by Preston Rizzo
About two weeks ago, Nintendo revealed the newest game in the Fire Emblem franchise. The game is called Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave, and frankly, I’m not too excited about it. I’ve been a fan of the series for about 10 years and played some amount of every game since the first 3DS release of the series, Awakening, and even the mobile game and weird hack and slash spin-offs. I follow the series pretty closely and generally get interested when there’s a new release. With this one, though, I just don’t feel it and want to talk about why.
The most immediate reason is that it’s an exclusive release for the Switch 2, and it’s a little hard to get excited about spending $500 on a device for a single, specific game. I also don’t understand why it has to be an exclusive for any reason other than to force people into the Switch 2 ecosystem ASAP because this isn’t really a graphically intensive series. While I admit the cut scenes look 1,000 times better than the first Switch release, Engage from two years ago on the Switch also looked way better, so they haven’t shown a feature to justify the hardware upgrade.
I’m also concerned about how the story will be handled. The series over the last three non-remake games has experimented with split stories and routes. They’ve done both ends of the spectrum; Fates had three very different routes but charged for each, sort of like Pokémon split releases, and Three Houses had all routes in one purchase but with barely anything unique across them. Ideally, they could split the difference with a little more uniqueness while keeping it in one package. However, that’s unlikely so I’d rather they just do one coherent story.
My biggest worry is what angle they’ll take for gameplay. Three Houses, with which this game clearly has a narrative tie-in, has arguably the worst gameplay in the franchise. So, it’s plausible for them to also draw from its gameplay, which I desperately hope isn’t what they learned from that game’s success. They removed all class-based weapon restrictions so when once only cavalry, pegasi riders, and lancers could use lances, now everyone can, whether it is a thief or a brigand. They brought back gender locked classes for no reason, crippling any male mages that you didn’t train for riding way earlier in the game. Bows are objectively the best weapon as you can get a skill that removes the one weakness of not being able to counterattack range attacks very easily.
The complete lack of class restrictions means objectively best way to play is to give every non-mage the wyvern class and fly through the entire game. It just doesn’t incentivize creativity or actually trying new things the way the other games can, and I don’t want it back.
So, in the end, while I’m excited a new game is coming from a series I like, the exclusivity, story, and gameplay have left me worried due to how the game is drawing more inspiration and story tie-ins to Three Houses rather than doing something original. I’ll inevitably check the game out at some point, but it probably won’t be a day one buy, even if I get a Switch 2 before the game releases.
