Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave: A strategy RPG review

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave starts with the end of the world, then sends you back in time to find out how things went so badly wrong. It is a big, rather unusual opening for a series built around turn-based battles, but it gives the game room to tell a story from several different angles. You are not following one hero through one campaign. Instead, you move between four characters with their own reasons for entering the Heroic Games in Dagsion, while slowly piecing together the history of the Dagdan Empire.

Four stories, one conflict

The four Flame Lords make a varied group. Leda is driven by revenge, Theodora wants her people to receive the recognition they have long been denied, Dietrich seems happiest when he is fighting, and Cai has a more personal wish: he wants his family to spend time together. Their stories begin far apart, which gives Fortune’s Weave room to reveal Dagda and its people gradually. I enjoyed piecing together how the characters and events were connected, even if the game sometimes leaves you to join the dots yourself.

That slow build means the larger conflict involving Fortuna and the demon god Balor can sit in the background for long stretches. The game gives each hero a substantial opening story, and I like that it lets their motivations develop before bringing them into the wider conflict. The shift in the second act is still abrupt, though. Its focus moves away from the four heroes and towards the events that shaped Dagda. The battles are memorable, but after spending so much time with the characters, I found it harder to adjust to that change in emphasis.

The time between matches in Dagsion is where those personal stories meet the game’s strategy systems. You can train, strengthen your Blessings, build relationships and look for new allies, then head out across the world map to take on quests or gather resources. Dungeons provide materials and a place to build up weaker units, though some of that levelling can feel like grinding when you have to repeat similar fights. Fortune’s Weave gives you other ways to spend your time, including auto-activities that move the calendar along, so you do not have to complete every task before the next match. I sometimes wanted the story to move on sooner, but these grindings also serve a purpose: it lets you shape your team before finding out how well it works in battle.

That preparation pays off in battles that reward careful positioning and a good read of the terrain. Enemy placement can make a seemingly safe route risky, while different objectives keep you from relying on one approach every time. A formation that works in one fight might leave you exposed in the next, so I had to keep adjusting my plans. The battles also have a greater sense of scale than in previous Fire Emblem games I’ve played. A fight can begin with a straightforward objective, then become more complicated as fresh enemies arrive or new areas open up. The second act’s encounters push you to think carefully about how your units work together. Fortune’s Weave can be tough, but I rarely felt that a setback was unfair; more often, I could see where my plan had gone wrong.

The characters’ skills and abilities give you more reason to think about how each unit fits into the team. Skills reflect their personalities and develop over time, so two characters in the same class can still play differently. Combat Arts offer stronger or more specialised attacks at the cost of weapon durability, while Blaze Arts let certain characters unleash powerful abilities by sacrificing HP. Blessings add another tactical option by buffing your allies. There is a lot to learn, but these systems make team-building feel more involved than simply assigning classes and sending everyone into battle.

Visually, Fortune’s Weave is a big step up from Three Houses, particularly in its character models, battle animations and cutscenes. Dagsion can feel sparse, and some activities rely on brief, reused animations, but the improved presentation helps give the characters’ expressions and important scenes more weight.

Final thoughts

The game asks for a serious investment of time, especially if you want to follow all four stories and see how they come together. That scale gives Fortune’s Weave room to build a layered world, but the slow stretches between battles and the abrupt shift towards Dagda’s wider history sometimes work against it. I found the personal stories easier to connect with, even as the larger conflict gave the battles a stronger sense of purpose.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave does not always move as smoothly as it could, but I kept coming back for its battles and its characters. Watching the separate stories gradually connect gives the long journey a purpose, even when some parts could be tighter. I think the game is at its best when its personal stories and tactical battles come together, and there is enough of that here to make the time worthwhile.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is now available for Nintendo Switch 2 and retails for $99.90. It is available at the Nintendo Official Store Singapore at Lazada and Shopee.