Since Hogwarts Legacy launched earlier this year, one of the biggest outstanding questions has been the upcoming Switch port. Hogwarts Legacy is a fairly ambitious, visually polished open-world game – it seemed near impossible it could work on the humble Switch. Well, Hogwarts finally lands on Nintendo’s handheld console today, and the results… aren’t terrible. Obviously, nowhere near as polished as on PC, Xbox Series X, or PS5, but not bad given the Switch’s limitations. YouTube channel SwitchUp posted a full breakdown of the Switch version of Hogwarts Legacy, which you can check out if you have around 15 minutes to spare, or you can scroll on down for our rundown of the salient points.
There were a lot of questions about how Hogwarts Legacy might be altered to work on Switch, and it turns out, things haven’t been changed that much. Developer Avalanche Software has attempted to port the full experience, with the same level design and layouts, to Switch. Resolution is now a lot lower, with fairly aggressive use of FSR to pump up the pixel count. Lighting and environmental detail has also been dialed down, but character models are still largely in line with the higher-end versions of the game, albeit without the fancy lighting and shaders. As for performance, the news is good – the game seems to hold a pretty solid 30fps, only dropping perhaps 2 or 3 frames in larger open-world areas.
Speaking of the open world, that’s probably the biggest drawback on the Switch. On Nintendo’s console, Hogwarts Legacy is far less seamless, with a number of loading screens that weren’t there before. Load times are also rather slow. Anyone who cut their teeth on, say, the PS5 version, are going to feel them.
So, is this the ideal way to play Hogwarts Legacy? No, of course not. That said, if you’ve got a kid who’s still Harry Potter crazy despite the controversy surrounding the series, and they only have a Switch, this looks like a perfectly playable option. Heck, it looks to run more smoothly than Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (sorry, I calls ’em like I sees ’em).
Hogwarts Legacy is available to play on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series /S, PS4, PS5, and, as of today, Nintendo Switch.
