Throughout the entirety of the Wii U’s lifespan, Nintendo had been teasing a brand new Zelda game, one that would reimagine everything about the long-running series. After years of delays, Nintendo finally released The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on both the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch, simultaneously concluding the life of the former console and beginning the life of the latter.

In short, Breath of the Wild was simply amazing. It turned Zelda gameplay into a completely open-world experience, one where you can run, ride, and climb anywhere you want. However, Breath of the Wild was a little too intensive for the hardware it was designed for. The framerate was locked at 30 FPS, and dips were not uncommon. For many, these were minor inconveniences, but this ruined the experience for others.

With the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo has thankfully decided to revisit some of its games and improve them with dedicated Nintendo Switch 2 Editions, beginning with Breath of the Wild and its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. You can purchase The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (a mouthful, I know) for $69.99, up from the $59.99 price tag of the original. If you own the original game, however, you can pay the difference of $9.99 to get this new version as an Upgrade Pack. Alternatively, this Upgrade Pack can be used if you have an active Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription. This enhanced version promises to take advantage of the new hardware, incorporating higher graphical fidelity, a higher framerate, and faster loading times. In addition, there are some new features to improve the experience, too. This review will focus on the changes to this version, but you can read our review of the original Breath of the Wild here.

To recap, Breath of the Wild begins with you taking the role of Link as he mysteriously wakes up in a cave. After becoming accustomed to some of the basic controls, you’ll walk out to see the Kingdom of Hyrule. With minimal guidance, you can practice learning some of the game’s many new mechanics while exploring a massive plateau on which you find yourself. After some exploring, you’ll learn that 100 years ago, Hyrule was brought to ruin by Calamity Ganon. During this time, Ganon has been held at bay by Princess Zelda. It is up to you to explore Hyrule and stop Calamity Ganon.

After this, the whole world is yours to explore. You can travel to any place you see in the horizon. If there’s an obstacle in your path, like a ravine, you can simply paraglide over it. If there’s a river in your way, you can create pillars of ice over the water to cross it. If there’s a mountain, you can climb it (provided it isn’t raining). You can progress the main quest however you want. You can even try fighting Ganon immediately (though I would not recommend this). The world is far from empty, too. You can find villages with shops and civilians in need of help; there are shrines which house puzzles that reward you with items that will increase your health and stamina; and there are more subtle puzzles around the world, in which solving them will reward you with Korok Seeds, which can be used to expand your inventory.

Speaking of your inventory, rather than being given a trusty sword and shield that will protect you throughout your journey, you must continually scavenge Hyrule for weapons that will break after enough uses. You will make use of expendable bows; shields; and melee weapons, which include your standard one-handed swords, along with two-handed swords and spears. Despite weapons having durability, you will never run out, as you’re provided with more weapons than you can possibly carry. However, it’s not always fun losing rare weapons after only a short time, with no way to repair them. There’s also no way to know approximately how much durability a weapon has until it’s about to break.

You can also obtain many different armors throughout the game. Along with providing protection against enemy attacks, many armors provide additional perks. They can even be enhanced with materials you find to improve their defense and provide bonus perks for wearing a complete set of armor.

Fighting enemies feels great. The different weapons and tricks at your disposal make combat more enjoyable than that of other Zelda games. The controls are mostly great, except for rare puzzles in which you’re forced to use gyro controls that seem to work against you, something that probably should have been changed in this version.

I will say that it felt weird returning to Breath of the Wild after playing Tears of the Kingdom. That game simply takes the same Hyrule and greatly builds on it, while adding major new systems for traversal and combat. Still, Breath of the Wild has its own share of puzzles and quests that make it still very enjoyable, in my opinion.

The music is also quite fitting as well. It’s typically calmer and more subtle. The simple piano tunes won’t get stuck in your head the way songs from other Zeldas might, but they still work well.

Breath of the Wild looks great in this Switch 2 version. The simple, celshaded artstyle holds up really well. The textures are often quite simple, but they work great with these graphics. The textures have also been improved to look much better, and the resolution has been increased as well. In addition, HDR is now employed for compatible displays. I didn’t originally expect this to be such a big deal, but colorful effects like explosions, fires, and the glow of the legendary Master Sword are way more striking than before.

Nintendo has also boasted about improved load times and the framerate, which has been increased from 30 to 60. I cannot overestimate how much better it feels to play at a much smoother framerate! I also had zero issues with the framerate dropping, not even during thunderstorms or in forests, where the game really struggled before. However, it is worth noting that if you play Breath of the Wild on a Switch 2 without purchasing the Upgrade Pack, you may still benefit from a smoother experience (the framerate will be locked to 30, but it might not chug much or at all).

