Key Preview Takeaways:

• Fortune's Weave clearly attempts to front-load more of its individual heroes' stories, and we applaud it.
• The new Blaze Arts moves offer a fun risk/reward system in combat.
• While you can now hop between story paths, the save-game system might annoy players looking to see everything the new Fire Emblem has to offer.

After seven years, Fire Emblem is finally returning to the world introduced in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There’s a lot of similarities to be found in the structure of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, but there are also plenty of ways that developer Intelligent Systems is building out the features that defined Three Houses in some pretty exciting ways. Even though I was only able to get just a few chapters in with each of the main heroes, I’ve already found several new additions I’m very fond of… and maybe one that I’m not as high on.

1) Walking the Hero’s Path

It was only after a few quick prologue missions in Fortune’s Weave that I realized my silent yet slightly customizable player character, Eshmel, was in over their head as one of the last lines of defense in a land overtaken by the undead. With no hope of winning the war on their own, Eshmel quickly took a backseat as I traveled back in time to control one of four heroes (dubbed Flame Lords) competing in coliseum battles known as the Heroic Games.

Though you’re supposedly sent back to the past to “assist” one of the heroes so they can survive to help you back in the present, I really like how the hero’s own personal stories usually take center stage over the distant threat in the future. This lets each story path have a unique flow as you uncover mysteries relevant to one particular character, rather than having to tread familiar ground across each hero. For example, playing as the young boy Cai wastes little time in having you travel to the capital city of the Dagdan Empire where his father is soon imprisoned, and must attend a qualifying event just to prove he’s tough enough to earn a spot in the games. However, playing as the vengeful musician and dancer Leda throws you into the middle of a revenge plot to track down and kill everyone responsible for her father’s murder. That bloody road leading to the coliseum ended up being an entirely different one compared to Cai, and thanks to the help of a goddess, Leda gets entered even after arriving just as the games start.

So far, it seems like Fortune’s Weave is taking the opposite path of Three Houses, front-loading a more unique and personal story for each of its main heroes, before funneling their journey into the near future where you’ll presumably team up with any story path you’ve completed to face off against the undead army that has now overrun the land. It feels like a very smart move, and I’m hoping the latter half of the game makes use of all the different ways you can team up with the characters you’ve built up over the earlier parts of each story path.

2) Cursed Ties That Bind

Another welcome addition to making each story path feel unique is the addition of each hero getting their own slew of abilities, headlined by new moves called Blaze Arts. Each of the main characters comes into possession of legendary artifacts that all seem to be cursed, and allow you to develop new battlefield strategies, whether that’s hurling a ball of explosive fire as Cai, teleporting through barriers as Dietrich, or bolstering your allies with a song as Leda. These powerful moves come with a few interesting side effects to consider: Using them saps a portion of your health, but also starts to build a gauge (one of the few ideas Fortune’s Weave seems to have taken from 2023’s Fire Emblem: Engage). Use enough Blaze Arts across a single battle and you’ll get a substantial stat boost for that hero. However, if you start to rely on it too much and fill the meter entirely, you’ll suffer a “burst” and have your max HP reduced for the remainder of the battle. It’s a really fun risk/reward system that allows you to experiment in finding a sweet spot of using these new powers without putting your hero at risk.

Even beyond battle, the unique backgrounds and quirks each hero possesses add new possibilities not found in any other story path. Cai’s innate kindness allows him to detect more people in need leading to bigger boosts of renown to make up for his inexperience, while Leda can perform at towns across the world map to earn unique rewards and new songs for her Blaze Arts. It’s little aspects like these that can end up influencing very different paths to take while exploring the world, depending on who you’re playing as.

3) The Road Goes Ever On

Speaking of exploring the world, Fortune’s Weave has its own unique spin on a traversable world map. After getting acquainted with the Dagdan Empire and reaching its capital, I was soon invited to spend a bit of my free time before my coliseum games to go exploring the continent. While there are still plenty of things to do in the city (as was the case in Three Houses’ Garreg Mach Monastery), activities here rarely actually cause time to advance. To really pass the time, you need to get out into the world. The more you travel its roads, the more you’ll discover new landmarks: places to gather food and resources, towns to trade at and find unique items, and of course, enemies or mini-dungeons that can blockade your path.

When combined with the calendar of events happening back in the main city, exploring the world adds another layer of strategy and nuance. Undertaking subquests and the like helps you earn renown to unlock more of the map and other rewards, but you also don’t heal up unless you find a spot to make a feast, or return to the capital to rest at an inn. I also had to set a few reminders for myself of special events happening back at the capital, and made sure I had a few days to spare traveling back the way I came to reach town before the event was over (just don’t be like me and set the reminder on the day of, or you’ll eventually make it back four days after it’s over).

