Listen, we loved Zelda: Link's Awakening on Switch. It updates the original game brilliantly, taking the core premise and wrapping it in a lovely, modern sheen that will make it more palatable for modern gamers. However, despite its obvious quality, the game suffers from some worrying performance problems, with the frame rate rising and falling like the tides.
Keen to find out why, Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter decided to put the game through some rigorous tests with the aim of getting to the bottom of the quandary. According to Leadbetter, Link's Awakening fluctuates between 60fps and 30fps, but changes in frame rate happen in odd places:
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.
To solve the issue, Leadbetter resorted to upping the speed and adding more power. Link's Awakening runs at the 'standard' Switch clock speeds of 1020MHz CPU and 768MHz GPU (docked), while the graphics core drops to 384MHz when the system is played in its portable setup. However, an 'exploited' Switch can be manually overclocked to push video processing all the way up to 921MHz, while the ARM Cortex A57s can be pushed to 1785MHz.
You'd think all that additional grunt would solve the game's patchy performance, but you'd be wrong:
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. Increasing GPU clocks to 921MHz does help, but only to a limited degree.
However, by overclocking the game in portable mode (with that 720p resolution), Leadbetter was eventually able to get smooth performance:
Switching to mobile mode with its lower resolution but running at docked clocks resolves the issue - and indeed almost all of the performance hiccups in the game. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Link's Awakening does seem to be GPU-limited, even in scenarios where the complexity of the visuals doesn't change before, during or after a stutter.
Ultimately, Link's Awakening is still a fantastic game despite its frame rate hiccups, and we're hopeful that Nintendo (and Grezzo, which handled this update) can find a way to smooth out these minor issues with a patch. As Leadbetter quite rightly points out, it makes no sense for Super Mario Odyssey to run at a faultless 60fps while Link's Awakening struggles to maintain the same performance.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 83
I'm loving Link's Awakening, but the performance issues are laughable considering how frequently (and consistently) they occur. Even Breath of the Wild doesn't misbehave as often as Link's Awakening does, and the former is a massive open world game!
I like the fact that the game is Version 1.0 (no patches!) which seems to be an increasing rarity these days, but it plays more like a version 0.9, and I wish they had delayed the game just a little so that this very prevalent problem was nonexistent and that the game, as it is presented on cartridge, was the best that it could have been rather than rushing the game to shelves in a rough state.
You would think this wouldn't be a issue for a remake of a Gameboy game. Breath of the wild runs smoother more consistently and it's a massive open world. Hopefully this
will get fixed with a patch soon.
It's there, but it certainly isn't game breaking and I'm enjoying my time with it immensely, even more than I did with Three Houses.
Frame rate drops when loading or transiting to a new screen.
Why didn't Nintendo overclocked the processor when it's loading, like they did with BotW and Mario Odyssey in a recent patch?
When Nintendo made a game in 60 fps, it's always rock solid 60 fps. What happened to quality control at Kyoto these days?
@nintendolie because based on the the video from DF it’s not CPU speed; it’s the GPU causing the issue.
Really liked the game, but the issues are very noticeable and it happens constantly. I would have preferred consistent 30fps than jumping from 30 to 60 all the time...
Different subject but related. This is not a $60 remake, this is a $40 game, no way this game is priced equally to BotW, a full open world game with 95% more content. As I said really liked the game but personally regret paying $60 for it (with technical issues).
Maybe I just don't care, but I've played about 15 hours into the game and haven't really noticed any issues.
I'd like to see Digital Foundry reviewed Ori. That's a Microsoft game on Switch in rock solid 60 fps, just as good as Cuphead.
Maybe Nintendo should hire Microsoft to make their games.
Whilst the framerate dips are noticeable and frequent, it rarely distracts from what is an excellent game. I suspect I will have finished it by the time they issue a patch.
This is embarrassing for Nintendo. I am by no means a stickler for frame rate but I was noticing it tank constantly for seemingly no reason and it really detracted from the presentation. Sure it wasn't game breaking but it took me out of an otherwise wonderful experience. Link Between Worlds ran at a rock solid 60FPS with the 3D on and looked wonderful. I don't understand why they couldn't manage that here. And if they couldn't then give me an option to lock the framerate at 30FPS so I don't ever see it drop.
