Fire EmblemFortune's Weave

Strategy and tactics buffs, and everyone who can't relax without pushing units around a grid map: to your Switch 2s. Intelligent Systems' new Fire Emblem came out on 17 September, and most of the critics say they found the best combat system in the series right here. Let's see what that praise rests on.

First, a caveat. This verdict rests on the game's own systems, the day-one patch and the published reviews. The game is a Switch 2 exclusive, so it isn't on Steam. We have no Steam user reviews either (so one side of the scales is left to the critics whether we like it or not).

Story: one wish, four heroes

The game is set in the Dagda Empire. Gods have ruled the empire for 1,500 years. In the capital, Dagsion, a tournament called the Heroic Games is held, and the winner gets a single wish. Four heroes enter the tournament:

CAI: A boy who wants to free his imprisoned father. DIETRICH: A swordmaster forever hunting for an opponent stronger than himself. THEODORA: A queen chasing her homeland's dream. LEDA: A musician out for revenge.

According to the press there is a frame story on top of this: the goddess Sothis sends you five years back in time, and you try to change the heroes' fates. Meanwhile the demon god Balor threatens the empire. This detail isn't on Nintendo's official pages; it comes from press coverage. The name Sothis will ring a bell for anyone who played Three Houses.

How it differs from Three Houses

And that's exactly where the comparison should start. In Three Houses you picked a house, played that route to the end, and started the game over for the others. In Fortune's Weave, time travel lets you jump back and forth between the four heroes' paths, and each hero's progress is saved separately. So when you get stuck on one route, you can switch to another. On paper, a pretty clever fix.

Battles are played as tournament matches on grid maps. Between matches you wander around Dagsion. You buy gear and "boons" (a kind of blessing that powers up your units) from the shops, and unlock new facilities as you go. You can head outside the walls to train your team. Reviews also mention a colosseum, dungeons and free-time management. Of course, that last item brings back Three Houses' monastery weeks. There too, half the people loved that part and the other half were bored stiff.

What the critics say

The numbers are from launch (scores on aggregator sites drift over time). On Metacritic it opened at 89 from roughly 60-70 critic reviews. On OpenCritic the top critic average is 89, and 97 percent of critics recommend the game. IGN gave it 10 out of 10, Eurogamer 5 out of 5. GameSpot sits at 9/10, Famitsu at 36 out of 40 (each of the four reviewers gave it a 9). At the low end are Game Informer with 8.75 and Nintendo Life with 8/10.

If the four paths look alike, time travel is nothing more than a convenience.

The praise gathers in two places. The first is the tactical combat: several critics call it the best in the series to date. The second is the four heroes' interlocking routes: each one has the depth of a full game on its own. The complaints are clear too. The opening is slow. The free-time management repeats itself. The pace sags in the later chapters. And the routes aren't as different from one another as you'd expect. That last one matters, because the game's whole idea is built on four different paths. If the four paths look alike, time travel is nothing more than a convenience.

Patch, price, language

The day-one update, 1.0.1, adds free special weapons from other games in the series, according to Nintendo Life. These are handed out within the story, in places like Dagsion. The patch also fixes a few bugs. Nintendo's own patch notes page couldn't be found, so the details came through the press. The download is 27.4 GB, so clear some space on your card.

Prices, as reported in the press: the digital version is $69.99, the standard boxed version $79.99. The Dagdan Collection is around $120. Inside you get a steelbook, character cards, a map of Dagda and an artbook. If you're not a collector this box adds nothing for you; the game itself is the same game.

No Turkish. There's Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean and two Chinese options. In Fire Emblem the support conversations and the story run pretty long, so if your English is shaky, factor that in from the start. In Australia it's rated M, for mature themes and violence.

Verdict

Fortune's Weave takes the skeleton Three Houses built and tries to fix its most criticised part. Switching between routes lifts the burden of starting the same game over four times. On the combat side, the critics are behind the game almost unanimously. The reason the score doesn't go past 90 is that the complaints come from exactly where the game stakes its claim. The routes are said to resemble each other, the free time repeats, the pace drops towards the end. And the reason it doesn't go lower is this: in a tactics game the thing that matters most is the decision on the map, and in this game that's counted as the high point of the series.

For those who loved Three Houses and put up with the monastery weeks, this is one not to miss. Those who love the grid map but get bored killing time in town will do their wallets a favour by waiting for a digital sale.