Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Review: Brilliant Tactics, Buried in Busywork

I have a complicated relationship with modern Fire Emblem. Three Houses had the story and a monastery I was sick of by hour forty; Engage had the battles and a plot I have already forgotten. Fortune's Weave is Intelligent Systems trying to have both at once - and the surprising part is how close it gets before its own ambition trips it up.

What it is

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave launched on 17 September 2026 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, co-developed by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. It is single-player only, a 27.5 GB download, and costs $69.99 on the US eShop - full Nintendo price, in other words.

The setting is the Dagdan Empire, in the same world as Three Houses' Fódlan, and specifically its capital Dagsion, a Mediterranean-flavoured city built around the Heroic Games - a tournament whose winners are granted their heart's desire. You play Eshmel, a customisable "Savior" sent back five years from the future by Fortuna, the Goddess of Fate, to keep four contestants alive before the demon god Balor returns: Cai, who wants his father out of prison; Dietrich, a Fódlan noble hunting worthy opponents; Theodora, trying to restore the worship of a goddess; and Leda, a dancer in disguise looking for her father's killers.

How it plays

It is a three-act structure. Part one gives each of the four heroes their own route, run on a calendar: train, recruit, explore the city, crawl dungeons, fight in the arena. Part two merges into classic chapter-by-chapter Fire Emblem, and part three goes big with large-scale army battles.

Combat comes in two flavours. Matches are proper grid-based Fire Emblem, and they are the best the series has had in years. Weapon durability is back, which I expected to hate and ended up loving, because it plays off the new Blaze Arts - signature moves that burn your own HP instead of your weapon. Every turn becomes a small budget meeting: spend the sword or spend the blood? Using Blaze Arts also fills a Blaze Gauge: at the halfway mark the unit enters Overblaze, a boost to its stats and Arts, but fill the gauge completely and it Bursts - the bonuses end and the unit's max HP is halved for the rest of the battle. So the budget meeting gets a third item: how greedy can I afford to be? In Classic mode, with permadeath on, a well-timed Overblaze is a lifesaver, and it produces exactly the kind of last-stand stories this series lives on. Varied arena terrain keeps the tournament from going stale, class changes sit behind certification exams, and this is the first Fire Emblem with Switch 2 mouse controls - a better fit for grid tactics than I expected.

Clashes are the other flavour: party-based dungeon fights closer to Fire Emblem Echoes. They are fine. The transition in and out of them is clunky, and weak enemies can be auto-battled - which tells you what the developers think of them too.

The lows

This game is too long, and not in the good way. A brisk run lands around 80 hours, and a thorough playthrough of all four routes goes well past 100 - some reviewers report 150 and up. A worrying share of that is city busywork - errands, gathering, recruitment conversations that go on and on. The game seems to know it: you can jump ahead on the calendar and let units train automatically. When a game offers a button to skip its own content, the content is the problem.

Four routes also mean four stories competing for attention, and they are not equal. Leda's revenge plot in particular feels rushed, which is a shame given the premise. Part three leans on constant reinforcements and corrupted terrain that debuffs your units - difficulty by attrition rather than by design. And 30 fps in handheld mode on brand-new hardware is nothing to brag about, even if the bright, saturated art style is a clear step up from Three Houses.

Price and availability in our region

Full price, Switch 2 only, and Nintendo's first-party games rarely see meaningful discounts, so waiting for a sale is not much of a strategy. There is no Croatian localisation - English, German, French, Italian and Spanish are all in - and the age rating flags in-game purchases. On the plus side, measured in hours per euro, you will not run out of game.

Who it's for

Tactics fans with a Switch 2 and patience. If you loved the scale of Three Houses, you are home. If you loved the focus of Engage, you will adore the Matches and grit your teeth through the rest. Newcomers: much of the social layer can be skipped, but it is still a lot of game to swallow.

Verdict

Fortune's Weave has the best tactical core Fire Emblem has had in a long time, wrapped in a good twenty hours of stuff I would happily never do again. Great game, poor editor.

Score: 8/10

Image: Crisco 1492 / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo_Switch_2_in_Docking_Console.jpg