Nintendo opens up Fire Emblem with the gigantic Fortune’s Weave

Fortune’s Weave brings Fire Emblem into Nintendo’s open-ended design trend by letting players tackle multiple stories within a single, sprawling playthrough. Instead of one linear campaign, the game offers four primary hero routes that can be played in two parts, then combined into a final act that ties the narratives together. From early on the game allows you to switch between heroes and storylines at will, and it even permits merging stats from characters used across routes to create exceptionally powerful units later on. The game’s structure divides play into a prologue, two-part individual hero arcs, and a third part where completed heroes and their allies join the main protagonist to confront an undead threat. Part one centers on a tournament in the city of Dagsion, where you can prepare, recruit allies, and explore a large map to gather resources and tackle smaller skirmishes. Part two focuses heavily on continuous battles in a wartime setting with far less pre-battle preparation, while part three expands the scope by letting you manage multiple squads across the map simultaneously. Gameplay mixes classic Fire Emblem turn-based strategy with some RPG-style encounters. Main battles play out on the grid with class-based units and strategic objectives; success rewards careful team composition and use of buffs, heals, and special abilities. On the game’s standard difficulty with permadeath off, the reviewer reported little trouble, often relying on in-battle “blessings of gods” that can rewind moves when needed. Dungeon and some story fights play more like traditional turn-based RPG battles and include an autoplay option the reviewer used to skip them for experience and stat gains. The game’s freedom also brings repetition and pacing issues. Replaying similar levels and cutscenes across multiple hero routes made parts of the campaign feel repetitive, and managing several squads in part three could slow progress across the map. A returning social minigame — now called “bird time,” derived from a feature in Three Houses — felt odd to the reviewer despite fitting the plot. Still, the core loop of training characters, building teams, and tackling battles kept the reviewer engaged, with the full cycle culminating in roughly 130 hours of play and a rewarding payoff when all squads converged for the final acts.