Nintendo unveils the massive Fortune’s Weave in Fire Emblem.
Nintendo has really nailed the art of crafting open-ended games. With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the franchise redefined what a Zelda experience could be, allowing players to explore the map freely, a concept further developed in Tears of the Kingdom. This philosophy has now made its way into Fire Emblem with Fortune’s Weave, and it’s a fantastic fit. With its numerous paths for progression and the ability to customize your teams, Fortune’s Weave has quickly become my favorite title on the Switch 2.
The game’s structure is a key factor in its open feel. Rather than confining you to a single storyline, Fortune’s Weave lets you experience multiple narratives in one expansive playthrough. There are four main hero routes, culminating in a final act that ties everything together, providing ample chances to restart and master the intricate mechanics and strategies needed for combat and team building. From the outset, you can switch between heroes and storylines at will, and even combine stats from characters used across different routes to create a supercharacter later on. The depth of the systems is impressive, yet Fortune’s Weave offers plenty of ways to tailor your experience to your preferences.
The game is divided into several sections. It kicks off with a brief prologue that sets the stage for your mission to save the world from an evil demon lord. To assist in your quest, you can recruit four missing heroes from the recent past by playing through their individual stories in two parts. The first part features your chosen hero competing in a grand tournament in the city of Dagsion, while the second part carries over your hero’s squad into a war. Completing a hero’s path allows you to bring them and their allies into part three, where the main protagonist leads the charge against the undead.
Parts one and three provide plenty of opportunities to train for battles and build your teams as you see fit. You’ll quickly find a rhythm of alternating between main story battles, preparing in Dagsion, enlisting allies, and exploring a vast map to gather resources and engage in smaller skirmishes. A calendar system counts down to the next main story event, but you have the freedom to spend your days as you wish. I fell into a satisfying routine of exploring the map for an in-game week, returning to Dagsion for weekly activities like skill training and sharing meals to build rapport, then heading back out to tackle more quests or grind for XP. (Part two is primarily focused on battles, with little time for pre-battle preparation.)
The main battles follow the classic Fire Emblem turn-based strategy format. You select your allies and then strategize each turn to attack enemies or buff your team with healing spells and support moves. Each character has a unique class, and having a diverse squad is crucial; while I’d love to run a team of only flying units, they’d be in trouble against archers. Some battles introduce different objectives, like defeating thieves before they escape while also battling giant birds. On the standard difficulty, with permadeath disabled, I found the challenge manageable, often relying on divine blessings during battles to rewind moves if I made a mistake.
There are also battles that resemble a more traditional turn-based RPG, encountered in dungeons and during certain story segments. I found these less engaging than the strategy battles, and thanks to an autoplay feature, I often skipped them to gain experience and stat boosts.
I opted to complete all four hero routes in parts one and two to carry them into part three. It was a monumental task: finishing each hero’s path took me around 100 hours, even after reducing battle animations, skipping previously seen cutscenes, and utilizing fast travel. However, each hero’s playthrough deepened my understanding of character training, advanced class assignments for balanced teams, and resource management for weapon upgrades.
Part three introduces an additional layer of complexity: instead of controlling a single character and their team, you manage multiple squads simultaneously. This initially felt overwhelming, but I quickly adapted, deploying my squads across the map to complete quests, level up my entire team, and take down numerous foes.
Not every moment of my 130-hour playthrough was perfectly spent. In parts one and two, I repeated many quests, cutscenes, and exploration segments. Part two features the same levels, just with different characters depending on the hero you choose. In part three, juggling multiple squads can feel like a slow crawl across the map. Plus, the quirky tea party minigame from Three Houses returns as “bird time,” where you interact with and “observe” other characters as the protagonist, who has transformed into a bird, to build support. I assure you, the bird form makes sense in the story, but it’s still a bit odd.
Despite the repetition, I found myself fully immersed in Fortune’s Weave. The cycle of leveling up characters, preparing for battles, and defeating enemies was nearly flawless, and I couldn’t get enough. Reaching part three felt like a significant reward for my efforts; after 100 hours, I was thrilled to unite all my teams for the final showdown.
Fortune’s Weave exemplifies how Nintendo adapts the concept of openness to fit each franchise. Rather than altering the core gameplay like Breath of the Wild did for Zelda, this game’s open-ended nature adds even more strategic depth to a series that has already begun to push its boundaries with titles like Three Houses. Fortune’s Weave feels like the pinnacle of what Nintendo has been developing for Fire Emblem.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave launches on the Nintendo Switch 2 on September 17th.
