Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom’s Frame Rate Is “Even Worse” Than Link’s Awakening

Be warned, if you’re going to watch the above video, there may be some brief story information provided that could be considered a light spoiler. Skip the introduction segment to avoid this.

Tech specialist Digital Foundry has presented its verdict on the newly-released The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for the Nintendo Switch.

The channel covers off most of the performance aspects you’d expect, including image quality and frame rate, as well as looking at how the world of Hyrule in Echoes of Wisdom compares to that of A Link to the Past for the SNES.

It’s the frame rate that immediately caught our eye, however. We mentioned in our review that the game is still plagued by unstable performance – a blight that affected many fans’ enjoyment of Grezzo’s previous Switch effort, Link’s Awakening – but the analysis performed by Digital Foundry indicates that Echoes of Wisdom actually performs “even worse” than its predecessor.

Essentially, when you’re stood still in the overworld, you can move the camera around and the game will stay at a smooth 60fps. However, when you start moving Zelda through the environment, the frame rate almost instantly dips down to as low as 30fps. The potential reasoning provided is that the game is almost constantly streaming in level data as you walk around. Another important caveat is that the overworld is larger, more complex, and more seamless than that of Link’s Awakening.

Frame rate also drops when in other locations such as dungeons, but it’s nowhere near as egregious as the overworld. The same goes for resolution, too. When indoors, the game maxes out at 1080p in docked mode, but will drop down to 720p when venturing out into the overworld. There’s a similar phenomenon to that of Link’s Awakening in that the game will start at 1080p for a few frames when entering the overworld, but will quickly drop down to 720p.

All in all, however, Digital Foundry states that the game does a lot right, and its experimental gameplay alone may be enough to alleviate the frame rate woes. However, if this proved an issue for you in Link’s Awakening, then it’s definitely something to be conscious of here. Narrator John Linneman summarises his analysis by stating “now more than ever, it feels like we need a successor to the Nintendo Switch”.