The scale of Fire Emblem has been increasing for some time now. From Three Fates, Three Houses, numerous rings, and now, a massive three-act entry for Switch 2. Those ever-increasing aspirations have led to impressive new heights and ever-expanding reach. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is easily one of my favorite settings and stories in the series’ history, with memorable battles and characters, even when repetition and overabundance weigh it down. Fortune’s Weave begins at the end of all things. After a quick character creator for a mysterious Pale Raven and an in medias res race through a crumbling world haunted by the undead, the player’s avatar and Fortuna, a goddess of destiny, are some of the only survivors. To save the world, they will have to defeat the invading lord of the underworld, Balor, and they will need help to do it. Then, you retreat to a chamber outside of time and travel back through history to the lives of four Dagda Flame Lords: Cai, Theodora, Dietrich, and Leda. They have all found their way to the capital of this continent in Dagsion, where the Divine Emperor Solel hosts the Heroic Games, with the promise that any wish will be granted to the ultimate victor. Correct the causality of these fallen heroes and they can survive and unite under your banner in the changed future for the final fight against Balor. You could challenge the big bad at any time, but the more lords you gather, the easier it will be. Being ready for the finale probably means bringing at least two lords and their respective recruits to the final campaign, and in my case, I wanted to get as many through as I could. Fortune’s Weave adopts a three-part structure, with each lord having an individual story through the Heroic Games. Each has their own reasons for fighting: young Cai wants to rescue his father from prison and imminent execution; Queen Saramina Teodora wants to recover important lands for her people; the singer Leda has murder and revenge against her father’s murderer on her mind; and Dietrich is there simply for the love of battle. It’s a bit of a stretch to explain, but it lends itself well to the size of the story Fortune’s Weave tells. The four face trials and conflicts throughout the games. Faustian negotiations, shadowy organizations plotting in the background, and old secrets brought to light by the influx of all the interesting and notable Dagda people to their capital. There is no need to play any of the routes, as you can fight Balor on your own if you wish. But each lord’s story adds more context, nuance and character to this enormous story. I loved the moments where I would see Dietrich and his friend Fabio, the spellcaster, mention something during Cai’s path, and then see the events from his perspective when he played them on Dietrich. However, playing each route is a big task. They are made up of chapters, each of which has one or two major battles, with free time prepared for you to spend as you wish in and out of the capital. Outreach starts small, with shared meals to establish rapport within your unit, recruit others to your team, or train skills in the arena. However, it soon expands to encompass the entire continent, as you can wander around, fight battles in the world, explore dungeons, and use lord-specific mechanics like recruiting Theodora’s battalion or Leda’s tavern performances to gain resources and power. This is where Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave starts to weigh. Dungeon crawling, a returning mechanic from Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, turns Fire Emblem into a classic dungeon crawling RPG with a small party, raid exploration, and turn-based combat. It seems like a microcosm of great strategic battles, only they become repetitive and too frequent; I committed to them on the first lord route, but switched to auto battle shortly after, as I was simply doing the same moves for every fight in every dungeon. Free time was more interesting when I was pressed against the clock to finish certain quests, acquire resources, and solve paralogues before the deadline, but keeping up with the numerous weekly activities and checking in at home for any random events (often only indicated by a discrete ripple on my map in Dagsion) meant I was usually just going through the motions. For some periods I was stressed, trying to raise support levels for a new Archer recruit while finishing enough side quests to gain the level of renown I would need to add them to my team for a big battle with incoming flying enemies. In other cycles, I was just in a loop: train, eat, automatic activities, repeat. When we finally get back to the basic strategy of Fire Emblem, Fortune’s Weave is excellent. The fights on the world map are pretty straightforward, but the final fights of the chapters are the highlight, especially when they take place in the Dagsion arena. Developer Intelligent Systems has come up with some brilliant coliseum battles that have all the theme and style you’d expect: cargo carts, puzzling mechanics, and special combat arenas that push you to use your units to the best of your ability. There is no shortage of options for combat, as each unit archetype can follow interesting lines of improvement. In Leda’s path, I had the would-be mercenary Mu become a deadly sword wielder who could cut through anything with a strong critical hit. On Cai’s path, I secretly trained the lord in magic alongside one of his childhood friends, Thialla, so that he could become a mounted, spell-casting Caldarius for the final fights of the Heroic Games. Fortune’s Weave eschews the weapon triangle to put more emphasis on what weapons can handle individually, such as magic versus armor or spears versus horses, and a greater emphasis on combat arts makes training within a fighter’s specific strengths rewarding. Lords also include their own Blaze Arts, like Leda’s Spell Songs or Dietrich’s Shadow Step, giving them fun tools to enable strategies and close out maps. The opening act is great, and yet in some ways it’s only one piece of the pie, as Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave still has two more acts to develop. After bringing a lord to the end of his path in the Heroic Games, a second section is unlocked, which explores his story in a war that breaks out shortly after the conclusion of the Games. See them through that, and the lord (and any units he recruits) will be able to join you for the final campaign against Balor, which has its own cycle of days, activities, and an extra layer of grand strategy on top. Put it all together, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave will be difficult to see through to the end; It took me over 130 hours to watch the credits and I still missed some scenes and events. The payoffs are great and certain story beats that were established in part one and paid off in part three were incredible. But doing so requires a lot of play time, investment and repetition. Dungeons never get more interesting or challenging, collecting specific resources can get cumbersome, and even exploring the map and managing units starts to slow down Fortune’s Weave in its final hours. What kept me going was the world and its characters. The Romanesque vision of gladiatorial combat, the plucking of vihuela strings and a world where the gods walk among men kept me captivated, from beginning to end. Fortune’s Weave’s story starts small and grows huge over the course of its runtime, but at its core, this Fire Emblem asks what our mortality means to us. How do we build our legacies and stories, for our future generations and what we live for with the time allotted to us? And what is worth defending and protecting with the time we have been given? Fortune’s Weave has an incredible soundtrack and gorgeous visual designs for its cast and the various classes they can take on. The fights in the Colosseum never failed to thrill, and some of them now rank among my favorite Fire Emblem maps of all time. Warriors like Fabio, Lilian, Mu, Anatolia, Dante, Talimun, and Orchel grew on me through their support and banter, or simply developed their own emerging stories in battle. Support conversations and side quests also delve into the world’s history. In Theodora’s route, the characters explored the difficulty of fulfilling the command of their patron god, Yu Phas, to never write down their stories, and whether adhering to their long-held practices would cause them to erode over time. Leda grapples with the vices of indulging revenge and what music can bring to those who have lost as much as she has, while Dietrich stumbles upon fascinating snippets about the world at large and its long-kept mysteries. The scope of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave allows it to take big swings at surprising, cool concepts and mechanics that feel fresh and interesting for the series. Packing them all into a single game might have made this the most intimidating entry since Fates, but putting it all in one package with some great quality of life options, like cross-progression improvements and side quest removal, helps pave the way for those who want to see it all. I have no doubt that those who crave a slow-burn epic and can stomach repetition to get results will love this world and its cast of characters. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave will easily consume all your time in the coming months, and it’s worth watching these Heroic Games to their conclusion.
