Let's see if this setup rings any bells. The world is on the brink of collapse at the hands of a demon king and his armies of underworld minions. To save it, a hero of legend must recruit four Divine Beasts Flame Lords to strengthen their attack and bring the fight to the big bad, all while navigating an enemy-filled fantasy land and countless instances of weapon degradation. Feels familiar, no?

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave has a hefty dose of Breath of the Wild in its narrative, a pinch of Persona in its inter-battle antics, and a good amount of its spiritual predecessor, Three Houses, in everything in between. It's nothing new for either the series or wider gaming, and it's not a road without its share of bumps, but if you're after a dense, tactical, and very, very meaty RPG to lose days to, Fortune's Weave will more than satisfy you.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)

Just in case the multiple trailers, the standalone Direct, and the daily Nintendo Today updates have passed you by, allow me to provide a brief refresher on what this one is all about.

The year is 1449, and the kingdom of Dagda is preparing to throw its annual fighting tournament, The Heroic Games. The winner is granted one wish of their choosing, a prospect tempting enough to attract fighters from all over the region, keen on taking the top spot.

Among the hopefuls are Cai, a boy hoping to free his father from imprisonment; Leda, a dancer seeking revenge; Deitrich, a brooding swordsman after one final hunt; and Theodora, a ruler attempting to spread her god’s good name. These are our four protagonists, each equipped with their own storylines, mechanics, and recruitable hopefuls.

But there’s more. These are not the true hero of Fortune’s Weave. Above all of this sits Eshmel, ‘The Promised One’, who, through all manner of time-hopping shenanigans, is altering the timelines for each of the four Heroic Games hopefuls.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)

You see, five years in the future, Eshmel needs all the help he can get. The world has gone to pot at the hands of a demon god, and The Promised One needs to make sure this quartet of prospective Flame Lords can live up to the challenge.

It’s an interesting little setup, divided into three narrative acts. The first follows one of the four heroes through the games, encompassing their individual stories, training, and team recruitment. The second throws things into all-out war, as the fun and games of the celebrations are eclipsed by a rising threat from the region’s capital, Dagsion. Act three dials up the drama to 11, with all the remaining heroes teaming up with Eshmel to take on the Big Bad with whom the narrative began.

The dialogue is all of a classic Fire Emblem flair (there’s no room for a lot of subtlety here), but as long as you go in looking for that sexy anime melodrama, you won’t be disappointed.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)

Those who played Three Houses might notice some similarities in the story structure and ever-increasing stakes. The big change this time around is that you don’t need to play through a set character’s entire story before starting again from a different perspective. At near-enough any point in the game, you can return to Eshmel’s time with the world on the brink of collapse, and dive into another character’s storyline — a welcome addition, because come the end game, when all timelines coalesce on a common goal, you’ll want as many heroes by your side as you can muster.

The character switching is wonderful, and throughout my ~80-hour playtime, I was constantly flitting between them, wrapping up three of the heroes’ arcs in their entirety before heading to the final boss. There is the option to head straight to the finale with Eshmel alone (something I’m sure those far more skilled than me will muster), though even with three-quarters of the fully-powered heroes on my side, I still found the final act challenging.

It’s not a structure without its flaws, mind you. Having so many storylines, complete with their own introductions, climaxes, and tutorials in the opening act, means that the pacing takes a bit of a dive in parts two and three. There is a lot to do in this game, and while it all feels fresh and exciting to start off, I found some noticeable narrative drags once I made it out of each character’s honeymoon phase.

I’m also not completely sold on the whole ‘surprise protagonist’ idea. Leda, Cai, Deitrich, and Theodora bring more than enough development and complexity to the story — some (Deitrich, my favourite) are stronger than others (Leda, my least), obviously. Having a mostly silent fifth hero above it all just feels a little unnecessary. Why would I care about this guy when I’ve spent all 40+ hours of Act 1 getting to know the other four?

I’ll give a quick shoutout to the recruitable heroes, though, because by jove, their sheer density is nothing short of impressive. There are over 80 outrageously good-looking NPCs, by my count, all of which are fully voiced with stories and motivations of their own, and most of them can be brought into your team to offer a unique skill in battle.

