Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave might need all the trimmings of a contemporary Hearth Emblem, with its Engage-like private abilities and the social parts of Three Houses. However behind these Kurahana-illustrated eyes is the soul of a traditional Hearth Emblem recreation. The most recent installment of the collection exhibits Clever Programs at its most assured, having lastly discovered a option to harmonize its traditional programs with trendy expectations.
You would’ve informed me Fortune’s Weave was Clever Programs’ Hearth Emblem anniversary challenge, and I would imagine it. It is filled with little homages pulled from all through the collection, however tweaked to perform extra like an evolution, proof of how far the collection has are available in 30 years. The largest one is how characters relate to one another. Gone are the times the place each character has to have a dozen help dialog companions and romance pursuits. Not that it was all the time dangerous. Fates and Three Homes had fairly a number of glorious pairings. A whole lot of them felt pressured, although, like Clever Programs was overcompensating for a way uninteresting and restricted Radiant Daybreak‘s helps had been again in 2006.
Fortune’s Weave calls to thoughts the Sport Boy Advance period of Hearth Emblem. Each character has a handful of help conversations with individuals who really matter to them — colleagues, members of the family, rivals, sometimes a random conflict of two large personalities. Romance is a factor, but it surely, and the making of time-traveling child warriors, aren’t the solely factor. It even does my favourite factor from that early ‘00s interval of Hearth Emblem, the place a handful of random, mysterious outlier characters sport glorious stats and nice designs that make you need to know extra about them (like Legault or Farina), however have possibly 5 dialog companions in the event you’re fortunate. Relationships really feel extra intimate and significant this fashion, not like lore dumps. You do not have to inform me all the pieces about each character’s life! Simply the bits that imply one thing to their story, please. And the payoff is value it. Even Nuzzuo, who has one help chat with one particular person, advantages from the depth it brings to him, which you would not in any other case get from the temporary second he seems in Cai’s path.
The underworld plot deserves a particular shout-out, too. Undead monsters and evil underworld lords are hardly new to Hearth Emblem, however I used to be all the time upset how impersonal they usually felt. 2004’s Sacred Stones was the one recreation that wove persona in with the netherworld stuff. Fortune’s Weave does it too, turning it right into a twisted household drama that traces itself all the way in which again to Sothis’ arrival centuries earlier than. It elevates the plot a lot extra. And giving undead enemies particular powers provides a way of problem you had been supposed to really feel going up towards skeleton armies in Sacred Stones, however solely actually bought when the large zombie dragons confirmed up.
Then there’s fog of struggle (restricted imaginative and prescient). Three Homes and Interact had it, to an extent, however the maps that featured it had been a far cry from the memorable likes of Blazing Blade‘s “Battle earlier than Daybreak” or a few of Radiant Daybreak‘s tougher maps. The strain simply wasn’t there. The fog maps in Fortune’s Weave carry a way of hazard, even the smaller skirmish-type maps. Enemies behave in such a brutal vogue, searching for out targets they’re efficient towards and surrounding them, that not realizing the place they’re or what they’re packing looks like a severe risk.
There is a blessing to mitigate restricted imaginative and prescient, in the event you’re discovering it makes issues too exhausting, however extra importantly, there is a small community of different interactions that makes these low-vis maps much more fascinating than the sooner ones that impressed them. Discovering an enemy makes them confused for a flip, which implies they can not counterattack. There’s additionally a set of equipment that grants you further buffs whenever you assault confused enemies, so you possibly can invoke the blessing, increase your imaginative and prescient, confuse a complete mob of enemies, then sweep in and demolish them.
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In the identical vein, eliminating the weapon triangle and sturdiness points could appear like concessions to modernity, however I see it extra as a long-overdue enchancment. Constructing features into weapons as a substitute of lessons — like axes all the time hitting exhausting at the price of accuracy or swords being stronger with follow-ups — leaves extra room for strategic flexibility. The consequence is identical, basically. You are eager about which character’s abilities work finest along with your chosen weapons and who must be there to help them. However you could have so many extra choices for what that appears like as a substitute of utilizing the identical swordmasters, knights, and paladins the identical approach each time. After years of experiments like weapon put on and including debuffs to robust weapons in Fates, it performs like Clever Programs lastly found out how you can make its traditional programs work in a contemporary setting.