Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave released earlier this year to many rave reviews from both fans and critics. Despite it's four main characters and long run time, the reviews insisted that it didn't drag, it was engaging and fun the whole way through the entire three-part saga. I had only finished 2.5 of the 4 routes in its predecessor, Three Houses -- in part due to how reptitive everything was -- so I was excited to dive into a game that revisits some of the 3H lore with supposedly less of the repetition that FE:3H was known for.
Ah, how naive I was!
side note: the drawing of Leda here took me so much longer than I had expected! "I'll just do a redraw of her sidequest dance cut-in," I said. "it won't take long, because it's a redraw." naive again! and, admittedly, I ended up completely cutting her right arm situation because that arm position is way easier for a 3D model to do than for my brain to understand!
Sadly, for me, I have a lot of gripes with the gameplay loop of FE:FW that do overshadow the parts the game does well. The main story battles and paralogue battles both have interesting challenges that scratch my brain in just the way I've come to appreciate from the FE series. But, then there's... all the other stuff that happens inbetween those battles. TBH, I think FE:FW definitely has the potential to be among my favorite FEs! But there's so much other crap getting in the way of my enjoyment of the core FE gameplay that FE:FW will likely languish at the bottom of my tier list.
so, if you, like me, have many a fond memory of playing FE on the GBA and consider those games some of the top entries in the series, you're in good company! allow me to invite you on my gripefest for FE:FW.
The Core FE Experience
ok, before getting too far into why FE:FW falls short for me, it will be helpful for me to define what I consider to be the core FE experience. Mainly:
- 1.
Casually, mid- to late-game chapters/maps should take about an hour to complete. This makes the time loss not too devastating if a character dies and you want to restart the map. It also means that a ~30 chapter game takes ~30 hrs to complete.
- 2.
Whether friend or foe, many characters are recruited on the battlefield. Some of the characters are tricky to recruit and require extra strategy.
- 3.
Characters have a reason to join you. Maybe it's not always, like, the most interesting reason, but there is a reason!
- 4.
That one seemingly-weak child character who gets hella good stat increases and is an absolute enemy-wrecking beast by the end game.
- 5.
The plot is, honestly, at best, serviceable. There's some shit monarch who's being influenced by a dragon or whatever to fuck up local politics and eventually you take down the dragon or evil god or whatever. It's not super important.
- 6.
The battles scratch that strategy-hungry itch in my brain.
FE:FW manages to deliver on some of these things, but ultimately gets bogged down in adding too much other stuff. let me break it down!
Beware mild game structure spoilers below!
1: Chapter Length
FE:FW chapter length is easily the longest of any FE game. While in most previous FEs you can immediately go from one battle to the next with minimal distractions, FE:FW's chapters are filled with distractions. to FE:FW's credit, you technically can skip all the distraction. Technically! but then you're missing out on additional benefits from side quests and building support with characters you want to recruit. at least for my first playthrough, there has been a real sense of FOMO that has prevented me from skipping haphazardly to the next main battle opportunity.
2&3: Character Recruitment
hoo boy, does this one disappoint me. I love to recruit my little guys on the battlefield!!! I love rescuing weak characters who are surrounded by strong enemies. I love carefully talking to enemies with my lord -- and do my damnedest to not accidentally kill or be killed by my future teammate. I love seeing that little "Talk" indicator pop up next to the face of my next anime friend!
however, FE:FW's main mode of recruitment is to run around and give gifts to and eat dinner with everyone in the hub area until they like you enough (often support level 3!!!) to say "hey, yeah, I guess I can join you sometimes even though I've got my own thing going on." ok thanks??? my first Flame Lord choice, Leda, is on a vengeful quest and tbh I think these recruits should maybe, like, actually, um, care that that's what she's trying to do. just maybe! what I'm saying is that I, myself, would be an unrecruitable NPC in FE:FW because it does not make sense to me to join any of these Flame Lords when they don't even have support conversations with most recruits!
on the other hand, I can appreciate that the writers did not want to come up with one-dimensional conversations between every recruit, but still! there are some characters on my team that I don't know a fuckin thing about because there's no one else for them to talk to! what's their personality? what's their reason for coming to the coliseum? hell if I fuckin know, man.