Since Fortune’s Weave has less of an emphasis on training than the school teaching in Three Houses, there’s a lot more freedom to focus on the aspects that interest you more, and exploring its world is one of the best ways to get stronger and more prepared before the next big battle. Of course, there’s only so much your rag-tag crew can do on its own.

4) Shopping For Teammates

It’s no secret that one of Fire Emblem’s most iconic features is the ability to grow your army by recruiting a colorful cast of characters to your side, and Fortune’s Weave plays on the idea of a massive tournament of heroes by turning the capital city of Dagsion into the world’s biggest shopping mall for sellswords.

The city streets are teeming with all manner of recruitable characters from different walks of life. Many of them are technically part of different clans that you may be facing in battle or allied with temporarily during certain rounds, giving you a chance to see them in action. Recruiting these gladiators takes both renown from your deeds, and getting to know them by using gifts or sharing meals together. Each character has their own requirements, so you’ll need to work harder to impress some more than others, and the story path you're on can also dramatically change these requirements (some might be off-limits entirely!). Peter might be Cai’s childhood friend, but apparently that doesn’t mean I can’t be his new best friend if I gift him enough treats.

5) Swapping Stories

While I loved each of the grand sweeping stories in Three Houses that you could choose from, I will admit having to replay the similar intro each time was a bit daunting. Not only is Fortune’s Weave remedying this with the more unique intros mentioned earlier, they have also added the ability to freely swap between hero paths as much as you want. As soon as you reach the capital city of Dagsion, you can have Eshmel return to the ruined present time, and select from one of the other hero paths to progress, or go back right to where you left off.

Not only does this give you the freedom to decide when you want to experience the other hero’s stories without starting the game over from scratch, but it also feeds into the larger story beat of trying to change fate to ensure these heroes can assist you at the story’s climax. In many ways it feels like Fortune’s Weave took notes on the recent Zelda games. Presumably, you'll be able to attempt the final boss with or without backup. This might mean that you can approach the finale with a fighting chance after completing just one story path, but you’re also able to go back and see them all to completion to give yourself even better odds. Just… don’t be like me and try to have Eshmel solo everything, because it did NOT end well.

The only glaring caveat of this approach is that it seems like Fortune’s Weave only has one save file to work with, which I expect not everyone will be a fan of. There is, however, a silver lining: when you interact with one of the obelisks that sends you to a hero’s path, I was able to turn back time to any chapter I had completed, which would erase all data after that particular moment in time. It’s a nice little compromise that allows for quick replayability, but I don’t know if you could keep a completed path once you rewind the clock again.

The Hatoful Birdfriend

So far, a lot of what Fortune’s Weave has introduced to build off the features of Three Houses have been welcome additions. But I’m feeling like I need to put my foot down on at least one of them. If you played Three Houses, you might remember a little thing called Tea Time. It was a way for the player character Byleth to get to know everyone over a nice cup of tea, and if you handled conversation topics well, you got a support boost. I was a fan of this little feature (I even participated in a silly video where we discussed character rankings over a cup of tea). Fortune’s Weave has a… slightly different spin on this idea.

Instead of sharing a cup of tea, you can have a character feed the Pale Raven (aka Eshmel) to enter a similar scenario, complete with random conversation topics that you have multiple choices to reply to. Leda might mention to you that when she plays her vihuela instrument, she tends to get nostalgic. But here is where we get to the root of the problem: I’m a bird. My responses are quite ridiculously limited. Such a conversation may give me such amazing choices between “flap your wings,” “sing a tune,” or “gaze intently.” Apparently, there are correct and incorrect ways that birds are expected to respond to these topics!?! Unsurprisingly, I failed all three on my first Bird Time.

Still, it’s not the worst thing the series has ever done (I still do my best to pretend Fire Emblem Fates didn’t have a face-rubbing feature). I remain very interested to see how your decisions in the past will have an effect on characters interacting with Eshmel in the present timeline, and I’m more excited than ever to see each of the story paths to completion to see how they’ll help me turn the tides and save the world from its ultimate destruction.

Brendan Graeber is a senior guides editor, and after writing both the review and guide for Fire Emblem: Three Houses at the same time, he swore he'd never do that again. Guess how that's turning out. Follow him on Blue Sky at @raggafragga.bsky.social