What parents need to know
The Fire Emblem series is a long-running strategic role-playing game series: Fortune’s Weave is the 18th installment, and the very first episode was released in 1990 for the NES (but the series didn’t arrive in North America until 2003 for the Game Boy Advance).
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave follows in the footsteps of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which was released on the original Switch in 2019. The story takes place in the same universe, but on a neighboring continent.
You play as a character that you create yourself (his canonical name is Eshmel, but you can name him as you wish), a hero magically created to restore balance to the world, and there is a lot to do, because when you wake up, all civilization has been practically annihilated by the forces of evil. So you have to go back in time and change the fate of four heroes (Cai, Dietrich, Theodora and Leda) whose paths crossed a few years ago during a war tournament, but who unfortunately all perished. You must step in to change their fate and make sure they will be by your side to fight evil and change the future.
For a rare time, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave features two types of combat. First of all, there are the usual tactical battles in the franchise. You control each of your units on a grid seen from above, much like a game of chess. Each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the weapons they use are powerful against some types of enemies but weak against others. For example, a warrior flying on the back of Pegasus will be easily knocked down by an archer, and a warrior in thick armor will see sword blows bounce off his breastplate, but will be cooked alive by wizards’ spells.
The terrain also has its influence; it is easier to avoid hits when you are hidden in the forest, a unit on horseback moves with difficulty in the sand, and so on.
Each of the characters must be trained over the course of the fights. Each assault we survive, each ally we heal and each enemy defeated gives us experience that allows us to level up, and improve our abilities (the distribution of points is random, and can greatly influence the usefulness of a character as we progress). You can also buy and upgrade the weapons you assign to your fighters to make them more formidable in combat.
Interpersonal relationships also give our units a hand in combat. By fighting side-by-side or participating in activities together outside of combat, characters can improve their bonds with each other. When they find themselves near a character with whom they have a good bond during a fight, their performance will be better, and they can even be protected from a fatal blow.
The other type of combat takes place in the many dungeons that we can explore throughout our adventure. In dungeons, both exploration and confrontation take the form of a more traditional turn-based role-playing game (think Final Fantasy or Persona, for example). You choose your attacks, the opponent chooses theirs, and you try to get out of it with as little damage as possible. You can also attack as a team with your allies.
Otherwise, between battles, you are free (during the first act, at least) to explore the capital, Dagsion, and the entire continent of Dagda. In Dagsion, you can carry out a host of activities: you can train to improve the handling of certain weapons by the units of your choice (even if our units are predisposed to certain types of combat, nothing prevents you from training them in other weapons), go to the theater or to the thermal baths, volunteer on time.
But most importantly, we can improve our bonds with the other fighters who are in the capital for the Heroic Games and who will agree to join our troops if we befriend them. To do this, we must offer them the gifts they prefer, invite them to the theater or invite them to share meals. Eventually, some of them will accept our recruitment offer or we will propose a quest to complete before joining our ranks.
We are free to complete the story of one or all of the protagonists before starting the two final acts. Obviously, the more protagonists we have completed and “saved”, the more numerous and powerful our army will be, and the better equipped we will be to face the demonic forces and save the world.
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
Fire Emblem is a war game, and if you don’t see blood as such, it is clearly established that the units die at the end of the fighting, and you have to kill creatures but also humans to progress. Some characters use a weapon that looks very similar to a pistol.
There is romance and sexual innuendo, but no nudity or sex scenes per se. Several female characters wear very revealing costumes.
As the voices are not available in English, you have to know how to read to be able to understand the story. You also have to know how to read to understand the tables that show us the damage at the end of our fights, and to understand the different capacities of the units. We use a lot of invented terms specific to this universe.
Our characters unite to defeat evil, but some are more ethically grey than others. Some characters talk about their love for alcohol, and we can offer them alcohol to encourage them to join us.
Being turn-based, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave doesn’t really require skill to manipulate the controller. However, it is a strategy game that can be complex, especially if we choose to make the death of our units permanent.
