By Isaac Espinosa

The Heroic Games of Dagsion present a simple but alluring prize for anyone who dares to take part: Win, and you can have any one wish granted. And so, with this reward on the line, whose story will you watch unfold as fascinating characters fight for their one, very personal desire?

The alluring tale sets you up in a unique way in this tactical RPG offering, so let’s break it down. Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave is the 18th installment in the long-running Fire Emblem series and it takes place many years after the events of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the previous game.

In 1454, the region of Dagda had been brought to ruin by the Demon God Balor, and his army. There, the Progenitor God Sothis enlists a lone soul called Eshmel to return to the past and work with what’s left of Dagda’s resistance. The reason? Defeat that awful demon god. 

Their first objective is to seek out the Goddess Fortuna, who will help guide them during this journey. Once returning to the year 1450, Eshmel meets two Survivors, and helps them fend off the Demonic Forces headed their way. With Survivor Hong Hua’s help, she and Eshmel make their way to the ruins of the Dagsion Empire, and meet up with Fortuna. 

Here, the story of Fortune’s Weave begins to divert and you’re given agency – the choice of intercepting the pasts of any previous Flame Lord, all participants of the Dagsion Empire’s heroic games. Each has their own journey to follow, and it is up to Eshmel to help prevent the events that cause them all to lose their lives. 

There’s Cai, a kind-hearted village boy who enters the Heroic Games to wish for his father’s freedom. Dietrich is a swordsman from a far off region who joins the games to test his strength and face powerful foes. Theodora is a noble queen of the Saramis region, who joins to protect and fulfill the dreams of her people. And Leda uses the competition as a way to seek revenge against her father’s killer, and others who destroyed her home town.

This is where the beauty of each of the four Flame Lords begins to shine. Aside from all having their own colorful personalities and traits that makes them fun to follow, they all hold a darkness within them that both figuratively and physically manifests in their stories. Leda, for instance, holds such an intense amount of depth to her seemingly basic profile. Her quest for vengeance puts her down a path that throughout every turn of her story, shows how unhealthy and corruptive it is to her well being. 

Leda’s constant thinking of her father’s killer, Bertrand, is continuously compared to something similar to love, in that she can never stop thinking about the day she cleaves her blade through him. It’s salient that so many people in her close circle, whether it be her loyal guard Buccar, or her childhood rival Olympia, are always trying to push Leda to choose a better path. 

Her walk toward the darkness is something that feels so human, so complicated and sad, and the fact the game never shies away from calling Leda’s path the wrong one is incredibly bold. 

As for the other Flame Lords, Dietrich himself has to deal with his undying bloodlust due to the curse of his blade, Answerer. And even as he learns more about what it means to be human, he always has to battle this drive to fight anyone that exudes strength. 

Theodora, in her pursuit to fight for her people, denies herself the right to live a normal life, casting herself off as incapable of doing so until she wins the Heroic Games. 

This thematic throughline of the Flame Lords battling their demons is what makes the story of Fortune’s Weave feels so compelling. More than any Fire Emblem game, the protagonists feel so relatably human, not only due to their conviction, but because of their damning flaws as people. 

It’s no secret that Fire Emblem has become iconic for its grid based battle system, which has stood the tests of time for each of its many installments. Fortune’s Weave elevates the flow by giving you plenty of things to do in between story chapters, while making sure that the core part of the battles still feels incredibly sound. 

Skirmishes outside of the main town of Dagsion, and all of the main story battles, follow that grid style of combat. You prepare your units by giving them weapons to wield, items to hold, and by studying the layout of not just the map, but the enemies as well. 

The maps of Fortune’s Weave really test your ability to adapt your strategy and come into every battle with at least some kind of plan. Some notable chapters for me were when the Heroic Games proposed an unfair advantage for the opponent. One of Dietrich’s maps, for example, has the enemies specialize in the Charioteer Class, which has the unique ability to charge forward and deal damage to any enemy they ram into. 

The solution? Use the stone pillars that the map grants you in order to block their path to protect your units, or even trap the enemy and prevent them from moving. 

Also, take the map in Leda’s path where you have to fight against a Pegasus flyer that puts up a high defense stat, protecting them from damage. How to maneuver around this? Target the mages that are upping the main enemies’ defenses, and adapt your strategy around them first. 

This rhythm of always keeping pace with the combat and changing your game plan is what has defined Fire Emblem’s gameplay for the last three decades, and Fortunes Weave absolutely does not disappoint in this regard. 

Of course, the gameplay of Fortunes Weave isn’t just the battles. When not battling, you’ll be spending most of your free time either touring Dagsion in preparation for the next part of the story, or expanding the World Map. In Dagsion, you can buy weapons for your units, spend time with them by doing activities such as eating or watching theater together and grow your bonds, or training them to make them even stronger. 

Upon going further out into the world, however, these options expand even more. You can tackle skirmishes against bands of random enemies, go to other regions to buy exclusive items from their markets, or, my personal favorite, try to become victorious in the newly improved dungeons. As one of my favorite mechanics from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, I was incredibly delighted to see how dungeons felt so much more cohesive in Fortunes Weave. They didn’t break the pace of the game as much as they did in Valentia. 

The best part about all of this though, is that you can explore as much of this map as you like, whenever you’re given the chance. The choice falling upon you means there’s a lot of room for creativity for each run through of the game, since you can explore as much or as little of the map as you want.

The flaws of Fortunes Weave don’t even come close to dampening the experience whatsoever. But it’s still important to point them out, as these particular critiques from the fanbase have been consistently popping up. The primary one I’ve seen comes from the recruitment system. In order to recruit many of the characters in Dagsion, you need to have a certain level of bond with the character, and also what’s called a high Renown Level. In order words, you need to be well known within Dagsion. The big issue with this, is that some characters require a higher Renown Level and Support Level than others, and that number changes with each of the Flame Lords paths. 

This can be daunting if a character you really like, or a unit who is really good, is locked behind these tough requirements. You won’t be getting them until the end of that route. And while you’d have a unit that matches the average level of your party, this also means missing out on certain growths in their stats, and proper customization of the kind of unit they’d become. This loss of customization is unfortunate.

Yet I feel this critique doesn’t really hold up for two reasons. One, each of the Flame Lords have plenty of units in Dagsion with less strict requirements for renown and support level. So it isn’t like you’re missing out in terms of quantity. Secondly, this actually presents a unique opportunity for each Flame Lord to have different characters for their respective routes, and by extension, grow attached to even more of Fortune’s Weave’s cast of characters. The game incentivizes you to play through each of the Flame Lord’s stories. Even though you technically have the option of not doing this, it should be seen as a way to recruit new characters you may not have used in a previous route. 

After 60 hours in Fortune’s Weave, I can say that it is genuinely incredible. While the previous Fire Emblem entry, Engage, keeps it simple to celebrate the franchise as a whole, Fortune’s Weave treads new ground in order to bring about peaks that I feel aren’t matched anywhere else in this series. There are gloriously-written characters. The map design is brilliantly created. And even after completing the routes of each Flame Lord, there still feels like there is so much to do. Fortune’s Weave proves how and why Fire Emblem has risen to be one of Nintendo’s biggest juggernaut franchises. 

Bronx native Isaac Espinosa is a Member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Along with being named the Circle’s first assistant Mentor, Isaac also coached students for CEI Esports.

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