Careful what you wish for.
Be careful choosing your hero in Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave.
Unlike Fire Emblem Three Houses which told different stories based on the character you chose, Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave tells one story from four different perspectives.
I’ve now played 20 hours of the game thanks to Nintendo for this preview, split between two of the game’s four heroes, Cai and Leda.
No spoilers, but one is much more heavily linked to major characters featured in the main quest.
That may change but it’s true for the game’s opening chapters, and it made a huge difference to my appreciation of the world and its story.
It’s also important because Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave is a complicated game.
I’ve played plenty of Fire Emblem games and still found myself overwhelmed during my first dozen hours. The game’s story, mechanics and systems are much more complex.
There’s a lot to learn, and a mountain of text presented on screen to help explain things. Once you wrap your head around the basics, it becomes easier to appreciate what makes the franchise special.
Combat animations are gorgeous and faster than ever (appreciated by someone who typically turns them off).
The world of Dagda, particularly the new capital city Dagsion, is more detailed and vibrant.
The game runs super smoothly (with the help of some muddy textures in the open world).
And the characters you come to embody, encounter and recruit are genuinely compelling.
Step back in time to save the world?
The game starts in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. You create your character (the “real” protagonist of the story revealed in the recent Nintendo Direct) and battle through a few tutorials before meeting a goddess of time. With her power, you’re told you can save the future by intervening in the lives of four heroes who fought in the Heroic Games five years ago.
Unlike Three Houses, which forced you to pick one of three possible story lines, Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave allows you to jump between the stories of all four of its heroes during one campaign. That’s a massive change, and while it’s too early to say how long the game is, even if you stick to just one campaign, there’s more than enough meat on this bone.
The characters you can choose between are:
- Cai, a boy trying to free his imprisoned father with special powers.
- Dietrich, a mysterious swordsman with a hunger for the toughest battles.
- Theodora, a new queen who lost her right arm during the assassination of her father.
- Leda, a first class musician with an enchanting smile and a thirst for revenge.
I chose to start with Leda’s story and boy is she dark. Her father was murdered, she’s hell-bent on revenge and some of her dialogue and early kills are downright brutal. She possesses a special instrument too, a vihuela (small guitar), which is powerful in battle but could be corrupting her soul.
Speaking of dialogue, there’s a lot of it. Cutscenes are fully voice acted but I found myself mashing ‘A’ to get through much of the dialogue as quickly as possible (reading is faster than listening). It takes a solid three-to-four hours to get to the capital city in Leda’s storyline where the game finally opens up.
So, what are the new dungeons about?
Before you get there, you’ll have to explore a few of the “dungeons” and an all-new style of combat. Fortune’s Weave still features Fire Emblem’s classic top-down strategy battles, but this new turn-based battle system looks more like something out of a Pokemon or Persona game.
Enemies share a health bar. They present themselves to you one at a time and it’s your job to pick the right character (or link attacks with multiple allies) to exploit their defences. It’s a very different style of combat and while it’s great for levelling up quickly, so far, it’s not my favourite. Full respect to the developers for trying something new, but I have been happily skipping most of these battles by holding ‘+’ so I can get to the good stuff faster.
Fire Emblem’s classic strategy battles feature in the major moments in Fortune’s Weave’s story. These event matches are as good as ever and, with the power of that goddess I mentioned, you can rewind time during battles to fix mistakes you make along the way.
Each protagonist has a special ability too. Leda plays her vihuela to power up herself and the allies around her with different songs. These come at the expense of your health bar though, so knowing when to use our special without risking Leda’s life adds another layer of strategy.
Exploration has levelled up
Between these battles, the world is your oyster. You have a set number of “turns” to use before your next big battle and how you spend them is up to you. You can use them to train your characters in the arena, pay tribute to the gods at city temples, complete quests and try to recruit new allies by raising your renown, finding the right gift or getting to know them over lunch.
All of that will sound familiar to fans of Fire Emblem Three Houses.
But while Three Houses relied on calendars and activity points to manage your time, Fortune’s Weave plays more like a board game.
You can leave the city walls at any time and when you do, you’re presented with a map. Moving around costs “turns” as you travel messy paths into new areas. There are towns and dungeons to explore, merchants to find, items and materials to harvest and enemies to fight when they appear at random. All of it earns you experience, money and materials critical to levelling up and upgrading weapons.
It took me a moment to realise that it didn’t play like a map from Super Mario. You don’t have to stop at every area or explore every dungeon. Everything costs you time so you have to choose each action wisely.
It’s a major change. I’m still wrapping my head around how to spend my time the most effectively but I’m enjoying a little extra freedom.
If you’re against that grind, you can choose to end your turn early and automatically level up your characters from a menu screen. I’m not sure if this shortcut earns you less experience than manually completing tasks, but it’s a solid safety net.
All-in-all, I’m glad to be back in the world of Fire Emblem. I haven’t reached a point where the game’s “true protagonist” has intervened in any meaningful way, but what’s clear is that the game is exceptionally polished and it is a monster.
It’s good to know both given Nintendo is charging its maximum retail price ($119.95 AUD physical or $104.50 digital) when Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave releases for the Nintendo Switch 2 on September 17, 2026.
