Hogwarts Legacy, the open world RPG set within the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, lastly launched on Nintendo Switch yesterday after a really lengthy wait. As anticipated, the shortcomings of the Switch’s dated {hardware} led to developer Avalanche making some severe cutbacks to the visuals, efficiency and traversal of its open world. The Switch model, in keeping with a brand new evaluation, doesn’t even have a seamless open world.
The YouTube channel SwitchUp just lately offered a deep dive into the Nintendo Switch port of Hogwarts Legacy and detailed what gamers can count on from a technical and gameplay perspective. On the plus facet, the sport appears to run at a largely regular 30FPS and unsurprisingly runs a lot better in handheld mode. Unfortunately, the visuals have taken a knock because of the Switch’s {hardware} limitations, with some muddy textures and much much less spectacular lighting on show.
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Most troubling of all, although, is the scaled again open world traversal. SwitchUp notes that as a substitute of Hogwarts fortress and the encircling areas providing a seamless open world for gamers to discover, the areas are divided into sections with lengthy loading instances (round 30-50 seconds) whereas transitioning. Walking into Hogsmeade village, for instance, is seamless on different platforms nevertheless it’s accompanied by a loading display on the Switch model. This additionally applies to each store you enter and exit, which additionally has lengthy loading screens.
Mark Walker from SwitchUp notes:
“One of essentially the most interesting issues for me after I first performed the sport [on PC] was simply with the ability to look into outlets and stroll in via the door. That sadly is not the case. When you attain the door you’ll be greeted with the choice of loading in [via button prompt], then you definately’ll have to attend – you guessed it – 30 to 50 seconds to load that inside.”
This drawback extends to each village or small city you enter within the open world of Hogwarts Legacy, together with Hogwarts itself which has loading screens between sure areas of the fortress. If the Nintendo Switch wasn’t already displaying its age with the infamous port of Mortal Kombat 1, it’s actually on the forefront of conversations now.
In different information, Hogwarts Legacy was nowhere to be seen on the nominees record for The Game Awards this 12 months. After changing into one of the vital bought video games of 2023 together with nice important reception, followers have been left stumped as to why it didn’t get a point out on the upcoming awards present.
Hogwarts Legacy is now obtainable for Nintendo Switch. It’s additionally obtainable on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Source: SwitchUp