I’ve barely noticed it, really. It’s definitely not as bad as some make it out to be in my opinion. I’m just enjoying it for what it is and I feel lucky to be living in a time when such a charming Zelda game is recreated.
It’s a bit of a shame that there are performance issues because I think other than that, it is the most beautiful Switch game I’ve played. I usually don’t 100% games, but it’s just such a pleasure to run around and explore this island.
Hopefully they can address some of the issues with a patch later. It really deserves it.
I've not had any hindrance on my enjoyment.
@h15c0r3r Indeed that thing there showing now is like old nightmares of the muppets..
@BarefootBowser Bosses are pretty easy once you discover the weakness, but I think the game presents a decent challenge when played on “hero” mode. It’s a bit artificial and the penalties for death aren’t that severe, since the dungeons are small, but it definitely requires you to stay on your toes.
@justin233 Your Switch is special then because it is very noticeable!
I've already finished the damn thing. Too slow Nintendo.
I love Link's Awakening, and it's interesting to me that this game makes my Switch heat up much more than Skyrim or Dark Souls, which are comparably more demanding, graphically.
@Danito Actually it’s more of an eye thing, you know they right ?
I stopped playing it after 30 minutes and will wait on a patch before going back to it. The drops are very noticeable to me.
Yes you can notice it but not enough for me not to enjoy the game. Fantastic game.
Come on October and come on weejee3
Sure they are there and noticable but I wouldn't enjoy this game any more if it was different. Loving the nostalgia feeling and nothing will change that.
I beat this game and really liked it. I never played the original and was very impressed how well it held up as I heard it was a very faithful reboot. At first, the graphics turned me off a little, as I thought they were a little too cutesy and toy-like for my tastes but that impression wore off quickly.
The stutters were obvious but never a bother for me.
Still, like others, it is times like these that I look forward to something with a little more power at some point. While you can never have enough I would love to just have games at this level always hit 1080p and 720p consistently (although I could imagine Nintendo doing 1080p screen to mimic the docked profile as a handheld and introduce two new performance profiles alongside).
Yoshi, and now this game... Nintendo is rushing to much.
@Danrenfroe2016 Aren't both of these UE4 games? Maybe it's one of the challenges of using that engine?
I’m in the barely noticed it camp- and am at the 7th dungeon so have played it a bunch. I only play tabletop tho, so perhaps it’s just that much better in handheld..
I need an update that fixes the fps, adds dpad and touch screen support, better reward for doing dampes dungeons (a chain chomp that has a mario hat maybe) and adding shadow link to the dungeons in hero mode. Theres no need to lock what little new content this game has behind an amiibo paywall...
I literally haven’t noticed any performance issues, so can’t say it’s impacted my enjoyment!
@thiswaynow That's pretty bizarre that you aren't able to notice them dude, they are extremely obvious and happen constantly. I'm talking EXTREMELY OBVIOUS. I'm not surprised though, in every article about framerate there are always a few people saying "I haven't noticed any framerate issues!"
@chipperkwah I guess not everyone’s as sensitive to frame rate variations as others? I can’t really comment on something I don’t notice, except to tell it how I see it.
@Lizuka Not even close, it happens hundreds of times every time I play. Every time you leave buildings, transition to different areas, and many other situations. I'm still enjoying the game, but the framerate issues are not being blown out of proportion.
I play Zelda Link's Awakening right now, performance is terrible, so perhaps when I hack my switch I can run CPU at 1785MHz and GPU at 921MHz... and play Zelda without frame drops
The biggest issue here isn't the game...but what it represents moving forward on Switch. It feels like we've hit a wall with what can be done on the system. I'd imagine a PRO version will eventually release, but with so many "portable only" Switches on the market now, the ceiling is lowered to what developers are going to be willing to do. This is worrisome. Nintendo will keep making good games with minor issues, and pay for the dev of decent 2nd party style exclusives (with varying results like Daemon < Astral)...but, we got a problem here. I was hoping the FPS issues in the Korok forest were a result of the game also being deved for the WiiU, not so much now.
@thiswaynow Sensitive? I mean, your eyes are working I'm assuming if you're playing games, and that's all you need to be able to see the framerate dropping. It's not something you "sense", you just see it with your eyes. It's extremely obvious.