At a retail price of $99.99 CAD ($109.99 in physical format), you won’t be fooled into thinking this is an affordable title. However, the amount of content offered in this title helps a lot to make the bill easier to digest.
Local game modes
Story Mode
Online Game Modes
None.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
Nothing announced for the moment, but the last episodes have been entitled to downloadable content. It would therefore not be surprising if the situation were repeated here.
Our opinion
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a DENSE game. Imagine a huge all-you-can-eat buffet with mountains of different dishes, and you’ll get an idea of how it’s going to feel like to play this new installment in Nintendo’s role-playing game series.
But fortunately, quality does not give way to quantity; it is without a doubt the most polished episode of the franchise, dethroning the already excellent Three Houses. Surpassing the three protagonists of Three Houses, we are now offered 4 four protagonists, each with a story that repeats itself much less. This makes the lifespan even longer.
The gameplay system is also more elaborate than ever, with new classes being added, such as the charioteer, an archer driving a Roman-inspired chariot that can knock down enemies, or the Ornius horseman, a versatile warrior who moves quickly on the back of an ostrich-like animal.
The weapon degradation system has also been changed; normal attacks no longer wear out our weapons, but special skills do. Once a weapon’s durability is depleted, it is not destroyed, but it is greatly weakened. Having played a ton of games in the franchise, we find this system a little too generous to players. However, for newcomers, it’s a reasonable compromise between difficulty and fun.
Let’s also talk about the difficulty, since this is often a contentious point when we talk about the franchise. In the past, Fire Emblem episodes had a reputation for being very, very difficult. I can confirm myself that I let out a few screams of frustration in my teenage years in front of Path of Radiance when I saw one of my units fall under the blows of an enemy out of nowhere.
But since the “rebirth” brought about by Fire Emblem Awakening in 2013, the franchise has calmed down considerably. First of all, we can choose if we want the death of our units to be permanent. But even setting the difficulty to “Hard” and selecting permadeath, I have to admit that Fortune’s Weave isn’t the most difficult installment in the series, mainly because of the divine sand that allows us to go back when a decision leads to unintended consequences.
That being said, the difficulty didn’t spoil our fun (to be 100% honest, at the time of writing, I can’t wait to finish my writing to go back to playing a little more!)
We also have to mention the addition of this traditional turn-based combat system in dungeons. This is far from the most complex and nuanced combat system in the world. But these fights occupy a relatively limited place in the game, and they perfectly fulfill their mission of renewing the experience and allowing us to change the air a little between two long tactical confrontations or in a long exploration session.
The world of Dagda is vast and full of secrets. We also enjoy navigating this map, and even after dozens of hours of play, we barely feel like we’re scratching the surface of what’s on offer. You can capture new mounts, grow vegetables, fish, search for merchants offering rare goods, discover dungeons… the possibilities are dizzying.
In fact, this may be one of the few flaws in Fortune’s Weave; it’s stunning. In our first chapter as a protagonist, we feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of options available to us. It’s almost an exercise in letting go to accept that you won’t be able to see everything, do everything, and recruit everyone. We will have to leave some for our next games. It’s a problem, but a really beautiful problem.
The story is intriguing, but still requires a certain level of commitment from the players. Since it is told to us through the story of four different protagonists, we have the impression of assembling a puzzle whose image becomes clearer over the course of many hours. It’s an interesting story, but it requires a lot of patience.
Visually, without being the most ambitious game in the Switch 2 library (the price would probably go to the new version of The Witcher 3, but that’s another story..), Fire Emblem stands out with a remarkable visual art direction. We immediately get attached to certain characters because of their looks, and Dagsion, with its architecture somewhere between ancient Rome and North Africa, is an interesting setting for our adventures.
In short, the Intelligent Systems team offers us with Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave the most accomplished version of their flagship series. It is an episode of incredible generosity. In fact, if you buy it now, we doubt that you will have finished it before Christmas, in any case, not without harming your responsibilities!
