😮 Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave has impressed critics ahead of its release
👏 The game currently has a Metacritic score of 89 after 60 critic reviews
🆚 That matches Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ score, and far exceeds Fire Emblem Engage
📅 Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is out September 17 exclusively for Switch 2
Nintendo’s latest first-party Switch 2 exclusive, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, releases on September 17 – and reviews are impressive for the tactical, turn-based strategy game.
After 60 critic reviews, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave currently has a Metacritic score of 89, making it one of the highest-rated games of this year. To put it into perspective against previous entries, Fire Emblem: Three Houses also scored 89, while Fire Emblem Engage only achieved an aggregated score of 80.
Here’s what critics made of the Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.
VGC gave the game a perfect score, claiming it’s an essential entry for SRPG fans:
“Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is an essential game for fans of Fire Emblem and SRPGs, and if you’re new to the series or genre, there’s no better place to get started. The stories of Dietrich, Theodora, Cai, and Leda are all brilliant, worthy of their own Fire Emblem game, and the fact that we get them all in one is just a bonus. It’s still early days, but I’m confident that Fortune’s Weave will be considered one of the best RPGs in the Switch 2’s library even a decade from now.”
IGN also awarded Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave full marks, and praised the game’s formidable challenge and intricate systems:
“Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave builds upon its strategic arts in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. It’s never satisfied to make me grow only as a battlefield tactician, or only in my ability to manage my time between skirmishes wisely, but both in perfect harmony. Every time I turned around, I was being given more challenges to face and more tools to master in order to overcome them. The many unique twists of each hero’s story path had me eager to see all the ways those journeys differed from each other, making the grand culmination in the final act hit so damn well. Planning out my expeditions across an imposing map became an unexpected highlight that not only hooked me, but rewarded my persistence by continuing to expand all the ways I could direct my armies as I tried to stay on top of newly emerging threats. The scope of both its formidably challenging battles and intricate management systems would be wildly ambitious for one path, let alone spread across four – yet somehow Fortune’s Weave only gets better and better each time you guide its captivating heroes into the colosseum and far beyond.”
Eurogamer was one of many outlets that felt Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave deserved a perfect score, saying:
“A synergy of everything that has made the series great for generations, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave hits the pinnacle of combat design, and is a sumptuous feast of a game.”
GameSpot gave the game 9/10, and claimed Fortune’s Weave is the new high point in the series:
“Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a sprawling masterpiece of a strategy RPG, building upon the successes of past Fire Emblem games with new interconnected elements, expertly designed combat puzzles, and an emphasis on flexibility and choice. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have topped themselves, making this the new high point to beat for future entries.”
Nintendo Life wasn’t as full of praise, but still gave Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave 8/10, saying:
“On the whole, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is dense, deep, and really rather delightful. It can sometimes feel like a bit too much of a good thing, with the pacing slipping in the later chapters, thanks to an unnecessarily complicated protagonist hierarchy and some grindy map management, but the battles have never felt better, and there’s no knocking the sheer amount to do. It takes a lot for a game to hold my attention for as long as Fortune’s Weave, and with a bunch of content still waiting for me, I’ll be happy to pour even more days into it.”
Gfinity was one of the few critics that gave the game 7/10, with the reviewer disliking the real-time dungeons and open-world sections:
“Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is a visually stunning departure that trades the series' beloved tactical combat for heavy JRPG exploration. While the core grid battles are brilliant, they often get buried under clunky real-time dungeons and tedious open-world busywork. It is an ambitious, beautiful experiment, but strategy purists may find themselves left out in the cold.”
Overall, it seems like Fire Emblem: Fortune’s is an excellent entry in the series, and a must-play for strategy RPG fans. It’s also another enviable Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, bolstering the console’s growing library of first-party games you won’t find anywhere else.
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Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. He also runs a retro gaming YouTube channel called Game on, boy! Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.