Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Review

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave embraces an enormous four-campaign structure while delivering some of the series' most memorable tactical battles, even if its ambition occasionally becomes its biggest weakness.

The Fire Emblem series has grown steadily over the years, from a somewhat specialized tactical RPG to one of Nintendo’s best-known role-playing franchises. That rise has brought a growing thirst for bigger stories, more characters, deeper progression systems, and more activities beyond the battlefield.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses' escalation goes further than nearly any other entry in the series, with a massive RPG built around four distinct story campaigns that eventually merge into one larger story. The newest game, developed by Intelligent Systems, is also the first Fire Emblem title made specifically for the Nintendo Switch 2, giving the long-running tactical series a chance to expand its scope.

From the outset, it's clear that Fortune’s Weave is attempting something different. 

Instead of serving you another series of grid-based battles with a simple tale to string them together, it mixes classic Fire Emblem combat with exploration, social activities, dungeons, side quests, resource gathering, recruitment, job progression, and four different character routes. The effect can be a bit overwhelming in the opening hours, but there is an astonishing sense of scale to practically everything you do.

The game wants you to care about the lives, relationships, decisions, and histories that surround the fights, not just the battles themselves. That ambition can be an issue at times. Some extra activities repeat, and not all the settings feel like they’re making the most of the Switch 2’s technology. But the underlying tactical underpinning is solid, and the sheer volume of content gives Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave a personality all its own.

It's a game that demands a big time investment, but much of that effort pays off with an ever more linked tale and some great combat. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave opens at the end of the world. You play as a personalized protagonist and a small group of survivors fighting back against a land already taken over by the living dead.

The biggest threat is Balor, the King Below, whose darkness has spread throughout the country. With the Earth obviously sliding into its last moments, the goddess Fortuna offers a method to travel into the past and find out what went wrong. This voyage takes you into the life of four Flame Lords: Kai, Theodora, Dietrich, and Lita.

All four went to Dagda’s capital years before the apocalypse to compete in the Heroic Games, a prestigious competition where the winner is promised one wish. Their reasons are radically different, which gives each campaign its own personality. Kai wants to free his father from prison; Theodora wants to claim a special piece of land for her people; Lita wants to get revenge on the person who killed her father; and Dietrich loves battle and wants to find tougher and tougher opponents.

The basic premise is that you have to fix the fate of these fallen heroes so they can join your cause later.

Technically, you can achieve the greater goal without finishing every path, but the narrative payoff makes it well worth experiencing all four campaigns. Each story has its own conflicts, bargains, organizations, secrets, and personal struggles, slowly shifting your perception of the events that lead to the apocalypse. The four campaigns also benefit from notable supporting casts.

Changing routes keeps the story from becoming too narrow with one character in the spotlight, and seeing how different heroes solve their problems adds another layer. The framework mirrors the multi-route strategy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, though Fortune’s Weave swaps that game’s story-centric structure for something much more expansive.

The framing story in the future is very significant, because your choices over the course of the four campaigns shape the circumstances of the ultimate showdown. You don't feel as if you are just observing four unrelated stories unfold; the past feels genuinely important. You slowly build the conditions you will need to face the threat that lies at the end.

However, the sheer volume of narrative substance can occasionally be too much. At certain points, it feels like Fortune's Weave adds exposition because it has so much story to tell. When the custom protagonist meets people from prior events, the future plot can sometimes disrupt the flow of past campaigns. It’s a unique storytelling device, though the execution isn't always smooth.

But the bigger themes of death, legacy, history, revenge, faith, and what you leave behind provide a meaningful framework for the huge tale. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is still a tactical, turn-based RPG at its core. You maneuver your forces across grid-based battlefields, positioning them wisely, using their capabilities, and trying to overcome hostile formations. But the fighting is just one part of the total experience.

Outside the key battles, you have plenty of leeway to do what you want. Gain character rapport, share meals, practice in the arena, complete side quests, explore dungeons, do additional activities, recruit new characters, acquire resources, and enhance your group. You can also skirmish in the overworld to build renown and bolster your team.

The calendar structure lends all these activities a deeper feeling of purpose.

What you do out of combat can directly affect your readiness for future engagements. Overall, Fortune’s Weave does a great job of making sure your time away from the battlefield still matters to your eventual success, rather than letting exploration become completely divorced from the tactical element. Recruitment is another key element of the development mechanism.

You can find potential companions to add to your growing team as you explore the game's primary hubs. You can also earn certifications that let your characters switch careers and learn other abilities. This leaves plenty of room for experimentation, especially since each fighter’s upgrade path can be approached in many ways.

The thing is, Fortune’s Weave throws a huge amount of systems at you. At first, it can be hard to see how everything comes together. But as the several mechanics start to work together, the intricacy is far more satisfying. You rarely run out of things to do, even if not every activity is equally interesting. 

Fortune's Weave feels most confident during the tactical clashes. Intelligent Systems has kept the heart of what has made Fire Emblem’s fighting so enduring, while adding enough new features to keep the system feeling fresh. Positioning still matters, and fights need you to think about how you position and level your units.

