It’s no coincidence that Avalanche Software asked for more time after other platforms to bring the adventures of the Harry Potter universe to Nintendo’s hybrid console.

While it’s a cross-generation game (it’s long been available for PlayStation 5, Xbox series, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One), there was a legitimate fear of how it would fare on the Nintendo Switch, given that it’s an open-world game that’s relatively appealing and ambitious. And it’s not easy to translate that to a technically limited platform, and looking at the port, it’s fair to say that it’s really not as polished as it was on the current-gen consoles, but considering the age and specs of the platform, the result isn’t too shabby.

A video posted by SwitchUp shows that not much has changed. Avalanche Software has tried to use the same level designs and layouts as on the other platforms. The resolution is much lower and there’s a very aggressive use of FSR to scale it up. Lighting and environmental detail has been cut back, but the quality of the character models remains close to the other platforms (when Mortal Kombat 1 was released, this was far from true for the Switch port), though lighting and shaders are weaker here as well. Performance is also surprisingly good, with Hogwarts Legacy running at 30 FPS most of the time, but dropping to 27-28 FPS in the larger open world areas.

The open world is where the port is lacking, or at least not implemented in the same way as on other platforms. Hogwarts Legacy is not without transitions and we see a lot more loading screens. Loading times are also relatively long, so this will seem like a major setback after the PlayStation 5 version. Granted, the Nintendo Switch doesn’t have an NVMe SSD, as that hasn’t really caught on in 2017, so the internal storage can’t read/write as fast.

So the port looks good under the circumstances.

Source: WCCFTech