I know in Act 2 there are a couple of characters you recruit on the battlefield, but, like, that's it. and you don't even recruit them until the battle is over. sigh.
4: From Weak to Beast Child Character
FE:FW does have this character and her name is Mu and I love her and I would die for her, thank you.
But it is also extremely funny that her mom requires support level 3 to recruit even on Leda's route, like, girl, aren't you worried about your daughter. don't you just want to, like, join me to watch over your daughter? no? well, fine, because your daughter is hella more powerful than you anyway.
5: Plot
look, I'm not going to pretend that I've ever played an FE for the plot. like, FE:3H does have an interesting plot with the different paths you follow, but truly interesting plots are not something I'm coming to FE for. that said! I think FE:FW is doing some interesting things with its plot! Seeing the fall of this empire from the perspective of four (and soon to be eight total with DLC) characters is a neat concept and I really would like to experience each version of the story. even in the midst of Act 2, it's not entirely clear how everything is going to go to shit for Act 3 -- and Hong Hua's participation in Act 2 is particularly interesting to me. it's neat that the gods are so present and willing to interfere in the affairs of mortals, and it's neat that a lot of the characters in FE:FW are ancestors of characters we know from FE:3H.
buuuut -- and this goes back to my issues with the chapter length -- there's so many distractions between chapters that I often found myself forgetting who key characters were! this could be fixed pretty easily with a glossary, but alas. no glossary for FE:FW. I suppose I am just doomed to be confused after running around Dagda killing pointless swarms all over the map.
6: The Battlefield
The battles, though? the battles are good. the real ones, I mean. not the filler ones on the map, but the proper battles for the main story and the paralogues. the paralogues especially introduce some interesting enemies, like a big ol' sand worm that you should probably just avoid while also herding weak villager NPCs to the exit. good stuff!
however, I do think the Act 1 main battles do suffer from mainly taking place in the coliseum. even though the coliseum gets a facelift for each battle, a la The Hunger Games, it's impossible to ignore the fact that you are just in the coliseum again and again and not a more interesting locale. Act 2 finally has you traveling the map for battles, but since I've already been all over Dagda doing little skirmishes, even the new battle maps don't feel that interesting. despite how much of the map you're encouraged to travel, it lacks a certain of sense of discovery for each chapter that is present in some past FE games. this is, ultimately, a minor quibble, but is just another issue that I have with the world map.
Closing Thoughts:
look, I have not even fully finished Act 2 yet. I still have Act 3 to tackle. I would like to hit credits on this game! but, boy, have I already played so much FE:FW. Act 1 took me a full 40 hours to play through Leda's 12 chapters.
there's just so much to do in FE:FW and most of it feels like busywork! I genuinely can't wrap my brain around IntSys's reasoning to add so much padding to what would have already been a long experience. why pad out the thing that people come to the FE series for -- the strategy battles -- and add in so many things that are not that.
despite all my griping, I would really like to play through at least one more Flame Lord's route -- and my plan is to do so in a super pared down way:
- 1.
No recruiting characters outside of the core team. Those guys are not my friends and I do not know them. It's just my little team of five, all the way.
- 2.
Minimal side quests; prioritize paralogues; use the auto-leveler. Zoom to the main battle as fast as I comfortably can.
- 3.
Take more advantage of skill training and support building within my core team.
- 4.
Skip Act 2. (Side note: The fact that this is an option is crazy to me -- like an admission that IntSys put too much game in this game.)
I think if I keep to these self-imposed rules, I'll have a more enjoyable time on a subsequent playthrough. maybe! hopefully! and if not, well, good thing they've been putting some of the older FE games on NSO lol.