2026 has brought a gargantuan multitude of JRPGs to the Nintendo Switch 2, and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave might just be the pick of the lot in scope and scale alone. The latest entry in the beloved tactical RPG franchise is the follow-up to 2023’s Fire Emblem Engage, but in truth it feels more like a sequel to Three Houses with its focus on storytelling, character development and social sim mechanics. That aside, Fortune’s Weave is also massive, with a sheer depth of content that feels like just the right amount of insurmountable for a modern JRPG.
The story of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is set in 1449 on the fictional continent of Dagda. Four main protagonists find their way to the capital’s annual Heroic Games tournament, a colosseum-based show of martial prowess that affords the victor one boon of their choosing from the Dagdan Empire’s Divine Sovereign. Each of the four protagonists have their own reasons for being at the Heroic Games, alongside their own unique story paths that are staggeringly distinct even as they inevitably converge at key points.
These four protagonists—and their peripheral supporting cast members—are all highly individualised and proficiently set apart from each other, with remarkable characterisation that comes out in both their story quests and combat. There’s Cai, a young boy who attends the Games in an ambitious attempt to see his father released from imprisonment; Leda, a dancer and musician with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance; Dietrich, the vampire-like traveller always looking to conquer his next foe; and Theodora, a foreign queen attending the games in a bid to find support for her kingdom.
Behind the scenes, however, there’s also a fifth protagonist: the enigmatic and near-silent Eshmel who has travelled back in time to ‘recruit’ these four to battle against a world-ending cataclysm in the near future, effectively staging an Avengers-level collab that sees them all teaming up to take down the demonic villain that has risen to prominence in the years following the Heroic Games.
What’s remarkable is how guiding each of the four main protagonists through Act I feels totally distinct, with completely unique stories that can easily take upwards of 60-80 hours to complete in totality—and that’s before even arriving at the meaty second and third acts that bring it all together. What’s more, these four distinct stories can be swapped between at almost any time, meaning players can freely take control of any of the four protagonists at any point in their journey. Again, the story structure is reminiscent of Three Houses with the steadily increasing stakes, and although the pacing gets a little patchy in later acts, it’s nevertheless a sterling effort that affords some of the finest fun the genre has ever offered.
This fun comes in the form of tactical turn-based battles that see players leverage their controlled character, alongside a handpicked selection of supporting characters recruited along the way. The options here are staggering, with a huge cast to befriend and convince to join your army as you progress. The battles themselves are spread out by the free time element that Three Houses introduced, whereby players can explore a hub world and engage with party members and schmooze potential new ones, while equipping themselves and levelling up to strengthen ahead of the next battle.
The class system is still very much present, too, affording an immensely satisfying level of control over the shape of your burgeoning army. As with most of Fortune’s Weave’s systems, well-executed forward thinking is heavily rewarded, and players are always kept on their toes with new deviations to the standard formula. For example, there’s a finite time allocation between each main story battle, but they aren’t always the same length, which serves to keep things from getting too formulaic and ensure a fresh approach to time keeping is required every time.
In addition to the hub, there’s an overworld map that can be gradually unfogged and populated with new settlements, dungeons and material dumps to explore as you make your way through it. Moving about this map steadily eats up turns, though, so it requires some forward planning to make every foray into the wide world of Dagda count. What’s more, Fortune’s Weave introduces a new form of turn-based combat—clashes—which occur when encountering enemies within overworld dungeons.
Clashes don’t replace the iconic tactical action, but rather serve as a streamlined combat experience whereby your chosen party members battle alongside each other, and each turn an ability can be selected from across the party as you aim to whittle away the enemy’s health pool. Mechanically, clashes aren’t all that dense, but they do introduce some tension to dungeon exploration without thrusting you into a full-scale battle every time. It’s a fair middle ground that thankfully doesn’t overstay its welcome beyond its presence during dungeon exploration.
It’s a good thing that clashes don’t overshadow the classic Fire Emblem combat, because this is the best its ever been in the series. It successfully builds upon past iterations while adding some much-need variety to each and every battle. Many of the skirmishes throughout Fortune’s Weave have unique quirks or mechanics that test the player’s flexibility and occasionally require a wholly new, almost-counterintuitive approach to winning the fight. Without spoiling anything, these are masterfully done and encourage creative thinking without becoming gimmicky or annoying.
With so much to see and do, it’s vital that Fortune’s Weave remains compelling throughout its lengthy runtime. Thankfully, the uniqueness of the four core protagonists ensures this to a large degree: each of them has their own abilities in and out of battle that change up the way you both engage enemies and spend your free time. For example, Leda can buff multiple allies at once to increase either their offence or defence, as well as imparting other buffs to increase her whole party’s combat abilities in a pinch. Between battles, she can perform at taverns for extra experience and money, which go a long way towards overcoming the game’s economy. Other characters like Dietrich and Theodora are much more offensively focused, with abilities that match their personalities and serve to further characterise them. It’s all masterfully crafted and balanced, and executed with a precision that firmly establishes this as an SRPG great.
Buttressing the whole experience is the game’s performance on the Switch 2. While the framerate isn’t remarkable, the graphics can be at times. This is most evident in the exceptional character designs, which make this cast perhaps the most memorable of any Fire Emblem title that’s come before. Whether playing docked or handheld, this is one of the best-performing titles on the system thus far, and it even offers the option for playing through battles with a Joy-Con in mouse mode. This reviewer didn’t use this feature often enough for it to feel like anything more than a nice-to-have, but it felt super smooth and responsive from the brief stint in which it was used. For players who get used to it, it could become a go-to control method given the nature of the tactical action on offer.
