The Nintendo Switch 2 significantly cuts down Breath of the Wild’s load times

Nintendo is dipping its toes into the hardware war with its new console. The Switch 2 will support DLSS technology and ray tracing, and it’ll launch with Switch 2 editions of its flagship Legend of Zelda Switch titles, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

But what do these hardware upgrades actually get you?

We had a limited time with the Nintendo Switch 2 at the New York preview event, but we put Breath of the Wild to a simple test. How long does it take to fast-travel from Lanaryu Tower to the Shrine of Resurrection on the Switch 2, versus the original Switch?

When Link fast travels, he whooshes away in a stream of light, and then the game cuts to a loading screen. And it stays there.

• On the original Nintendo Switch, the loading screen between Lanaryu Tower and the Shrine lasted 29.85 seconds. Definitely long enough that picking up your phone starts becoming tempting.
• On the Nintendo Switch 2, the load time has been cut down to 19.2 seconds.

By our math, that’s roughly a 35% improvement, and nothing to sneeze at. It’s no PS4 to PS5 jump, but the wait is noticeably shorter than it used to be. And any reduction in the time I’m spending staring at my reflection in the Switch’s screen is a win for me. 

What’s more, we played a sequence in the Korok Forest, which was notoriously laggy on the original Nintendo Switch. In our demo of the Switch 2, we didn’t run into any of the same performance issues, with it maintaining a silky 60FPS throughout.

The Switch 2 will be more expensive than Nintendo fans are used to paying, but at least in terms of performance, there are some real improvements.