- RPG
- Action
- Adventure
- Open World
Hogwarts Legacy
Avalanche Software · Warner Bros. Games
Released: Feb 10, 2023
Wait
Current Recommendation
Best value: $10 or less (reviewers report $6-7 sales)
- Updated:
- Sep 30, 2026
- Tested on:
- Not stated in source video
10-Second Reality Check
Biggest win
The hand-built castle and the world around it carry the game: the most-upvoted positive reviews, at 155h and 34h played, single out the castle, the animated paintings and the music as the part that holds up.
Biggest issue
Everything outside the castle is thin — the ranked negative reviews describe a collecting simulator of fetch quests, a lifeless open world and a story carried by the licence rather than the writing.
Value
Worth seeing at a deep discount and not at the USD 59.99 list price: the world is the product, and the captured profile needs a 67% render scale with DLSS just to sit in the 80-144 FPS range.
Reality Matrix
Overall: Wait
Performance
82-109 FPS in the combat sequence and 143-144 FPS in menus on the captured machine, but only at a 1281x721 render scale with DLSS Quality and every ray-tracing option off. The GPU stayed at 38-68% load while the CPU held 80-86°C, so on this machine the limiter is not the graphics card.
VRAM
The overlay peaked at 6,669 MB during combat — before any ray tracing, at 1080p output and a 67% render scale. That leaves roughly 1.3 GB of headroom on an 8 GB card, and no 8 GB card was captured to confirm how it behaves there.
Stability
The 3m37s capture contains no crash, and none of the ranked negative reviews is about one; the highest-voted positive review (38 upvotes, 155h) does flag glitches that 'can affect the game experience a bit'.
Monetization
PCGamingWiki's taxonomy records One-time game purchase and DLC with the microtransactions row set to none, so there is no cash shop for this record to substantiate.
DRM
The availability table gives the Steam, GamersGate, Gamesplanet, Humble and GMG rows Steam DRM and the Epic and Microsoft Store rows their own store DRM. The page's wikitext also hits the word Denuvo, which the harvester records as a keyword hit rather than a fact — so no Denuvo claim is made here in either direction.
Steam Deck
ProtonDB rates it GOLD from 798 reports (score 0.81, confidence strong, trending tier platinum). No handheld frame rate was captured for this record.
Value
143,731 Steam reviews sit at 91.2% positive, yet the ranked reviews converge on 'wait for a sale' — a 26h buyer reports paying $7 for a game that lists at $59.99.
My Hardware
See how it actually runs on your rig.
Mid-Tier PC (captured machine)
Playable
- Average FPS
- 82-109 FPS in the combat sequence; 143-144 FPS in menus
- 1% Low
- Not recorded in source video
- Settings
- 1920x1080 output at a 1281x721 render resolution (67%) with DLSS Quality, all ray tracing off, 144 FPS cap
- Resolution
- 1920x1080 (67% render scale)
Key Notes
- MSI Afterburner overlay across 22 frames: GPU 1,830-1,905 MHz at 110-117 W, 64-65 °C, 38-68% load
- The CPU held 80-86 °C at 4,000-4,200 MHz and 49-60 W, so the GPU was not the limiter in this capture
- No GPU model is rendered on screen; the uploader's description puts the machine at close to RTX 2060 performance, which is a claim and is labelled as one
8GB VRAM (RTX 3060 / 2060 class)
Playable- Average FPS
- Not measured on an 8 GB card in this capture; the captured GPU peaked at 6,669 MB of VRAM
- 1% Low
- Not recorded in source video
- Settings
- Not tested — the captured profile renders at 67% scale with DLSS Quality and no ray tracing
- Resolution
- 1920x1080 (67% render scale)
Key Notes
- The measured 6,669 MB peak leaves roughly 1.3 GB of headroom on an 8 GB card at this profile
- No frame rate is claimed here because no 8 GB card was captured
Steam Deck
Playable- Average FPS
- Not measured in the harvested evidence
- 1% Low
- Not recorded in source video
- Settings
- ProtonDB reports only; no handheld footage was harvested
- Resolution
- 1280x800
Key Notes
- ProtonDB tier GOLD from 798 reports, score 0.81, confidence strong, trending tier platinum
3 Major Roadblocks
- 01
A fetch-quest loop sitting under a handcrafted castle
The strongest material in the negatives is not the world but what you do in it: a collecting simulator with real-time potion and plant timers, one fetch quest after another, and an open world that stays generic once you leave the castle and Hogsmeade. The 27h review reduces the whole thing to 'wide as a lake, shallow as a puddle'.
