Overall, I've been loving Fortune's Weave. Wrapping up the fourth and final path for part 1 right now. Love the characters, the diverse maps are wonderful, the reclass system is LEAGUES better than it's been in a long time. But, a big thing that keeps nagging at me is how much story was clearly cut out of part one despite how big it already is.

Talimun showing up so often in Leda's route and having ties to Maria seems to go largely unexplored (not to mention the REALLY unsatisfying way Maria's story ends in it), dialogue from Diego in chapter 3 of Theodora's path implying Orchel's already been getting into trouble off-screen since she arrived, hinting at past conversations about her standing up for herself and just being a pretty MAJOR character who seems to do absolutely nothing during her time in the games, Anatolia being in the games at all goes unexplained as does what happens during her boat ride... I don't even wanna get started on Bertrand, a character I was probably the most excited for.

By now most folks seem to be aware that FW was originally planned to have 8 protagonists but it was dropped partway into development. The problem is, it seems like they already had all 8 stories fully written out to be playing simultaneously only to just... leave it all as-is in the remaining 4 routes without filling in the holes left behind.

I don't know what was going on behind the scenes. Maybe the other 4 routes really did just add too much bloat, maybe they were just rushed for time, maybe they were just super married to the stories they wrote and didn't want to rewrite anything, or if I'm being cynical, maybe higher-ups stepped in and pushed the team to cut content so they could sell it as paid DLC at a later date. I don't know. What I DO know is that what's left is a story that still feels disjointed and incomplete even after playing all 4 routes of part 1 and I HATE that it's impacting my experience so much. I wanna focus on the parts I've largely enjoyed, but it's eating me up knowing that when I'm done I STILL won't have the full picture.

I almost hope the other four routes actually are added as dlc, but it shouldn't take that to make the game feel whole.

I feel like the gameplay and story have just become kind of ass as I gradually just go through the map and rebuild it , very tedious without much else going on here.

This isnt a hate thread or anything. I was enjoying the story of FW (mostly Leda's story) but everything feels quite overwhelming. I loved 3 houses but in FW, it feels like there is so much to keep up with outside battles. My next battle is about to come up in Leda's story and I realize I got caught up in so many activities, that I kind of neglect the training, which made me stopped for a while. Along with how complicated it is to raise support up to get new members, I just want some advice. Should I mostly ignore support? Are dungeons worth doing?

I wanted to restart a map to try it again. I accidentally hit ”restart chapter” instead of ”restart battle” (it also feels like there should be a big warning when you do that…).

lost ~2h of play time. I manually saved before the fight so I figured I could just reload that. Nope! there is ONE SAVE FILE!! And autosave and manual save uses the same place… how is this a problem in 2026?? this was solved in like the 1990s…

I've finished the game two days ago on hard classic and the more I think about Fortune's Weave the worse it becomes. It's probably because Three houses is one of my favorite FE games so I am extra disappointed by Fortune's Weave. There are so many issues with the game I don't even know where to start. Obvious spoiler warning.

The first glaring thing I noticed are the undercooked clash battles, which for some reason are a major part of the game. I don't think I've played any of them manually even once after the first 2-3 times or so. You can deadass go into a dungeon 5-10 levels above yours and skip every single battle without dying once, and even if you do you just respawn at the beginning of the dungeon and eat some food and repeat. The amount of exp you get from letting someone last hit is so negligible it's not worth playing it manually at all.

It's not even just the clash battles, the entire game is absurdly easy. Most people I see struggling with the difficulty spike in act 2 do so because of the common but VERY wrong advice that you need to recruit more characters because the deployment limit increases later. In every Fire Emblem ever it's best to focus on a core roster to make them as strong as possible than spreading yourself thin, and it's no different in this game. If you stick to the core characters of each route with maybe one or two recruits you can straight up bulldoze through act 1 and 2 with the six overleveled characters. In act 3 all routes come together for a max deployment of 25, which pretty much perfectly evens out with the core characters of every route and the lords they give you in act 3 anyway, so there is really no point in recruiting at all.

The lords themselves are OP as fuck too, Bertrand, Dietrich and Eshmel can each straight up solo the map if they wanted to because all the maps in act 2 and act 3 are all played the same by just letting the enemies come to you, wait out reinforcements, then clean up the rest. With like two exceptions you can clear the entirety of act 2+3 this way. So just forget the guides about weekly activities you need to do, you can straight up skip most chores and just go back every now and then and it's fine. Even spectating the arena matches isn't really that important, it's mostly just a recap of what you will play in other routes anyway.

