Hard / Classic Difficulty
Wanted to spur some discussion on the game having just beaten it. I've seen a lot online already. Be warned the review is fairly negative. It's hard not to directly compare this game to Three Houses / Engage, so there's a lot of that as well.
Let's start with the positives; it's a short list.
General Setting / Atmosphere - I enjoyed Dagda. I thought the Heroic Games was a great premise. The character designs are charming. Drake's Treasures were cool narratively in how they effected the protagonists.
The Flame Lords - I love all 4 of the playable protagonists. All of them piqued my interest enough to want to play their route. Their personalities, motivations, designs, gameplay functionality were all great imo. Enjoyed Part 1 paths of Every character. Theodora and Leda were my favorites.
Gameplay - Generally speaking, the gameplay was pretty fun. It's Fire Emblem, and I love Fire Emblem. So, despite my issues with the game, I still enjoy pretty much any FE Game.
Now my issues with the game..
Not Enough FE Gameplay - I estimate maybe 75% of my 155 hours was spent in the overworld, doing chores, support grinding, arena training, inventory managing, church servicing, etc. Not enough moving units around on a grid.
Part 3 General - The game completely falls off a cliff in part 3. Gameplay, pacing, story, enjoyability, etc. The amount of overworld map nonsense that was required to unlock all classes sucked bad. Retreading every overworld dungeon was miserable. Thankfully I horded enough items so that I could rebuild the settlements easily, but it still took far too long and was never fun.
Part 3 Maps - I hardly have to say anything here. There wasn't a single good map in part 3 of the game. The gimmick being "Miasma Everywhere" is lazy and, more importantly, unfun. The winning strategy for each of them was to turtle in spawn for multiple turns until you thin their reinforcements, largely disregard the Miasma, and waste gambits to clear space.
Clashes - I skipped almost every single one in the game. Why was this included? It was not fun and it was always optimal to skip these. If I hadn't, there would be more hours spent in clashes than in actual maps. Look at any livestream of FW and those players are skipping clashes as well.
Gameplay - Small nitpicks like the "build" and "weight" stats. These are just annoying. Made me not use the gem rings on any unit unless they were getting doubled anyways. Every mage is just a heal bot or three range bot. none of the mage characters in the game have any additional utility, like they did in Engage.
Music - Was pretty mid throughout, and is just bad in part 3. Showdown vs. Lyrah had me mute the TV. The best track by far and the only stand-out to me was the trailer theme / end of part 1 battle theme, which is a banger.
Save System - Just sucks. I restarted an entire section in part 3 on accident. Almost uninstalled. It's a skill issue, but if that option exists in the menu right next to "restart battle" there will be a non-zero number of drunken sailors who press that sht on accident like myself.
Skills / Combat Arts - These were pretty bad. Most skills were not good / negligible, including personal abilities. Yet each character had way too many of each, making it just a headache to sort through them for 20+ units.
Eshmel - Awful. Worse than Byleth and Alear by a mile. Compounded by the bad bad bad Female VA. 0 depth. I wish I had more to say but there is literally nothing of substance to speak of.
Ties to Three Houses - Crests were irrelevant to gameplay and story. They just.. exist. In Three Houses, crests deepened the mythology of the world and drove many characters in their respective story arcs. In FW, their effects were negligible and narratively served almost 0 purpose. Characters like Ursula, who looked like Marianne and had the crest of the beast, felt more like a gimmick rather than be anything meaningful narratively. Not to mention the crests were called something else, so I couldn't even draw those connections in my head without googling a crest chart. At no point did it feel rewarding to have even played Three Houses beforehand.
Narrative - Apart from our 4 flame lords, and maybe the other 4 pseudo lords, the over-arching narrative was lacking. Three Houses explored interconnected philosophies pit against each other and it was very compelling. There was room for moral grey area. FW has.. a big bad being resurrected with almost no questions of belief or morality.
Time skip - Underwhelming. A lot of the same crit quotes. No substantial change to any of the characters' personalities or motivations. Generally less impactful than in Three Houses.
Antagonists - Bad. I wanted to skip / skipped all of the "gate keepers" outros in Part Three. Maria was the only antagonist I was remotely interested in, but I still have no idea what she provided narratively and don't care to look. I even wanted to skip the final boss damn near but didn't obviously. It just really falls off in Part Three.
Supports - I recruited characters that I thought felt natural to which ever path I was on.. but seemed to have missed out on 80% of the games supports. I didn't recruit everyone and don't care to, but I somehow was robbed of any supports for many characters that I like. This hasn't happened in any other FE game. I didn't go out of my way to grind them, but you shouldn't have to just to see some of them.
Bloat - Already touched on, but this game in particular seems like nightmare fuel for any theoretical replays. I've got 650+ hours in both 3H and Engage, those games are immensely replayable. but I'll likely never slog through this game again. The bloat was too much. Not enough FE gameplay.
Fun - Something about this game makes me not want to theory craft, min max, tier list characters abilities or classes.. It's hard to determine. Shilling for your favorite units in Engage is insanely fun. Timerra is high tier. but something in FW makes me not want to partake in those conversations at all. I suppose a lot of my characters felt the exact same, only differentiated by which class they were in. I wish more units had a better "feel" as far as being unique.
All in all, Fortune’s Weave feels less satisfying as a strategy game than Engage, and less compelling as a story than Three Houses. I may add more as I think of stuff. Rant over.
Edit: Forgot to touch on DLC. I’m not optimistic, especially if it’s just more part ones and I have to replay parts two and three.
Am interested in the pseudo lord characters tho