I’m loving the game so far but I feel like the slowdown is getting more frequent it didn’t bother me at first but it’s starting getting to me now hoping for a patch to fix cos it’s an amazing game
It feels often lower than 30fps because of the sudden switch between 60fps and the drop...
Game is awesome, but these framedrops are just not Nintendo-like and honestly quite shockingly bad.
Comparing LA to BOTW isn’t exactly fair. LA is attempting to hit 60 FPS, double the frames of what BOTW. BOTW also suffers from performance issues that can dip it well below 30, which I personally find to be more jarring than a game that runs at 60 90% of the time and double buffers down to 30 for brief periods of time or only in certain areas. Furthermore I found the dips to be quite forgettable after playing the game for extended periods of time, sure at the beginning it was difficult to ignore but after a few hours I barely noticed it. I think people are getting a bit worked up about an issue that barely changes the game. Sure it’s a con but the rest of the game is incredible, can we not just be happy with that?
@nintendolie I think the main issue is that this is made by Grezzo, who, as much as I think they're great at design, lack the finesse to optimize games that Nintendo proper does. They really need some help with optimization, it's been consistently there biggest issue in games.
Some of the hot takes in this comments section are laughable.
Link's Awakening is a fairly effects-heavy game (moreso than Breath of the Wild) that implements double-buffered V-sync to render the assets. Double-buffered V-Sync waits for the most recently rendered frame to be displayed before telling the GPU to begin working on the next frame, so an otherwise small frame delay will cause a massive dip in performance - in this case, from 60 FPS to 30 FPS, with no target frame rate in between.
Grezzo/Nintendo aren't incompetent buffoons who forgot how to make games with stable frame rates - it's just the method in which the programmers decided to use the GPU to render assets that is causing these issues.
I'm doubtful there will be a performance patch that will fix this, as Grezzo would need to significantly alter how the game renders its graphics, which simply isn't worth the effort. All it would/could do is add 1-2 points to its already high Metacritic score and silence some internet commentators.
@nintendolie if you’d watched the DF video they state that over clocking had little to no impact on performance. You also misunderstand how Nintendo is utilizing overclocking. Overclocking in BOTW is being used outside of gameplay to speed up load times. The switch is not overclocked during regular gameplay so thinking that they should just simply overclock it to make Links Awakening run smoother doesn’t make sense. Something needs to be adjusted on the backend to take some stress off of the graphics card. It’s doing to much at once, and it seems to be rendering the whole map. Have you noticed any long load times in Links Awakening during basic gameplay? An alternative would probably be to have load times that are longer between walking in and out of buildings or dungeons or when traversing areas which I’m assuming is something they wanted to avoid.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks Nintendo is purposefully gimping their games just enough to not ruin the experience but to make the upgrade to the Switch Pro more enticing when all the little problems magically disappear.
I had a few drops in framerate while playing the game but they weren't that noticeable. I didn't feel like they detracted from the gameplay at all. Either way though a patch that can smooth out all those hiccups is certainly appealing and I would definitely welcome it.
To be fair, Mario Odyssey cheats in busier places:
"For starters, there's animation at a distance. In some of the busier scenes with lots of characters on-screen, animation updates at a lower rate. At close range it's a full 60fps but back up a little and animations can drop to 30fps. Step back even further and it cuts down to 20."
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-how-super-mario-odyssey-pushes-switch-to-its-limits
@chipperkwah No actually. A good chunk of people can’t tell the difference between 30 and 60, which is normal BTW. They might notice a longer drop, but a momentary one not so much. On the other hand, you and many others are using an upper limit of your vision, so it’s very jarring.
I notice it in the swamp and around water because I instantly get motion sickness and get a headache. That’s where my ability taps out and don’t notice the rest as much. It really does depend on your vision.
I've played through this version twice now and never noticed anything. I guess I'm blind to this sorta thing because I've been gaming since when this was the norm for pretty much all games. Well that and I'm not a tech wizard so i have no idea what I'm looking for.
Funny how i don't remember anyone complaining about the performance of the original gameboy game and surely it had tons of technical issues. Whatever, you guys analyze and I'll just play the dang thing. flaws and all.
