Fire Emblem has always been known for its mechanical density and complexity, but Fortune’s Weave applies a force multiplier. With an array of four differentiated but intertwining story campaigns, it feels complex in a way that could prove overwhelming. Having played the first several chapters of two of the campaigns, each had its own wrinkles and elements that could have supported their own standalone campaigns–all composing a sprawling narrative that appears to reward exploring it in full to see every scene and interaction.
Fortune’s Weave looks to be a conscious effort to restore some of the magic of Three Houses, following the more divisive Fire Emblem Engage. That means a tale that is more grand and sweeping across multiple factions, including a time-jump element that Nintendo revealed during its recent Direct presentation. At its core, though, this is a story that focuses on four main protagonists, the so-called Flame Lords, with the neat hook that they can be explored in any order, and you can jump between them with mostly unfettered freedom.
For the purposes of this preview I started with just two of the four main characters: the dancer Leda and the queen Theodora. And even in the early stages, it was easy to see how this four-quadrant approach holds incredible promise for storytelling, with just a few potential pitfalls.
For one, the stories feel well differentiated, even when covering similar sword-and-sandals epic subject matter. My first choice, Leda, begins by witnessing her father’s coldblooded execution in the street, thus beginning a revenge quest that completely consumes her. She is obsessed to a fault and often seems to have trouble even relating to people who aren’t similarly single-minded and driven. That creates an interpersonal dynamic with her attendants and friends, who understand that this obsession isn’t healthy for her, but that on some level she needs to see it through to get closure.
Theodora likewise has a tragic past involving the death of her father, but the conditions and her reaction to it are radically different. As the heir to a throne, she’s ambushed by her wicked brother, and his loyalists cut off her dominant arm in the process. It’s only later, after finding a magical prosthesis–more on that in a bit–that she learns her brother’s betrayal included killing her father as well, but it’s offscreen and treated as part of his larger regicide plot. She isn’t obsessed with vengeance at all. Instead, her story dispatches the wayward brother quickly and then transitions into her goal of proving herself worthy of the crown.
Both of them, and ultimately all four of the main protagonists, are drawn toward the Heroic Games, and that’s where you start to see factionalism and clashing interests start to arise. They all have their own reasons to be there–Leda gets a lead that her father’s killer is competing in the games and sees an opportunity, while Theodora wishes to prove herself against a possible succession battle. Each team competing in the Heroic Games has its own little cadre of warriors with their own relationships to each other. You can even see the other protagonists and their own bands of warriors milling around the grounds as you explore the capital city of Dagsion.
I was able to give gifts to start winning over recruits, which act as small, contained pools of characters to befriend and add to your growing forces. I didn’t get far enough to try poaching warriors from the other Flame Lords, so I don’t know if that would work or how it would impact their own paths. But the recruitment system looks flexible enough that it could support such a thing.
As you may expect, Leda and Theodora play very different roles in combat as well. Theodora is a fierce queen who uses a spear–in fact, her missing arm was a major issue for using her weapon of choice before she received her magical substitute. Leda is more of a back-line combatant, most proficient in bows. They were both rounded out by a supporting cast to make up for their weaknesses, like Leda’s loyal attendant, Buccar; the flirtatious Sirocco; or Theodora’s stalwart quartermaster, Bonaventure. The cast is very likable right from the start.
They also both have their own unique abilities not shared by any other regular characters, and this is where Fortune’s Weave starts to show the real depths of its complexity. Leda is a dancer, while Theodora is a warrior queen, so there’s a real contrast between their abilities both on and off the battlefield.
First are their unique Blaze Arts. As a dancer, Leda can cast Spellsongs, providing buffs to her allies in combat, while Theodora has an Earthen Throw attack that can reach across the battlefield in a straight line. Both have powerful effects at the expense of some life. Theodora can also assign Battalions to strengthen her units.
