Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave brings together the strengths of both Three Houses and Engage to deliver a genuinely absorbing experience. Its tactical battles ramp up in difficulty at a steady pace, giving both newcomers and longtime players plenty to enjoy, while its character progression systems reward repeated experimentation and offer substantial replay value. Taken as a whole, it is easily one of the best Fire Emblem games to date.

With Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Intelligent Systems delivers a massive epic for the Switch 2 and one of the meatiest entries in the series. The developer doesn’t shy away from going places with the story! It tries things when it comes to mechanics for the different lords’ stories and abilities.

Deep, ambitious, and endlessly engaging, Fortune’s Weave is Fire Emblem at its very best.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a sprawling masterpiece of a strategy RPG, building upon the successes of past Fire Emblem games with new interconnected elements, expertly designed combat puzzles, and an emphasis on flexibility and choice. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have topped themselves, making this the new high point to beat for future entries.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is a chapter that solidifies many of the profound changes Three Houses introduced to the gameplay formula.

The best Fire Emblem game of the modern era and a staggering achievement in terms of the volume of content and the variety of gameplay – with even the plot taking some unexpected detours.

Even though it's probably the most generous entry the series has attempted, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is a contradictory object. On one side, you'll find a broad three-act structure that finally defuses the multiple-routes problem through fine writing, incredibly endearing characters, and some of the best maps in the series. On the other, this is a game that doesn't dare commit to its own choices, constantly apologizing for its major design decisions with options (permadeath you can bypass, a half-optional hub, a skippable second act...) that only drain them of meaning, the whole thing chopped up by time-consuming repetitiveness during the free-time phases. For anyone with the time (or the patience) to deal with the optimization chore that serves as its backbone, Fortune's Weave still remains a very fine entry in the saga. In fact, it's good, because the foundations already were. But there was so much potential here that you couldn't help hoping for something more concise, more precise, more sure of itself.

Simply astonishing, this game delivers on all fronts. Fire emblem still showing why it's a jrpg pillars

I’m around 6 hours into this game so that may not be enough to assign it some permanent judgement, keep that in mind. That said, my main complaint so far is the slow pacing. 6 hours is still 6 hours and I feel like I’ve barely just gotten started. And I’m STILL getting various tutorial pop-ups! This game feels huge and it doesn’t fully justify why it’s so huge. Theres a big world map you can explore, and I’m at least glad it’s not an actual empty open world that I’m running around like the monastery in FE3H, but I still don’t know why I’m running around the map. There are many activities you can do during your “free time” between main missions, but nothing I do feels impactful or important. And despite being 6 hours in, I haven’t yet gathered up a team of NPCs to get attached to. As I said I’m ‘only’ 6 hours into the game so surely it will all come together and I’ll be hooked like I was with three houses. But it should not take this long! So my warning for folks is only buy this game if you enjoy those slow burn/ dialogue heavy games. Otherwise it might take too long for you to get hooked.

I play FE for the tactical battles. This game is 80% walking, talking, bonding, eating, training, exploring, shopping, and looting. 20% is tactical battles, and dang good ones. I would have preferred a 50/50 split but they are appealing to more casuals and it works clearly. Cast, combat, music, graphics, and story are great, but all that "free time" is just painful for me so I have to speed run it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Oh my God I am so disappointed in this game. I have been a hardcore Fire emblem fan since 2007 when I first played Sacred Stones on the GBA. And I hate what Nintendo has done to the franchise. Engage was fine, but I hated how Three houses tried to turn Fire emblem into this weird, stupid time management simulator. I hated how 80% of the game was running around Garreg Mach. I hated how The game's pacing was structured. I hated how lifeless the class system felt. Fortune's Weave takes everything I hated about Three houses and makes it even worse. Another stupid time management, persona wannabe game where the tactical battles feel like an after thought. The horrible pacing of spending the bulk of the game introducing characters and then rushing through the game's climax. Also, the maps in this game are annoying, more so than even the infamous Fire Emblem Fates Revelation maps. I'd play Revelation over THIS game any day of the week. The maps are often gimmicky and unbalanced and just downright cheap. Not fun to play at all. Recruiting allies in this game is a frustrating, annoying, grind. It's a pain. This game's sense of progression is just broken. Three houses, and Fortune's weave both do not feel like true Fire Emblem games, and to be honest I wish they were not. I wish Nintendo had made an entirely new IP for this garbage and left Fire Emblem alone to do what Fire emblem does best. A rich, rewarding, fun, engaging tactical RPG experience. Fire Emblem used to be my favorite game franchise. Now the series just leaves me feeling heart broken and frustrated. Fortune's weave is an extremely disappointing game. Even though I hated what Three houses did to the series, I still went into Fortune's weave with an open mind and a lot of hope that I would love it. I WANTED to love this game so badly... but No. It's official, Nintendo killed my favorite franchise, they assassinated the core identity of Fire Emblem... If you have not yet played Fortune's weave then PLEASE. Don't buy it. Nintendo does not deserve your money for this abomination.