@chipperkwah Well, if I don’t notice it at all and you think it’s extremely obvious there’s some difference there.
@mousieone It's the GPU causing problems technically cuz the CPU is pulling extra duty (which unusual) on assisting some tasks the GPU would normally handle mostly alone....so if the CPU is effing up in memory stuff it's because it's being preoccupied a bit elsewhere. That was my impression from them, only have a super basic understanding myself.
@mousieone People notice drops, anyone notices drops, behind a fraction of a section stutter. 60 vs a very clean 30, when booting a game up for the 1st time, someone may not know the difference, but when 60 halves itself, it is noticeable not matter how unpicky someone is.
@Zeldafan79 How haven't you noticed anything in the swamp area? How is that even possible?!
@Matroska Ever play YsVIII? On Switch the animation in the background legit ends up looking like stop motion movies.
@Dang69 that’s not at all what they came to the conclusion because he overclocked the CPU and they made no dent. However, when he upped the GPU only it made a difference. Ergo GPU is doing something for the CPU 12:25 in the DF video.
All People notice significant drops, but not everyone is going to notice a small one. Hence why some people are it’s no big deal. It’s just we all have different levels
@mousieone Ergo, vis a vis, concordantly, you're right. I thought the thing that seemed like the problem only seemed like the problem because it was helping out the actual thing causing the problem. Thanks for the clarification.
I honestly experienced no issues with the game whatsoever. I did play the game digitally so I don't know if that makes a difference but I honestly had no issues at all.
I just love the game. I usually never notice framedrops. But in this game I do notice. It’s never gamebreaking to me, but it’s there for sure. Still my most beloved game of 2019.
I guess with Nintendo they usually always make the games as good as possible before releasing them so if there's a hiccup or two I'm like Meh no biggie. now when there's major issues i notice that.
I'm just not into picking apart every minute technical problem.
Unplayable is one thing. Slightly annoying is something else.
I won't buy the excuse that many classic games had low framerates and frame drops and we didn't complain.
It's 2019, locked 60FPS should be a standart, not a luxury, plus, many other Switch games that look more heavy and with better graphics, have better framerate.
People should understand already that the excuse of "I don't care for graphics, I care about gameplay" is a terrible excuse, frame rate is not graphics, it is gameplay, when a game runs below 60FPS, it means better gameplay was sacrificed to achieve better graphics.
The frame rate stuttering annoys me but not as much as the bottom edge screen blurring. It's a very good reason to score it 8/10 instead of 10.
@CupidStunt well you just didn’t notice them. Which is also good. Some people are very sensitive to frame stutters and hitches. Others don’t notice them at all. I wish I was the later but I’m very sensitive to it.
Maybe it's just me, but one thing I noticed outside of the swamp and Turtle Rock's lava sections, most of the times where it dips is during area transitions, but not specifically from that, but when the text displaying the name of the area shows up. It drops fps during that time, but the moment that doesn't show anymore, fps goes back up.
@Zeldafan79 I can feel the frame rate drop at times through the controls. The game dropping 30 frames means that the game is less responsive and commands don't go through as quickly. There's been times where I was going to a different area and fell down a hole because the frame rate dropped and I missed the timing for Roc's Feather.
It's not unplayable but it's a shame because it takes me out of the experience.
I honestly think they should have just locked the game at 30.
OK Digital Foundry, I know why the performance is so bad.
https://nintendosoup.com/studio-remakes-zelda-games-hiring-unreal-engine-experts-legends-game/
This game was made with Unreal Engine. Not in-house engine like previous 3DS Zelda. They don't know how to optimize performance on a 3rd party engine.
Let that be a lesson Nintendo, Unity/Unreal may be easier to kickstart a project but at the end performance issues will come back to bite you and it won't be easy to fix because your programmer didn't built the engine. It's not a cost effective solution, build your own engine.
I blame the depth of field effect.
@nintendolie
Link's Awakening was not made with Unreal Engine. Epic Games/ Unreal is not mentioned anywhere in the game's credits.
I’m not usually a frame rate tracker but the repeated motion stuttering did detract quite a bit from my experience of the game while playing in docked mode. In handheld the situation was much improved, and I think this is the best way to play the game. I’d be interested to know whether those who didn’t notice/weren’t bothered by performance issues were playing exclusively in handheld. It’s hard to believe people didn’t notice it in docked, it’s quite bad.
