Is it really ‘too big for Switch’?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomarrives in a turbulent time for gaming.
Even Nintendo-published titles, such as the recent Pokemon games, have had unfortunate technical flaws.
Such is the case with Tears of the Kingdom.
Tears of the Kingdom builds on a strong foundation and takes the concept to the next level.
You’ll revisit Hyrule, but there’s so much more, both above and below.
A new procedural cloud system has been implemented to better support the skies you’ll be exploring.
Everything is governed by realistic physics simulation.
If you build a fire and then light your torch, you could set plants ablaze.
And what about those trees?
Drop it into a body of water and it will float.
The same trunk can also be used to create vehicles if you wish.
This is the norm for open world games.
Simulating all these elements is taxing and I’m surprised Nintendo was able to pull it off at all.
This brings us onto the topic of performance.
What makes this interesting, however, is how the dynamic resolution manifests itself.
In some scenes, for example, the game changes its internal resolution based on the camera’s speed.
It doesn’t always drop, mind you, but it’s certainly a common occurrence.
In this case, the quality of the video is exceptionally poor with severe macroblocking and visual noise.
The low quality FMV nearly spoils these scenes entirely.
Still, when in real-time, image quality is sufficient.
Image quality is significantly better than most other attempts at a large open world on Switch, at least.
Of course, how it performs is perhaps most important and the result is unexpected.
It occurred often enough that I would have considered it a huge problem.
Then, a patch dropped.
It’s not 100 percent perfect, however, and I found ways to trigger a drop in frame-rate.
In most instances, it’s the result of using the Ultrahand feature.
And like those games, Zelda is smooth in terms of frame-pacing and lacks any significant stutter or hitching.
Comparisons with Breath of the Wild are intriguing.
The first thing I noticed was the change in the position of the sun.
Even when the time is synchronised between the two games, the position of the sun is different.
One benefit I noticed is a slight boost to loading times when using the fast travel feature.
This is especially important given the environmental focus.
The sound of rustling trees with soft piano notes echoing out is immensely satisfying.
The soundtrack is also phenomenal, building on the work started in Breath of the Wild.
This is easily one of the most sonically pleasing games in the franchise.
Also, without going into too much detail, I will say that the game itself surprised me.
