Digital Foundry has released a detailed technical analysis of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for the Nintendo Switch, evaluating its performance and comparing it to previous games, especially A Link to the Past from the SNES era. The review looks at key aspects such as image quality, frame rate, and overall world design, offering insights into how the new title fits within the legacy of Zelda games on the Switch platform.
The most notable point of concern is the game’s frame rate, which has been a significant issue. Digital Foundry highlighted that Echoes of Wisdom performs worse than Link’s Awakening, a game already known for its inconsistent performance.
In particular, while stationary in the overworld, the game maintains a steady 60fps, but as soon as the character begins moving, the frame rate can drop to 30fps or lower. This is attributed to the game’s constant streaming of level data as the player explores the larger and more complex overworld.
Frame rate issues are not just limited to the overworld; they also affect other locations like dungeons, though the drops are less severe. The game’s resolution also fluctuates based on location, with indoor areas running at 1080p in docked mode, but dropping to 720p in the overworld. This dynamic resolution behavior mirrors that seen in Link’s Awakening, where the game starts at 1080p but quickly scales down in more demanding areas.
Despite these performance issues, Digital Foundry acknowledged that Echoes of Wisdom does many things right, particularly in terms of gameplay. The unique and experimental aspects of the game may be enough to overlook the frame rate issues for some players. However, for those who found the performance in Link’s Awakening frustrating, the same problems are likely to be present here, and they could affect the overall experience.
While The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is an ambitious and creative title, its technical limitations underscore the need for more powerful hardware. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman emphasizes this point, stating that the game’s performance struggles highlight the growing necessity for a successor to the aging Nintendo Switch hardware.