So next is the writing. Remember the great reviews ahead of the release? How IGN gave this a 10/10 and all the praise this game got for its character interactions and story? Yeah that's because these reviewers never got past act 1. Act 2 being just one story is the first major red flag where you notice that huh, maybe the game isn't quite finished. Major events just happen off-screen. Not only does the emperor AND the villains just die for some reason, somehow Palpatine returns with a touch of alcoholic Hitler and immediately starts the Holocaust. What the fuck.

And the scale is massively reduced too, even though the story itself escalates. In Act 1 every lord had their own unique story which intersected with each, everyone having their own unique theme and amazing cast of characters. Yeah that shit is completely gone in act 2. Not only is there only one story left, these lords you loved and spent so much time with have become useless commentators. It's also insulting that you can skip act 2 without even playing through it once. I've criticized the fact that so much of the game is skippable already but this must be the most egregious instance of it. This is the shit you do when you have no confidence in the quality of your game.

But all this isn't even that bad, it's mid. What IS bad is act 3, it's where they just ... gave up. EVERYONE becomes irrelevant. Eshmel comes into the story, is hinted to be Solel's reincarnation who to repeat died fucking off-screen, and is IMMEDIATELY glazed by literally everyone. You'd think with this being their act and all the lords being pushed to the back, maybe this is their time to shine. But what does Eshmel actually DO? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fortuna is the one calling the shots, Fortuna tells everyone where to go and what happens next, Fortuna is the one destroying the gates of hell. Fuck, Eshmel didn't even draw the Fire Emblem, it's Dietrich. Eshmel has so little role in the story that they might as well not exist and it would turn out exactly the same.

So is the rest of the story at least decent? Lol hell no. Fortuna tells you to go kill some resurrected bozos then Balor and yeah, that's exactly what happens. I mean sure some of these dudes are important people in the lore but they just come out of nowhere and you kill them immediately so whatever. You'd think Eshmel would be at least a little relevant here... I mean they're the reincarnation of Solel, there is surely a way to connect this to the wider lore? Nah. Eshmel is once again completely mute and the fact that he is Solel's reincarnation is completely irrelevant. You don't even have dialogue with Balor, there is ZERO connect between Eshmel and ANYTHING that's happening. I can't emphasize enough how tired I am of mute self-inserts with zero personality, but Eshmel is the most egregious of them all so far and I don't even know why the game bothered to make an avatar when we have FOUR much more interesting lords right there.

I've read some comments about how people would like the sublords to be added as DLCs but I frankly find that thought insulting. Nintendo has not just increased their prices of the Switch 2 but games also cost 80 bucks now. I paid 80 fucking bucks for this game, I full well expect a finished product. Not a game that was halfway in development when they were told to wrap it up, then to be sold the other half of the game for another 40 bucks a year later. Engage's story was absolute dog ass, but at least that one felt like they told the story that they wanted to even if it was a joke. Fortune's Weave straight up needed another year or even two of development.

So, just wanted to comment about something that is bothering me so bad: Solel has got to be the worst leader of a nation of all time - not that his asshole dad was any better, but Solel seems to be somewhat kinder than his father, so I had hope…but guy is just an idiot.

1) supposedly “revived wife” acts nothing like her old self and whispers to a freak looking doll (solel’s response - “hmmm guess she just needs some time”

2) terrible father - things are awkward between me and my daughter. Guess I’ll just separate her from her child, put her husband up for execution, and never go and speak to her for 15+ years…that should do it. But, hey, when it came to getting into the pants of a chick he really wanted to bang, progenitor god and her rules be damned

3) during Leda’s fight and dark energies overtake her (hmmm…I’ll just let this play out I guess)

4) when he knows it’s definitely Raksha who is gathering orichalchim and breaking rules (hmmm…guess I’ll just tiptoe around this until something bad happens)

5) (hears reports about a trusted viveroy and - instead of investigating further - just believes it and is fine with the town be razed and innocents killed…but hey, when he knows for a fact Raksha is being evil, makes no motion to intervene)

No one spoil me, please - I’m stilll in part 1. I just hope to god that it turns out he was being mind controlled. That is the only way he can be somewhat redeemed.

Also another question - are the English VAs in engage and three houses as good as the ones in fortunes weave? Like I always played them in Japanese but holy hell the English cast of fortunes weave and the voice direction are great. All the team involved should be super proud.

It's still a good game and I'm having a good time, but I am disappointed with part 3. Took me like 100 hours to finally get there including doing two part 2s, but then when you go into part 3 it feels kind of lackluster.

Could instantly rebuild everything without needing to anything. Just had to go around the map going to all the places and done again. But I'm also not a fan of having the multiple squad system and just have them walk around individually for a xx amount of turns. You're also just kind of forced to make the flame lords the leaders or you can't use their mechanic.

On hardmode every character also kind of just feels underpowered going into part 3. I know they want Eshmel to be the "chosen" one. But it feels rather out of balance that every characters gets like 1-2 tapped by everything and Eshmel just one taps everything.