Evidence: Steam reviews at 65h, 27h and 7h played, ranked by real votes_up (14, 7 and 13 upvotes)
- 02
GPU headroom left unused while the CPU is the wall
Across the gameplay frames the GPU never exceeded 68% and mostly sat between 51% and 59% at 110-117 W, while the CPU held 80-86°C and frame rates fell to 82 FPS in combat. A faster graphics card alone is not the fix on a machine like this, which is why the captured profile drops render scale instead.
Evidence: MSI Afterburner overlay in the source capture (Bilibili BV1wG4y1M7uu), frames 06-22: GPU 51-68% at 110-117 W, CPU 80-86°C, 82-109 FPS
- 03
VRAM and 16 GB of system memory are both nearly spent
The overlay peaked at 6,669 MB of VRAM and 11,241 MB of system RAM during combat — with no ray tracing, at 1080p output and a 67% render scale. An 8 GB card has about 1.3 GB of headroom at that reading, and a 16 GB machine is already around 70% committed just walking around.
Evidence: MSI Afterburner overlay frames 13-22 (MEM 6,628-6,669 MB) and frames 05-22 (RAM 11,083-11,241 MB)
Who is this for?
Buy if
- You want the castle itself — the world is what the ranked positive reviews defend at 155h and 34h played
- You have 12 GB of VRAM or are happy to run DLSS Quality at a 67% render scale
- You are buying at a deep discount rather than at the USD 59.99 list price
Think twice if
- You play on an 8 GB card, where the measured 6,669 MB peak leaves very little room and no 8 GB card was captured here
- Your machine has 16 GB of RAM, where this capture already shows 11.1-11.2 GB in use
- You want quest design beyond collection and fetch loops — that is the most common complaint in the ranked negatives
Best Settings
| Setting | Recommended | FPS gain | Visual loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upscaling | NVIDIA DLSS, Quality mode, with render resolution set to 1281x721 (67% of 1920x1080) | Not measurable from this capture: no scene was shown twice with upscaling on and off. With this profile in place the overlay read 82-109 FPS in combat and 143-144 FPS in menus. | Not measured in the capture — it records the profile, not a comparison. |
| Ray tracing | Reflections, shadows and ambient occlusion all OFF, with the ray-tracing quality row left where the profile left it | Not measured here. Every frame rate on this record was captured with all three off, so the numbers describe the non-ray-traced path only. | Not measured in the capture. |
| Quality mix | Texture quality maxed, with foliage, post-processing and shadows at medium and view distance and character detail at high | Not measured here — the capture's frame rates describe this mix as a whole, not any single row inside it. | Not measured in the capture. |
| Frame pacing and camera effects | Frame generation OFF, NVIDIA Reflex disabled, V-Sync OFF, frame-rate cap 144 FPS, HDR OFF, and motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration and film grain all OFF | Not measured here; the 82-109 FPS combat reading was captured with exactly this configuration in place. | Not measured in the capture. |
Testing & Evidence
- Test Date
- Sep 30, 2026
- Game Build
- Not stated in source video
- Platform
- PC (Windows, Direct3D 12)
- GPU
- Unidentified laptop GPU — the uploader describes it as close to RTX 2060 performance; 1,830-1,905 MHz at 110-117 W observed
- CPU
- Not stated in source video (4,000-4,200 MHz observed at 80-86 °C)
- RAM
- 16 GB (11,083-11,241 MB in use across the capture)
- Driver
- Not stated in source video
- Test Duration
- 3m37s capture, 22 telemetry frames sampled every 10s
- Copy
- Third-party creator capture (Bilibili BV1wG4y1M7uu), not an in-house run