Hogwarts Legacy Looks Surprisingly Good On Xbox One

The last-gen version is out now

by Ben Kerry Fri 5th May 2023

After a few months of waiting, Hogwarts Legacy has finally arrived on last-gen consoles and it looks like the wait may have been worth it for Xbox One players after all.

As showcased by The Xbox Tester up above, Hogwarts Legacy on last-gen consoles actually looks pretty good. Bare in mind that this video shows the game being played on the original Xbox One console from way back in 2013.

There are clear cutbacks to the graphics and to NPC density here, but given the substantial delay, we feared for this port to be quite honest. In fact, the load times seem to be the most egregious problem that remains, thanks to the Xbox One's internal hard drive as opposed to the SSDs found in Xbox Series X|S.

If the full game holds up as well as we see in this clip, Hogwarts Legacy looks well worth a play for those still using these older consoles. We absolutely loved our time exploring the Wizarding World back in February and it's great to see that Xbox One players should now be able to enjoy it just as much!

What do you think to these results? Surprised? Leave your thoughts down below.

Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin' in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he's not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that's far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.

1
Lup
Fri 5th May 2023

Here's hoping now that is out on One, it gets a discount soon.

2
SplooshDmg
Fri 5th May 2023

Load times seem pretty rough, but all in all, I'm kinda surprised this looks as good as it does. Props to them for taking the extra time to ship it in what appears to be good shape for the respective platform. I'm beyond curious how they manage the Switch version. It seems like it would truly have to be a Witcher 3 kind of sorcery.

3
Ralizah
Fri 5th May 2023

The real final boss will be the Switch port.

4
Widey85
Fri 5th May 2023

It's amazing that they've managed to get this going on a base Xbox One - yes the load times are a little longer and the population density is lowered, but it's a staggering achievement

5
Romans12
Fri 5th May 2023

I still have to get this for the Series X. Heard really good things about the game. Once there's a price drop or sale.

6
JONOFTHEJONS
Fri 5th May 2023

@Ralizah I’m really excited to play it. 😉

7
SplooshDmg
Fri 5th May 2023

@Ralizah If they can pull it off, then holy crap, what a performance. How this studio went from Disney Infinity and Cars 3 to this pretty spectacular open world game across so many platforms is honestly extremely impressive. They have really, really shown up some considerably more prestigious industry veterans with this game.

8
anoyonmus
Fri 5th May 2023

@Ralizah or they will cancel it like Midnight Suns

9
Ralizah
Fri 5th May 2023

@anoyonmus Difference is that the Switch port has a concrete launch date target, not just a vague assurance that it's totally, definitely coming. Also, they've already demonstrated competence with downscaling the experience to the last gen home consoles.

@SplooshDmg Definitely. The level of care they're showing for the different platforms in terms of delivering a strong, optimized product is impressive.

Especially considering the PS4/Xbone builds are unlikely to pull a ton of sales, with most core gamer types having moved on to the newer devices by now.

If Hogwarts Legacy is decent on Switch, I might buy it just out of a show of support. It's the sort of care I want to see with more ports.

10
themightyant
Fri 5th May 2023

SplooshDmg wrote:

Load times seem pretty rough

I think we've just been spoiled for so long with next gen speeds and forgotten that many AAA games had over 1 minute load times last gen, some even got upto 2 minutes.
Still my favourite feature of next-gen!

11
stefan771
Fri 5th May 2023

I'm surprised by how good it looks and runs. Hell, i'm still surprised it launched at all.

12
SplooshDmg
Sat 6th May 2023

@themightyant Yup, it's true. I remember being mind blown when I fired up Fallout New Vegas on an XSX. My first reaction was, "I JUST WALKED OUT THE DOOR AND IT WAS LIKE.. INSTANT!" 🤯

13
themightyant
Sat 6th May 2023

@SplooshDmg The biggest one for me was Skyrim Anniversary on XSX. Skyrim on 360 had a bug where loading times got longer as your save got bigger and load times for entering a door (which could happen multiple times in quick succession) were between 1 and 2 minutes on my 150+ hour save.

Playing it on XSX was a series of revelations.
1) It picked up my decade old save instantly
2) Load times were almost instant
3) It was a buttery smooth 60fps as opposed to a very unstable 15-29fps... not sure it ever hit 30fps unless you stared at the sky on 360.

Literally a game changer.

EDIT: Might have to check out New Vegas. Loved that game. I wonder if Fallout, or Elder Scrolls would be one of "The Collections" (plural) Phil Spencer was talking about. I'd take HD upgrades of these over Gears every day of the week.

14
SyCoREAPER
Sat 6th May 2023

After recent AAA controversies (and a recent Switch Port cancelation for another game), you Switch commenter's shouldn't hold your breath.

That it runs this well on Xbox is a small miracle in its own right. I have a 13th Gen i7, 4090 and 64GB of RAM and it still wasn't a perfect experience.

However, in its own right this game was a ton of fun. No loot boxes, subscriptions, authentication servers, good old offline fun and in a massive world. I wish they'd reconsider and add DLC, not as in more game world, just more missions and extend/continue the story.

15
SplooshDmg
Sat 6th May 2023

@themightyant Yeah, I would absolutely love an updated version of Morrowind. Heck, I'd like to see another Bethesda team go back and remake games like Arena/Daggerfall/FO1/FO2 into the modern Bethesda style. I kinda figured there's a solid blueprint there already, so it doesn't seem like Todd or other key personel would really need to be super involved.

HOLY MACKERAL! I just pulled Ganyu! WOOOOO!

16
themightyant
Sat 6th May 2023

@SplooshDmg nice, she’s boss. Congrats! Her arrows are like mini nukes.

A Melt setup with Ganyu, Bennett, Xiangling and a shielder works well. As does Ganyu + pyro + Nahida (if you have her) - The Dendro keeps them burning so you can keep applying melt, it’s a bit broken.

17
SplooshDmg
Sat 6th May 2023

@themightyant The melt build is exactly what I'm going to do. I don't have the geo daddy, so I'll probably have to substitute with Diona, but my Bennett and Xiangling are both 90 already. Ugh. I'm just now getting my Ayaka team up to snuff, and now I have to start building a Ganyu team. This game, man... It knows how to keep you coming back.

18
themightyant
Sat 6th May 2023

@SplooshDmg that it does. 2.5 years I’ve been playing, though this week was the first I haven’t done my dailies in a while. If anything can shake the addiction it’s Zelda!
Diona is great BTW. Enjoy

19
Maaarge
Tue 9th May 2023

Hello,

Looking for some help. I’m having the opposite experience with graphics. It looks absolutely terrible, especially the hair and clothing. The hair is pixelated on the characters and animals, the clothing is blocky and angular. I tried it with the default display settings.

Any advice?

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