The State of Early Access — Should You Buy Hogwarts Legacy's Deluxe Edition for the 72-Hour Bonus?

We're already a day into the Hogwarts Legacy early access period for Deluxe Edition owners, and many fans have been able to engage in the first interactive Hogwarts experience in the form of a fantasy game set in an open-world RPG. You might be tempted by images, videos, and streams, but I'm here to tell you: wait.

Much like I did forELDEN RING, where I informed everyone to be very careful with the release of the game, I want to caution eager fans against the early access bonus for Hogwarts Legacy. Jumping into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is an exciting thing for many aspiring witches and wizards — casting magic spells and meeting magic and mythical creatures are things that many have dreamed of. But the state of early access inclines me to advise otherwise.

Now, it's not that Hogwarts Legacy is riddled with bugs — Ronen's face has only disappeared a handful of times throughout my adventures — but because of the optimisation errors. My computer is no longer the beast it used to be; sporting an RTX 2080 with an i7 9700k. It's still a spry machine for sure, but nothing to be wowed at. And although it's been running my games in ultrawide resolution surprisingly fine, including Hogwarts Legacy in intervals, I am getting seriously bad stuttering issues whenever presented with something new in the game — which is always.

The lag spikes that occur happen whenever the game is loading something new. This means that whenever the first cutscene started, I was frozen for a couple of seconds before my video started running and I missed a couple of lines of dialogue. This also means that whenever I arrived at Hogwarts, my computer decided to stop working for about two to three seconds whenever I opened any door and entered any place. In fact, at points, I resorted to running around and letting the lag get out of its system before the game started running surprisingly smoothly.

This is all fine for the patient gamer that doesn't mind lag spikes and stuttering; I'm not a complainer of either bugs or lag. But the problem starts when you want to be immersed in the world and enjoy the storyline, cutscenes, and just anything overall — it's so prominent at times that I had to wait until it would stop lagging whilst Natsai Onai waited for me on the road to Hogsmeade — impatiently — to go drink Butter Beer together. The Deputy Headmistress nagged me once too many times for my comfort as a self-proclaimed teacher's pet because I was trying to get the lag to stop so that I could properly explore the castle without stumbling into things.

The first couple of fights and duels? Lag because of new spells. The first time I fought a boss? Lag. First epic cutscene showcasing something pivotal to the story? Lag. First time I entered Ollivander’s? Thankfully, that shop was relatively small, so there wasn't lag — but there could have been! It's unimmersive at best and plain out unplayable and bothersome at worst.

In my angry tirade against the lagging, I didn't get to mention the pop-in textures. Like in World of Warcraft when you're playing the game just after the bar barely touches a pixel into "Playable", everything is unrendered and looks worse than in the ancient times of Lara Croft's triangle breasts. Smooth textures where it should have depth and pixelated textures on things that should be otherwise smooth surfaces make it difficult to tell apart Professor Hedan from a table. Although I exaggerate quite a bit (Professor Hedan looks nothing like a table), if you leave a Hogwarts room for too many seconds and decide you want to revisit it because you just didn't stare at the moving painting enough, you'll have to deal with the texture popping in... again.

I cannot assure nor confirm that all of these optimisation issues will be fixed — but with the lag spikes, stuttering, and terrible texture pop-in, Hogwarts Legacy is not as immersive as it should be, and playing it at the moment — if you're excited about the game — feels bad. Wait for an optimisation update or 58 before you maybe think considering perhaps possibly delving into the game. It's that bad.

DISCLAIMER: Although I might sound agitated throughout the article, I am just trying to add a humorous spin to an otherwise simple and infuriating topic. For the most part, I've laughed to not weep as the stutter happens in an epic scene, and I'm left with the clapping of the crowds at my amazing feats that I'm otherwise not privy to and feel like a short-term amnesiac that forgets any moment of adrenaline.