Outside of combat, Leda can learn new Blaze Arts by accepting performance requests at local taverns, and she can travel around the map picking up gigs to perform at local taverns in smaller towns. Sometimes giving a performance will prompt a barfly to give her a tip about a secret spot nearby where she can acquire special materials. Theodora’s abilities, meanwhile, focus on her role as a leader of her people, letting her deploy battalions to search for supplies and send supplies back home to help her people.
The two are also linked, indirectly, by the presence of cursed objects. Leda has an instrument that is said to be teeming with dark energy, while Theodora’s arm itself–taken from the resting place of a legendary hero of her people–is said to be cursed. In both cases these work thematically to emphasize their stories, symbolizing Leda’s willingness to use any dangerous tool at her disposal to enact her vengeance, and showing Theodora’s need to prove herself through physical strength. But early as I am, I suspect there will be more to both of these, and other similarly cursed objects across the other two protagonist stories.
Once you reach Dagsion and begin the Heroic Games, the structure of the game reveals itself. You’re scheduled to take part in qualifier rounds on particular days, which gives you a certain amount of time to explore the town and surrounding cities taking part in sidequests, skirmishes, and to give gifts to potential recruits, between major story events.
In the thick of combat, this is through and through recognizable as a Fire Emblem game, with all of the density of gameplay the strategy RPG series name has come to suggest. You’ll be carefully positioning units, drawing enemies in to be flanked, and experimenting with different combinations of job classes as you buy licenses to unlock more advanced units. The unique powers of each protagonist gives them their own sense of combat identity and makes them feel special.
Aside from the traditional strategy battles, there are also sporadic dungeon-crawling segments with more traditional RPG combat, which appear randomly as you explore the map, and as occasional story events. I found these to be fairly simplistic for now, but they were an okay diversion and another way to gather resources aside from simply using the search function while exploring the map. And as the game continues those may blossom into a more engaging diversion, though if they remain too simple I could foresee them becoming an annoyance, or just skipping them altogether.
It altogether feels a little overwhelming. But that feeling actually worked to soften one of the rougher edges of this game’s structure for me. Since you have a choice of four stories that all run in parallel, and you can hop between them freely, you’re essentially doing multiple different versions of early-game missions. That could risk making the game feel fairly flat at the beginning, when the challenge level is still at its most gentle. I haven’t done this, but in theory you could play Leda’s path to completion and then start all over with Theodora’s, which would probably feel like a hard reset. But instead I played the first few chapters of each back to back, and I plan to keep swapping between them. That means that, at first, I was staying at a steady, very easy challenge. It also had the odd side-effect of repeating a handful of optional introductory quests from a quest board, like finding the item and weapon shop vendors in town.
But that gentle introduction with some elements repeated actually worked in favor of Fortune’s Weave in an unexpected way. Since the world is so dense and complex and with so much to do, and so many factions with their own agendas, the presence of some repetition helped reinforce the aspects that are the same between the campaigns, and gave me a better sense of what was different between them as well. I’ll have to see how my patience holds out for doing it twice more, if I choose to play all four at all, but at least at first, this was a welcome way to learn the ropes.
Another way that Fortune’s Weave seems likely to soften the edges of its multiple campaigns is through the use of Boons of Salvation. By completing Milestones, you unlock karma shards that can be spent on Boons that apply universally across all four paths. Those include things like an XP Boost, increased damage output with particular weapon types, or discounted items. So in theory you could use your progress in some chapters to create a glide path for the next one. That wouldn’t skip over the more simplistic early-game elements but it would likely make them quicker to breeze through and get to the more substantial tactical combat.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave feels absolutely massive. It’s dense in a way that few other RPGs are, and the story being structured around four separate heroes with their own stories and abilities sets makes it even more complex still. The four parallel stories also feel reminiscent of the various schools in Three Houses. That game is widely seen as the recent high-water mark of the series, and while Fortune’s Weave doesn’t seem to have quite the same Persona-like social hooks, the array of specialized abilities make the four main characters feel distinct, both in and out of combat. It’s so vast and sprawling that it will take many more hours to reach a final evaluation, but what I’ve played so far is a very promising start that could put it among the best the series has to offer.