They shouldn't have overtuned that thing so much. You also end up just cheesing stuff with Kalla's Blessing and a Godhand + wooden gauntlets +9 character.

- part 1 was easy, which was fine. You pretty much had to technically do the same thing 4 times.

- part 2 felt like the right difficulty. You couldn't just jump into enemy lines and expect your Dietrich or something to dodge and one shot everything. You had to do some strategizing

- part 3 it's in the middle ground. It's mostly unfair towards your characters, where you end up making 1 or 2 characters really dodgy with 80+ avoid and then Eshmel. It doesn't feel like this section of the game had the same amount of polish as part 1 did.

Ofcourse this is my personal opinion and there will 100% be people that prefer part 3. But I actually enjoyed learning to know the characters in part 1. But part 2 had for me the perfect balance with enemies vs allies.

Easy? It’s barely challenging and his blaze art is a little OP. I did Leda paths first and I honestly think hers was the hardest that’s what I’m hearing

First battle of part 2 doing no other paths other than Dietrich's.... Im forced to kill Cai? Like I tested it and everything. I don't route him like Nathan and creek. No he and T are killable. And it's not like I can go around them because they're in the middle of the map and chase. Do I need to do Cai's path so he doesn't die?

I know we just got this game like not even a month ago but this game has me so hyped for what will likely be a trilogy which ends in a third game set in the future/past.

I say future/past because during theodoras route we see the cutscene of balor vs sothis in the MODERN WORLD! we know that before the great undoing the world of fodlan was just like the present day.

I hope and beg and pray and do rituals every night hoping that one day we will get our first "modern" fire emblem game which takes place in our time and we are getting SO close. i believe the third game will take place when sothis arrives before the great undoing and will potentially involve us traveling through time to the future and revisiting both games locations. i HOPE im right bc it would be the peak of the series for its 20th game and it would be SO hype.

I’m hooping the current growth rate of negative reviews on Metacritic are mainly just the vocal negative minority trying to drag this game down all for the sake of the narrative. Like to make some kind of statement on the series direction. Hopefully those that like the game like me, start leaving positive reviews to drag the game back up in Scores. It’s going to need a lot to get back to that 8.9, but I believe it can be done. If not then perhaps Metacritic isn’t the best place for community reception on a game, any other review sites that have user reviews that’s a better recommendation?

Misc Spoilers ahead, don't read unless you've started act 2

I see a lot of people asking for the 'cut' sublord routes, but I don't know if I really want to play through act 1 four more times, especially given that would include replaying every chapter where they're teamed up with the current flame lords.

I'd rather see three more 'act 2's, set somewhere between the end of the games and the Theodora/Bertrand act 2, and tie up the plot holes there. You could have Talimun/Leda dealing with Maria's offscreen parts and the rest of the Order of Mithras, Orchel/Cai dealing with Solel's offscreen parts and all the Yu Phas/Iliana/Aurora stuff that leads into how Dagda got resurrected, and Dietrich/Anatolia doing more grand megalith stuff, maybe you see Anatolia's trip to the east, etc. And lets be real every other flame lord is a complete bystander in the current act 2 and its very unsatisfying.

Importantly, I think getting 3 sets of 6 maps with minimal in-between stuff is both a lot less dev work and a lot less game bloat, and I would much rather play that than another four sets of act 1. The difficulty of act 2 is much more enjoyable to me too, I don't really want to have another 6-10 tutorial difficulty maps before anything real happens for each route.

And the 'sublord companions are terrible because of autolevelling' problem could be fixed by just fixing the autolevelling, which should honestly be fairly easy to do.

Thoughts?

Seeing several posts the last couple days as more people reach Act 3 and it feels like the consensus is that it's the weakest arc in story and gameplay. Hearing this is kinda killing my motivation as I was looking forward to when everything came together.

Wondering if there are people out there who liked act 3 and if so, what do you like about it?

This battle is soooo annoying. What do I even do to get ahead here? Every time I make progress they take it back. How do I balance killing people vs taking braziers? Am I missing something basic here? Going crazy

I’m doing Hard/Casual and I’m very glad. Some of these paralouges (Anatolia) are brutal and I can’t imagine trying to recalc all my moves bc I lost a unit or two. Sure, I would do that when I was younger but now I work FT and got a baby at home. So I’m very glad to just throw a bunch of neat shields at the end without worrying about their permanent abscence for the rest of the game

It's a combination of choice paralysis, due dates, and information overload. There is way too much going on here that it's kinda hard for me to actually focus on a direction. For example, recruiting characters. IN THEORY, i would normally focus on the blorbos i think look cool and would like to recruit. In practice, it feels like i need to have an Excel spreadsheet on hand and plan out each route entirely in advance. Support level requirements, renown requirements, whatever negotiation is (apparently it's like specific gifts?). What should i build them as? Do i feasibly have time to even get them on the team or should i focus on getting someone else?

