The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening remake released a bit over a week for the Nintendo Switch, and it has since been getting praise from fans of Nintendo's long-running series, as well as video game critics.
From a gameplay standpoint, the remake of the classic Game Boy title remains us polished as the original game, but technically the game suffers from constant framerate drops — which is something that players found out almost immediately when the game released.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Nintendo Switch aims for 60 frames per second but the game constantly drops to 30 frames per second, making the game look very unpolished. The thing about it is that, no one has been able to specifically point out why the game has such performance issues.
In a recent video, the people over at Digital Foundry have attempted to explain why those jarring drops in framerate happen in
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and, as it turns out, they aren't quite sure either.
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The overworld presents the lion's share of the performance issues - just leaving the initial hut causes a sudden drop in frame-rate, for little discernible reason. Basic traversal causes minor stutter as we move around the initial beach locale, and more serious drops when transitioning between more significant areas of the map - like entering or exiting the Mysterious Forest, for example. What's curious here is that the stutter is fleeting - within a couple of seconds, we're back to 60fps," explains Technology Editor at Digital Foundry Richard Leadbetter.
Leadbetter tries to pinpoint the issue to CPU, but it turns out that even when overclocking the console's CPU, the changes, if any, are minimal.
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As the graphics content can remain almost completely unchanged during traversal (the game does use dynamic resolution, but pixel counts seem static in traversal), logic suggests that the CPU may well be causing the problem - perhaps it's still streaming in and decompressing world data? Well, overclocking the CPU by 75 per cent should sort that out, but it actually makes no difference whatsoever."
So, which is it? What exactly causes the framrate drops? Digital Foundry's analysis is inconclusive, as they themselves have stated that performance tests of
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening raise more questions than it answers. Whatever the case, gameplay is not affected, but the constant dips in framrate can be overwhelming.
Hopefully the people over at Grezzo(the developer that handled the remake of the game) will figure this out and offer some solutions. As of yet, it seems that players will have to get used to these performance issues when playing
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
Link has washed ashore on a mysterious island with strange and colorful inhabitants. To escape the island, Link must collect magical instruments across the land and awaken the Wind Fish. Explore a reimagined Koholint Island that’s been faithfully rebuilt in a brand-new art style that will entice fans and newcomers alike. Battle enemies as you conquer numerous dungeons and uncover the hidden secrets of the island. Encounter Super Mario enemies like Goombas, Piranha Plants, and more, and interact with unique locals who help Link on his adventure.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is currently available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.