Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave review for Nintendo Switch 2

There are two types of people when it comes to Fire Emblem: those that like the franchise for its strategy gameplay and (sometimes) good stories and those that hate the franchise with a burning passion because of the Super Smash Bros representation. For the former, the release of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a time of celebration. Set hundreds of years before the events of Three Houses, Fortune’s Weave shares a world with the previous entry while entirely standing on its own two feet in a plethora of ways.

Instead of being set in Fodlan, we find ourselves in the Kingdom of Dagda. Also differing from its predecessor, Fortune’s Weave offers four playable characters that you can eventually gain the ability to swap between the campaigns of at will. When you start you’ll be told to pick a “pillar”, each of which denoting which “Lord” character you’ll be following for a while. After the first few chapters you’ll unlock the ability to spend achievement points on varying EXP upgrades and be able to swap from one character to another. Did you start with Dietrich and wanna swap to Cai? Go right ahead, just talk to the little white bird and return to the pillars.

Being able to freely swap between “routes” is such a nice way to let us mix up our experience if players find themselves bored and that the game might be stagnating. Luckily, I don’t think that’ll ever become a problem. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave has the best story in a long while full of an excellent cast of characters. From the four lords themselves to the supporting roster, everybody feels unique and enjoyable. Each lord, of which includes Dietrich, Cai, Theodora, and Leda, there’s a route for everyone to start with and enjoy. I won’t go into depth about the story because it’s heavy spoiler territory and I wouldn’t wanna take away someone’s first experience with this game.

A big part of who you choose is your starting playable roster and recruitment. Something I noticed with my time in Dietrich’s route is that a couple characters either had insanely high recruitment requirements comparatively or just outright refused to join him. Which, to be fair, makes sense given he’s effectively a really hot serial killer that technically wants to help people. Each character also has their own path they’ll follow, so you won’t be experiencing too much overlap. The most consistent things you’ll be doing that match up with each other playthrough is some of the arena battles as those are story related and have specific characters involved within them.

You wouldn’t think gameplay can be all that different between Fire Emblem games, but if you play enough of them you’ll be able to tell the little things. For instance, Fortune’s Weave includes a couple new classes we’ve not seen before that function very differently. The Charioteer has an ability where they can spend a turn to prepare a charge that does a lot of damage and raises your defenses but you will not be able to avoid attacks or control yourself until after the charge attack occurs. Additionally, weapon durability is removed from all basic attacks and is reserved exclusively for Combat Arts. These can offer a myriad of buffs or give you an advantage against certain types of enemies you might not have otherwise had a bonus over, such as armored units for mounted units.

Not only are there combat arts, but there’s also Blaze Arts respective to each character. In my case, spending most of my time with Dietrich, the Blaze Art I became accustomed to was his ability to teleport up to 3 spaces in any direction. This pairs well with his aggressive Myrmidon playstyle, enabling him to quickly clear out groups of enemies with ease. These Blaze Abilities usually consume HP to use, so be mindful how frequently you’re burning through your health.

While the story, characters, and combat are all generally solid, I will say I’m a little underwhelmed by the game’s visuals. They’re not bad by any stretch, so don’t go thinking that, but they definitely don’t look like something you’d expect on the Switch 2. It’s not a really big deal, especially because Fire Emblem has always been an anime stylized series, but a little more visual clarity and fidelity with some of the texture work would’ve been nice to see. Additionally, while I don’t think it’s necessarily required, running at 60 frames per second would’ve been totally doable on the hardware. Camera movement in the more “open exploration” dungeons at 30 frames looks a little jarring at times. Again, this isn’t necessarily a problem, but definitely something that Intelligent Systems totally could’ve done a little better with. They’ve clearly got the style down to a T so I’d be interested to see what a later entry can do with the hardware of the Switch 2.

Now, you might start the game and hear some references to things like Shambala, Agartha, and Fodlan, which were around in Three Houses. I wouldn’t worry too much about whether you missed anything by not playing that game, especially since this is a prequel. It’s more of a little nod to that game than anything else. Fortune’s Weave stands completely on its own legs and it does it very well.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave as a full package is excellent. It recovers from the rocky stories of Three Houses and Engage with a gripping narrative spread across four unique characters. It makes some improvement in battles for arguably the best combat to date across a rather large catalogue of titles, which is a huge plus. With respectable visuals and a fantastic musical score on top of all of that, you’re buying arguably one of the best Fire Emblem games since the GameCube era. The downtime between “missions” could be a little better, but otherwise it’s handled exceptionally. Train your units’ skills, build support ranks to recruit new characters, or just generally explore the map and do sidequests while you bolster your roster for upcoming encounters. You genuinely cannot go wrong with Fire Emblem this time, so if you’re a fan of strategy RPGs, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying Fortune’s Weave.

Note: Nintendo provided us with a Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave code for review purposes.

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