The Heroic Games are especially powerful because they give the fights a theatrical character. You are not battling on anonymous battlegrounds. You're fighting in packed venues with enthusiastic fans, and the way the game presents these battles makes you feel like you're in a massive event. Charging chariots, environmental devices, and even floating ship conflicts add variety and help distinguish critical confrontations from run-of-the-mill skirmishes.

The battle system also moves away from relying solely on the typical weapon triangle, placing more emphasis on advantages and combat techniques.

This lets you experiment with your units instead of following a predetermined tactic in every engagement. The multiple upgrade routes let characters specialize, so you can tailor your group to your preferred combat style. One of the most talked-about additions is Blaze Arts. These are sort of fighting techniques but cost differently; they suck the health of your lead party member instead of using weapon durability.

For example, Kai can use an ability that hits across multiple grids, while Dietrich may use Shadow Step to teleport farther than normal. These skills can change how you approach a difficult encounter, especially when positioning is essential. Another nice feature is Fortuna's Blessing. If you die, you can rewind time to some earlier moment instead of just restarting the fight from scratch.

Some old Fire Emblem fans may see this as a step down in complexity; however, it's optional. If you want the classic challenge, just don't use it. However, for those who want to spend more time trying out methods without being punished too much for a mistake, it’s a great quality-of-life element. The greatest weakness is repetition.

The big confrontations are still fascinating, but the regular games can get a bit too similar after a while. After doing the same thing over and over, you can find yourself using the auto-battle option for situations that no longer require your full attention. This doesn't detract from the quality of the tactical system itself, but it does highlight how the sheer length of Fortune’s Weave can amplify even small repeats.

The dungeon system shares a similar problem. It's a fun change of pace from the usual Fire Emblem presentation to explore these regions from a third-person perspective, and the battles offer chances to gather resources and beef up your group. Unfortunately, the settings themselves do get repetitive. Forests, caves, and the like might start to feel like a blur, especially when you see them again and again throughout numerous story paths.

The many actions in Fortune’s Weave are tightly tied to its passage through time. Story battles and overworld skirmishes give you exp, letting you level up characters before major confrontations. Another way to beef up your units is arena training, and job certifications let you swap skills and specialize them for certain roles.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave gives you plenty of chances to prepare for tougher fights, and that planning can be enjoyable.

If a character is struggling, you can spend some time boosting their level, trying out other upgrade paths, changing jobs, or working on a different specialism. Your non-combat activities are rarely wholly pointless, too, because the social and exploration elements feed into that growth.

However, plenty of optional content makes grinding feel pointless. Dungeons and resource gathering can feel repetitive, especially if you are taking multiple character routes. Fortune’s Weave includes quality-of-life features meant to speed up progression, but doing the full experience with all four Flame Lords can still take dozens of hours.

That length is both a blessing and a curse. If you enjoy building a powerful squad and trying different character configurations, there is a lot to do here. If you’re a fan of tightly paced tactical RPGs that are almost entirely about the fighting, some of the progression systems can feel like they’re getting in the way of what you like most.

Visually, Fortune’s Weave looks good, especially in its character designs, key story moments, and combat. Art direction fits the game’s anime-inspired fantasy presentation, and the range of characters gives the world plenty of personality. Their theatricality also helps the Heroic Games, lending the big fights the proper sense of epic scale.

However, the game doesn't regularly appear like a title built for new hardware. Certain environments look quite ancient, with some places resembling graphics from much earlier generations. This is especially evident when traversing dungeons, as the repetitive surroundings may make the limits of the visual presentation more apparent.

There are also the rare frame-rate reductions, hinting that Intelligent Systems is pushing the Switch 2 in some places. It’s a weird combination. Fortune’s Weave can be stunning in its character-centric presentation, but its surroundings still don’t show the technology's full potential.

But one of the best parts of Fortune's Weave is the soundtrack.

Music is vital to set the game's overall grand fantasy mood, especially in the Heroic Games and big fights. The Romanesque gladiatorial impact of the setting lends the soundtrack a suitably dramatic character, while the use of instruments and vocal parts reinforces the planet's cultural identity.

The soundtrack also fits the game's more introspective themes. You could be entering a character's personal struggle, bracing for conflict, or dealing with the repercussions of something that happened years ago. Still, the soundtrack helps maintain the emotional tone. Even when the pace slows, the audio keeps the setting feeling alive.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is an ambitious tactical RPG that often succeeds because it refuses to be tiny. One of the most full Fire Emblem experiences to date comes together as four connected campaigns, a framework story set in the future, deep character development, social activities, dungeons, recruitment, job growth, exploration, and tactical battles.

That magnitude has its repercussions, though. Some tasks grow monotonous, dungeon environments aren't varied, and the sheer volume of information can feel unevenly paced. The writing can occasionally get too deep, especially when the game adds explanation to an already complex story. If you are primarily after the classic Fire Emblem experience, you’ll wonder why you’re spending so much time resource-farming, dungeon-crawling, or side-questing.

But if you are willing to accept all that Fortune’s Weave has to offer, its size is one of its greatest assets. The four characters have different motives; their campaigns slowly reveal more about the world, and the eventual convergence makes your earlier actions more meaningful. Tactical combat remains the core, and the new mechanics offer enough flexibility to make experimenting fun.