Almost two months after Hogwarts Legacy was released for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series and we tested it extensively and found it to be good, the bestseller has now made it to the last generation of consoles. Since Friday, May 5th, you can also buy the game for ten-year-old devices from Sony and Microsoft. With hardware requirements that are not exactly low, thunderstorms of effects and graphically great landscapes, the Warner Bros game is already bringing current consoles and PCs to their knees from time to time: frame rate drops and graphic errors are not a regular occurrence, but they are definitely present. It is clear that weaker hardware means fewer features. But how severe the cuts would be was not clear until the very end – especially since the publisher did not send any versions of the last-gen version in advance.
The good news: For most players, the quality of the Hogwarts port seems to be completely sufficient and we were also able to convince ourselves (on the PS4) of the existing quality of the old-gen version. The reduced graphics quality is of course an expected evil that we have to put up with. However, the new version for the old consoles is not perfect apart from that. Unfortunately, some of the cutbacks go beyond the graphics.
Significantly less pretty
It’s not just that the textures are washed out, there are fewer objects in the world, and the frame rate drops off for distant objects, as does the pixel density. In addition, an effect causes frowns, with which, for example, Jedi: Survivor has to struggle.
Hair and shadows flicker at all times because the game is dialing down the resolution to maintain the framerate. This effect is particularly noticeable on 4K screens, but the flickering disappears somewhat, albeit not entirely, on devices with lower resolutions.
Of course, that’s tolerable, but there are other quirks that get on your nerves as the score progresses. If you unlock the broom, reloading textures and regular jerking in the air show where the limits of the now ten-year-old generation of consoles lie.
Since we rarely have to fly precisely in the air, short frame stops don’t significantly affect the gameplay. The amazing view we have for the release of Hogwarts Legacy (buy now €58.76 / €53.99 ) on newer hardware, but we still miss it.
Small stutters
If we land in a horde of opponents with the broom and all mobs draw attention to us at the same time, frame rate drops occur, as in other places. However, we did not notice any stuttering in the fights that affected gameplay – so PS4/Xbox One owners need not have any concerns about playability.
The biggest shortcoming is something else: the loading times, which are the most obvious indication of the weaknesses of the aging hardware. Even with the first release of Hogwarts Legacy, PC gamers in particular without a built-in SSD noticed that there were often loading times in the castle when trying to walk through a door.
The next room loads and a small loading circle appears under the door handle, which can take a second or two before it gives way. There are also short waiting times on PS5 and Xbox Series, but they are marginal.
Wait and drink lots of tea
In the version for the older consoles, however, the loading times are a good five to seven seconds. This doesn’t happen with every door, but often enough that it gets on your nerves when you just want to walk from A to B for a short time.
Fast travel within the castle also only helps to a limited extent. We’ve regularly measured loading screen times of 45 to 60 seconds when trying to “fast” travel within the castle. Outside the magic walls, the loading times are only slightly shorter, but exploring takes so much time that the long waiting times in between are no longer so important.
Nevertheless, you should be patient, because opening the map or the menu can take a few seconds depending on the load on the processor. There are also new loading times in places where there were none before.
Within Hogwarts there are now several separate areas and we also have to accept waiting times on the way in and out of the castle. Along with this, we are now also more restricted when using the broom, since we can no longer simply fly into the inner courtyards and land there.
Old version, new problems
Finally, we would like to point out a few new bugs that we didn’t notice in the previous versions for PC and current consoles. We once encountered a bug in the Merlin puzzles scattered around the world where we had to solve one of the puzzles multiple times because it reset itself.
We had an indicator bug during a quest that caused the quest indicators to disappear. And by slowly reloading the textures and environmental objects in the world, we were occasionally able to broom under the ground.
None of these bugs are in any way so dramatic as to render Hogwarts Legacy unplayable, however, these flaws are largely due to the limited last-gen hardware, so don’t expect them to be patched in the future.
If you’ve been waiting for the PS4 or Xbox One version of Hogwarts Legacy, you probably don’t have the option to choose one of the current-gen versions or the PC version instead. Therefore, we recommend at this point to rely on a variant for the current generation of consoles or the PC.
So if you can live with the mostly expected shortcomings and problems, you get a port of the magical adventure that is comparatively solid.
And on top of that, none of the consoles we tried Hogwarts Legacy on went into jet engine mode – the fans remained virtually silent. We collected our impressions on a standard PS4. On this particularly old generation of consoles, Hogwarts Legacy runs at 900p and – as mentioned – a relatively constant 30 frames per second. As a guideline, the PS4 Pro achieves 1080p, i.e. Full HD.