In true Fire Emblem form, the characteristics are generally as fully fleshed as “Grr, I want revenge,” or “Tee hee, I love to serve my master,” but they do all feel like proper individuals, and I didn’t want to see any of them bite the dust. Praise be for the option to switch between permadeath and casual modes.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)

It’s not all narrative, of course. Fire Emblem has always been about the gameplay, for me, and Fortune’s Weave doesn’t disappoint in this respect. The inter-battle activities that I previously found so off-putting in Three Houses (it’s one of the reasons I preferred Engage — come at me) all return here, but they feel like they gel so well with the army-building vibes of the whole thing that I completely lost myself to them this time.

Meal-sharing, theatre trips, and combat training are one thing, but Fortune’s Weave also offers up a huge world map to explore between battles. The overworld is awash with merchants, Shadows of Valentia-style explorable dungeons and other, smaller cities to explore. Each promises unique item pickups, experience points, or information that will improve your chances in the arena.

It’s an almighty undertaking, slightly let down by a unique turn-based map control system, which, while absolutely in keeping with the world, regularly makes progression far slower than it needs to be. Your units can only move so far and perform so many actions in any one ‘turn’ (a portion of a day), you see.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)

While I respect the dedication to the turn-based bit, such navigation gradually grated on me the longer I played, as the map expanded in scope and I began to control more units on it in any one turn. Added ‘move all’, ‘auto-travel’, or ‘Pin items’ functions would make things far more approachable.

Still, there’s something very Persona-y about the whole thing: getting a set number of days until your next battle, and using them to the fullest is super satisfying. All the downtime is skippable, worry not, with your characters being suitably levelled up automatically, but if even someone as tea party-averse as me can lose hours building up a connection over the perfect sandwich and gifts, then you know it’s doing something right.

The battles themselves are sublime. Fire Emblem has never been lacking in the tactical department, but this might just be the strongest iteration of the gameplay. It’s the same fundamentals that were fine-tuned in Engage, with a handful of new mechanics to spice things up. Each of the main heroes has their own Blaze Art abilities which provide a welcome buff in combat, at the cost of the heroes’ HP.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)

It’s a neat bit of risk/reward that also appears in every character’s Combat Art abilities — attack modifiers that degrade the selected weapon in the process.

It’s not quite as simple as the classic weapons triangle (which, itself, is complicated this time around, not least by the inclusion of nuns with guns), but with hundreds — yes, hundreds — of battles to use them in, I got my head around the new systems soon enough.

For something a little less conventional, Fortune’s Weave also introduces new Clash Battle encounters, which play out like a standard turn-based RPG battle rather than the usual grid system.

This introduces a whole tactical system of its own, with Link Attacks and other combo opportunities to get your head around. They fell a bit flat for me (and they crop up with such frequency in the late-game that I tended to use the Auto-Battle option for most of them), but I respect the attempt to inject something new into a combat system that only has so much room for development.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)

It all plays with the expected level of sheen on Switch 2. While not as visually impressive as a Donkey Kong Bananza or a Star Fox, Dagsion is packed with charm and enough moving, talking NPCs to put Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Lumiose City to shame. There are minimal ‘opening door’ loading screens between the city’s three massive tiers, too, which is always a welcome sight.

The controls have a nice snappiness to them, making navigating the battle menus a breeze, and there’s a Mouse Mode addition for all those who really want to point and click — I’m still not convinced by that control scheme as a whole, but hey, I appreciate Nintendo’s stubbornness for adding it to every game, at this point. And no, you won't find any in-battle touch controls here (something I've personally longed for since Into The Breach), though I suppose the systems are a little too complex for chunky fingers like mine.

Conclusion

On the whole, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is dense, deep, and really rather delightful. It can sometimes feel like a bit too much of a good thing, with the pacing slipping in the later chapters, thanks to an unnecessarily complicated protagonist hierarchy and some grindy map management, but the battles have never felt better, and there’s no knocking the sheer amount to do.

It takes a lot for a game to hold my attention for as long as Fortune’s Weave, and with a bunch of content still waiting for me, I’ll be happy to pour even more days into it.

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