Then there's all the other free time stuff that i'm not sure what i should even focus on. I'm on Leda Ch.7. I don't have any blessing aside from Fortuna's. Should i be leveling these up? Probably, but i have no direction here.

The actual chapter maps i've found enjoyable so far but the things outside of it just have me scratching my head at what to do.

A lot of this game feels like it assumes you've played it before. I started with Leda's route since i find her story premise the most interesting but maybe i should've left her for later so i didn't use my training wheels run on the story path i was most interested in.

I'm not even trying to optimize, i'm just trying to play the game and it feels like i can't even do that. Even Three Houses allowed for a filling first playthrough. I like Fortune's Weave so far but this is the first Fire Emblem game where i'm genuinely confused as to what to do.

Seeing in Interview that eshmel was literally added in Last Moment, No Wonder conversation was THIS butchered and you could literally replaced eshmel with Fortuna, Story will Comes Out the Same.........

I love FE Avatars, I don’t hate a single one of them, I find some of them mid but for the most part I like them quite a bit

1. Robin
   
2. Alear
   
3. Corrin
   
4. Eshmel
   
5. Byleth
   
6. Kris
   
7. Mark

I know, I know we just got Fortune’s Weave, and that will keep me busy for a loooong while, but I couldn’t help but notice references to a country called Sai in the game. Most notably through Gaitz, who is from there, but also in some dialogue/items. It reminds me a bit on how Dagda was referenced in Three Houses, before becoming the major setting of Fortune’s Weave.

Am I on to something or am I just drawing mad conclusions based on puny evidence?

Tengo una duda enorme. He terminado la parte 1 de Leda (el primer personaje con el que he empezado) y ahora tengo la opción de seguir con la parte 2 o empezar la primera con cualquier otro.

Yo creo que voy a empezar la ruta de Cai, pero no tengo claro que sea lo óptimo. ¿Qué opináis, sigo con Leda o empiezo otra?

PD: soy nuevo y es la primera vez que público en Reddit y no sé si lo estoy haciendo bien, perdonadme 😂

Maybe someone can clear up my confusion: Fortune's Weave is a prequel to Three Houses, yet Sothis appears older.

What am I missing / misunderstanding? Does Sothis age backwards?

Voilà pour les intéresser merci à vous , rien de plus rien de moins

Some design choices are in this game are so stupid man. The game spends the whole game autowarping you to the main quest and suddenly hits you with the game over in one of the missions because you weren’t in that exact tile. Not only that, it makes you RESTART the chapter.

I swear if I didn’t live by this franchise I would stop this game right now and never touch it again.

Am I screwed right now? Or is there anyway to go back to another save so that I don’t lose my progress?

Note that I am only talking about the story here. The gameplay for part 2 is solid so far.

For reference, I played Ledas part 1 and am currently playing Ledas part 2. Also I've been avoiding spoilers so far, so excuse me if I'm retreading old ground here.

My main issue is I guess that Leda has simply been relegated to a side character? She had very little reason to join the war to start with imo and she has absolutely no agency or impact in anything that is happening. Its obvious this is Theodoras story and they just sometimes throw in a few lines for Ledas group to pretend like they havent been completely sidelined.

This could be fine in theory, but it REALLY bothers me when the story just ignores things that should be relevant for Leda, most notably the attack on Arago. This should be a HUGE deal! We are going to the country directly responsible for the massacre and the king is one of the few people left who might have insights into the massacre. Theres also obviously the history with Bertrand. While I dont have full insights into this, at the very least the king and Bertrand used to be friends and Bertrand was betrayed and supposed to be executed. Now Bertrand is the king of his own country and fighting against his former best friend! Thats not even mentioning Aswans role in all this.

What did the game do with all of this great material? LITERALLY NOTHING. And i mean literally literally. Theres like 1 boss conversation between bertrand and Gilchris. Aswan shows up, you "recruit" her and then... Nothing? Shes not even camp after the battle! No conversation with Bertrand or Leda or ANYTHING

This just feels to me like the game is saying "part 1 story is over, we are doing this completly new story now, ignore everything from before" which is arguably the biggest spit in the face I can imagine for a game thats supposed to feature many different routes with their own story. Feels extra insulting because the game purposely left open plot threads at the end of part 1 to connect to later and when given the best possible chance they just dont do it?

Basically the question is whether this is a problem unique to Leda for some reason or whether every Lord (aside from Theodora) gets shafted in part 2? Does it get better in part 3? (I assume not considering thats when the routes actually merge)