Some may be put off by Nintendo locking these improvements behind a paywall, instead of just allowing the original games to take advantage of the better hardware. This is definitely understandable, especially considering that about a dozen games have received updates for free that provide similar improvements. However, while these technical changes are certainly the meat of the Switch 2 version of Breath of the Wild, there are numerous new features as well.

To start, you can now have two separate save files at a time. I never understood why this wasn’t always the case, but it’s nice to see it rectified. If you are upgrading from the original version, your progress will also transfer by default.

The rest of the new features, however, are tied to a new service on the Nintendo Switch App for mobile devices, known as Zelda Notes. The first of which is the addition of Voice Memories, which is really the main new “content” in the Switch 2 Edition. Visiting various landmarks with Zelda Notes open on your phone will cause some voice-acted dialogue to play on your phone. These bits of dialogue often expand on the world-building. Each one is only around 30 seconds to a minute long, but there 125 of them to find.

You can also use an interactive map to help you explore. If you have used one of the many unofficial maps created over the years, it is quite similar to those. You can choose to display numerous kinds of items, landmarks, and enemies to aid in finding them, with there being many more options than what the in-game map gives you. What this map has over unofficial ones is that it updates as you play, so your location and discoveries are tracked in real time. You can even select a destination and have a voice give you directions. I would advise that you avoid using this map too much when exploring new areas, so it doesn’t ruin the fun of exploration, but it is certainly useful for finding things you would otherwise miss.

There are a few minor features as well. You can now track certain stats, earn medals for reaching milestones, and compare your stats to those of other players. You can also register various Zelda amiibo to Zelda Notes. Normally, you can only use each amiibo once per day, but if you use one five times, you’ll be able to scan it twice per day. Finally, you can send photos taken using the in-game camera to Zelda Notes to add logos and other decorations before saving them to your phone.

One annoyance for me in Breath of the Wild was the fact that there was never a proper storage system. If there were weapons taking up space in your inventory, you had to get rid of them to make room for more. Zelda Notes fixes that with Item Sharing. You can send items to a digital storage box, which can hold up to 100 items between Breath of the Wild and the Switch 2 version of Tears of the Kingdom. You can then take them out as needed, or you can even send them to Tears of the Kingdom. You can even share a QR code with friends, allowing them to take items you don’t need or give you their own items. Annoyingly, you can only send up to 10 items per day, so you’ll need use the feature sparingly during long sessions.

These are all the main changes with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. If there were other quality-of-life features you were hoping for, such as a way of more accurately gauging a weapon’s durability, you may be disappointed. Even minor helpful features introduced in Tears of the Kingdom were not backported to this game.

It is also worth stating that the original Breath of the Wild had an Expansion Pass for $19.99. This DLC added fun new challenges; small additions to the story; and new goodies to play with, like an unlockable motorcycle. Normally, enhanced rereleases of games include DLC as part of the package, but that is not the case here, which doesn’t really sit well with me.

As always with Zelda, you’ll fight monsters, skeletons, and sometimes people with weapons typical of a fantasy environment. Enemies simply disappear when you kill them, though they can drop cartoonishly disgusting guts upon death.

Kind of surprisingly, there is a bar in one town. You can’t get a drink yourself, but there are quests revolving around helping the bar make beverages for others. Even more surprising is a single use of the d-word. However, it only appears in a rare line of dialogue that most players will never see.

There are also occasional mentions of reincarnation, with Link, Zelda, and Calamity Ganon being reincarnations of iterations from previous games. There is worship of a goddess named Hylia, and upgrading your health and stamina requires praying to statues of her. Ganon is known to be a demonic entity, and there is a demon statue you can pray to if you want to redistribute your health and stamina upgrades. You and foes alike use magic, which is mainly in the form of magic wands and magical technology.

A number of female characters do like flirt with Link, and some have revealing outfits, like Great Fairies and the Gerudo. In fact, the Gerudo have a town that forbids males from entering, so to enter this town and perform important quests requires disguising as a female. Said disguise is obtained from a cross-dressing man. There is also a quite effeminate man who wears pink that you can purchase a house from.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition successfully takes one of Nintendo’s best titles and makes it look and run exponentially better than it ever has before. After playing this new version, it’s hard to think that I settled for such a worse-performing version all these years. The Zelda Notes service also introduces some very welcome features, and I would love to see it integrated into more games down the line. However, it is frustrating that even after eight years, this new release of Breath of the Wild still requires you to pay extra for its DLC. Breath of the Wild does feel slightly dated in some ways compared to its successor, but it’s still worth a playthrough today. Not everyone may want to pay $9.99 for this upgrade, but considering this adventure will easily take over 100 hours to play through, I’d say it’s a small price to pay for a much better experience on the Switch 2.

-Tyler Ferguson