Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Review – Terrific Tangled Threads

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Review

I love this enormous, utterly improbable RPG. A story like this, with a game big enough to flesh it out? It’s downright excellent. I have a weakness for complex stories hiding giant mysteries. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave sets a high-water mark for cool, compelling stories. On the other hand, there are some teeny tiny pacing problems to push through. It feels terribly rude to set the stage for this incredible, era-spanning conflict, then pull way back for a few dozen hours. I was impatient to get back to that amazing story they teased, which cast a shadow over the first third. Yes, you get hints about what’s to come, but they never felt like quite enough. Which is unfair to the major sections I was speeding through. They were wonderful enough in their own right, I was just laser-focused on the plot.

To be fair, the plot in this game is excellent. You’re playing as a member of an advanced civilization trying to stop the world from ending. It’s not going great. There’s a whole world of gods and goddesses you have to dive into, along with some light time travel, if you want to change the ending of this tragic tale. Any setting where laser pistols and cursed axes share the stage is a good one. And the gods! Are they actually divine beings? They certainly live long enough to qualify, but in a world of generational ships and custom-built bodies, it’s natural to question that stuff, right? On top of that, you’ve got people in masks with mysterious powers, and a murdered malevolent god trying to come back to life. It totally rules.

Tales of Gods and Men

But instead of leaning into all that rad business, you spend most of your time in the shoes of a handful of other characters. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all fascinating individuals that I love learning about. But it felt like a series of consolation prizes after that fantastic opening offer. And yes, eventually all these loose threads come together in a pretty satisfying way, but the road to this point is a long one. It turns out I’m not as patient as I assumed when it comes to slowly building plots. Because of all this, the pacing in Fortune’s Weave suffered for me in some important ways.

Actually, the pacing just suffers in general. Part one of Fortune’s Weave involves a series of matches at the arena in Dagsion. It’s a cool centerpiece for some pivotal moments. But, you have a lot of turns in between matches. So you spend that time doing side quests, training your team, and exploring the continent. It’s all a reasonably good time, but the loop gets exhausting after a while. Soon enough I was staring down the barrel of another 120 turns before the next match. And it’s not like you can just skip ahead to the next key story moment. I mean, you can, but you will be under-leveled and likely to lose. So success means doing all the side stuff you can, every single time. It’s kind of a drag.

Pacing Problems

Fortune’s Weave is the first Fire Emblem game I’ve played in over a decade where I turned off Classic Mode. Even after I started optimizing my free time, I was losing people like crazy. It was untenable! So I restarted the campaign with permadeath turned off, and I finally got through Part One with one of the four heroes. To be clear, even in Classic Mode you can rewind time to change the outcome and save a character’s life. But it turned every major match into a grueling hour-long affair. The game is long enough, and this made it so much longer. So I gave up, changed the settings, and had a much better time afterwards. You can absolutely play this game on Classic Mode, just not if you have a review deadline coming up.

When I say this RPG is massive, I mean that there are four discrete combat systems in play. Each hero has unique mechanics that change how you can play the game. Theodora can recruit battalions to be used in battle. It means extra healing and new forms of attacks for her fighters. Meanwhile, Cai specialized in animal husbandry. So he’s out there capturing wild horses, pegasi, and birds to be rode into battle. Every hero has their own mechanic that changes their fights. So the tactical knowledge you earned in one person’s campaign doesn’t carry over to the others, not completely.

Cool New Mechanics

But the core Fire Emblem experience is intact, and it’s better than ever. Blaze Arts and Combat Arts give you extra strength in exchange for weapon durability. The old rock/paper/scissors attack patterns have been discarded, with a new, more subtle system in place. Things like magic for armored foes, lighter weapons for more strikes, and bows for flying enemies. There’s more to memorize, but it’s refreshing to see things changed to a more nuanced and natural system. Repairing and refining your gear is more difficult, but the results are worth your efforts. Terrain feels like a more important part of every fight.

At the same time, it’s a lot harder to end up with a handful of overpowered fighters. Previous games let you power up one or two characters to the point that the game balance was critically compromised. It was a great way to sneak through some nasty fights without stressing too much about strategy. Those days are kind of done, for better or for worse. You’re a lot more likely to end up with a squad of six great fighters instead of two relentless killing machines. I understand the shift, but I do miss the old system a little. Now if you want to raise a serious bruiser, it requires a lot of supplies and dangerous decisions throughout your campaign.

A Little Better Balanced

Sadly, the support system is still diminished in my eyes. You can watch a lot of cool conversations between characters, yes. So if you’re hungry for extra story bits, you’ll be feasting frequently. But people aren’t hooking up quite like they used to. Weirder still, your character, the forgotten protagonist, can only appear as a bird most of the time. Which means that getting closer to the other characters is kind of impossible. They can all foster a curious friendship with an animal they don’t understand, but that’s kind of it. You do make the occasional appearance in human form, but it’s pretty rare.

Fortune’s Weave is a huge game. The story is epic, you’ve got four campaigns to play through, and a massive roster of characters. It feels so big that it impacts the pacing, which suffers from time to time. I don’t want to do every possible thing every time for every campaign. But if you’re patient and persistent, you can smash past all of that and succeed. Even if you have to turn off permadeath to do so. There are an imposing amount of systems to discover and master, but it’s a lot of fun doing so. And the battles are all excellent affairs. I struggled at points for sure, but overall this was a fantastic time. If you’re any kind of Fire Emblem fan, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a slam dunk. Don’t miss this one.

***A Nintendo Switch 2 key was provided by the publisher***