My Switch 2 doesn’t tell me how many hours I’ve logged in Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave yet because the game hasn’t been out long enough, but I suspect it’s about 10 hours. And I feel like I can count on one hand how many of those hours I spent weaving some fortunes. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game. I’m really enjoying these protagonists and I’m surprised by how much everyone not named Theodora has won me over. But my God, do all these bitches talk too much? Yes, talking is essential to plot development, but there’s a lot of explaining here that gets in the way of doing so. It feels like every second conversation is a repeat of the last, like the game doesn’t trust me to have any retention powers. The writing is so overstuffed that when a conversation starts, I feel like I can turn on the game’s auto-advance and briefly tune out because I got the point in the first panel of text and the rest is nonsense. Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb has shared a good example (although it’s a spoiler!) of what I’m talking about. The game itself is also guilty of explaining too much. I could shave several minutes off my total hours of play if I removed every time a tutorial panel appeared. I understand why they exist. Of course, please pass on the relevant information to me! But if a game explains that all points on a world map are called “locations,” something has gone wrong. © Nintendo, man, a good editor will clear this shit up for you.
