merge and stack your seperate elements together after they're complete. The rooms are mounted on one another via a handful of connection points, which means they are easily separable from one another. If you need more room to pose scenes or individually play with the set's different components, this gives you easier access. Typically, sets of this complexity and magnitude are 18+ in age range. But the Main Tower and all the other Hogwarts Castle sets are 10+, which means they straddle the line between play and display a bit more evenly.

You build a roof over these elements, and then you build the actual Main Tower. It stacks five rooms. one on top of the other. The first three rooms contain the iconic Hogwarts moving staircases, designed by Rowena Ravenclaw herself. Two of them are mounted onto rotating platforms, allowing them to pivot. Portraits hang on the walls. On the third floor is a gargoyle, which guards the secret entryway to Professor Dumbledore's office.

The aforementioned office is on the fourth floor. It's covered with portraits of former Headmasters, and it's stuffed with the various magical knick knacks that make it so interesting to read about and watch on screen. To the right of Dumbledore's desk is the sword of Godric Gryffindor and the Pensieve. To the left of the desk is the Sorting Hat, complete with a mouth near its brim. Dumbledore's office is probably my favorite part of the set. It's furnished beautifully and it provides an excellent place for Harry and Dumbledore to have their evening lessons together.

Lastly, you build the massive spire that caps the tower, and inside the spire is the fifth and final room containing the Mirror of Erised. The mirror mounts on a rotating platform, which allows you to swap two different images. On one side is Harry with his mother and father. On the other side is Harry holding the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Main Tower's size is impressive; it's over two feet in height, from the bottom of the rock facade to the peak of the tower itself. And when you merge it with the Great Hall, it's even more impressive; the two sets combine to form a seamless exterior facade. The interiors, taken together, are even more impressive – it's a sensory overload to see all these iconic Hogwarts scenes in such a small amount of space.

There's not much more to say, other than this: I want to see more. The last time LEGO created a massive Hogwarts Castle, it felt a bit cobbled together after the fact. There was no "official" way to put it all together, and fans resorted to squinting at promotional materials to figure out the best way to assemble all the sets together.

But this go-around? It feels like there's a master plan; I strongly suspect there's a "complete" Hogwarts Castle somewhere in LEGO headquarters, whether in physical form or on a hard drive. The designers are not 'winging it' – they have a final result, however rough, that they're working towards.

It's going to take them years to get there. But if the LEGO designers maintain this level of detail and see it all the way through? It's going to be an unparalleled achievement. To be continued.

LEGO Hogwarts Castle: The Main Tower, Set #76454, retails for $259.99, and it is composed of 2135 pieces. It is available now.

Interested in more LEGO? Check out our roundup of the best Harry Potter sets. And stay tuned – we'll be publishing a completist's buying guide for the modular LEGO Hogwarts Castle later this week.

Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.