Like normal now a days, they have released a game with not enough testing, as it doesnt matter as they can just patch it later, just like Bloodstained: Ritual. This also means that if you buy physicals (like me) a complete game is not on the cartridge.
WHY IS THIS ACCEPTABLE PRACTICE???
Another case of "it should have been delayed, but muh money".
Oh well.
I have to admit that I found it pretty distracting when I first started playing the game - and I was dissapointed that a big Nintendo release would lack polish in such an obvious way. I've played about five hours now though and it's stopped bothering me quite so much.
@Bunkerneath by “now days” you mean the past 15 years? Since the mid 2000s if you wanted to ensure your physical copy of the game wasn’t missing patches your safest bet has been to pick up a GOTY release or some other edition that ships 12 or 18 months after release and is almost guaranteed to have everything included. It’s been a very very long time since you could buy a physical copy day one and not expect patches to ship at some point.
For PC gaming you can go back further to the mid to late 90s where consoles it became the norm with the 360/PS3 given they were generally online systems.
Not saying this title or Bloodstained should have shipped as they did, but you can’t buy a game day one and expect it won’t get patches at some point post release. Ideally the fixes would be more minor than Zelda and Bloodstained require.
@Mr_Muscle This is simply not true. Link’s Awakening uses vastly superior, and thus more resource heavy, post processing techniques with: lighting, depth of field and ambient occlusion. This is an Unreal Engine 4 game from what I gather.
@Yoshinator how can you even compare the two? There are PLENTY of frame drops in BOTW.
Tired of all this FPS obsession BS. So glad that I'm able to enjoy games as they are without nitpicking them to death.
@Antraxx777 Are all Unreal engine games extremely graphically intensive?
@Snakesglowcaps I definitely do notice these things. I think about 3 or 4 times in the whole game it happened when I was leaving a building. Literally nothing really game altering at all. The physical game I read is worse than the digital copy. I also have the newer model if that could make a difference as Polygon states it has some performance gains as well as a better battery life from the new SKU.
@CupidStunt that’s a myth. There is absolutely no performance gains for the V2 switch other than battery life. It’d have to be patched in, and it’s unlikely Nintendo would divide its customer base.
@westman98 I don’t believe it would be if it did use unreal. Unreal is tech, I don’t believe you need to credit them.
@Snakesglowcaps
Technology can and often is patented and owned. Unreal Engine is tech that is wholly owned by Epic Games. Any software that uses Unreal Engine MUST credit Epic Games or face litigation.
There have been cases of companies facing litigation for allegedly stealing/copying/plagiarizing several lines of code. Now imagine if an entire game engine was used without permission...
@Snakesglowcaps I take their word over yours and I only had a few framerate hiccups and only when leaving a building.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2019/8/22/20828134/new-nintendo-switch-teardown-battery-life-processor-exchange-free
@westman98 oh I always just assumed you just pay to use the engine and that’s the end of it
@CupidStunt you can believe it all you want it’s a myth lol
@Mr_Muscle
Unreal Engine is just an engine. An engine is just a collection of software. Games running on Unreal Engine can be as graphically simple or intensive as the artists, animators, and programmers desire or are capable of.
This game is beautiful and adorable, I have not had any issues with the performance, I mean if the entire game ran at 30fps we'd never see a dip and people would be happy, but then some might complain it's not 60fps. I'll take this where it's 60fps most of the time, especially when it matters, and just when traveling between areas it dips as it loads multiple tiles at once. Remember, on the original you'd only see a single screen at a time, now you see into the distance and neighboring areas as you walk around.
@Snakesglowcaps
I will the information from those qualified to provide it, such as those at Tech Radar but thank you.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/wccftech.com/nintendo-swtich-new-model-performance-screen/amp/
@CupidStunt I’m just yanking your chain a bit, I actually read it. I’m a bit surprised. I’ll have to watch the video analysis because I’m interested to know how I missed this. I’m a huge fan of DF. I thought the slight performance gains had been debunked and only YouTubers seeking attention. Kinda cool.
Tap here to load 83 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...