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The Fire Emblem Thread

It looks like they really took criticism of recent games to heart. As I suspected based on like half a second of footage from the last trailer, field activities now come with an opportunity cost, which I'm sure will help them feel more like strategic decisions and less like video chores. Being able to switch between parties during the first act and coming together with a unified second act means that it won't be necessary to replay in order to see all perspectives on the story (while still retaining, if not increasing, the replay-friendly game design elements common to the series).

Multiple parties? A traversable overworld? Dungeons? (With a streamlined RPG-like battle system, no less.) That one Intelligent Systems employee who really loves Fire Emblem Gaiden is eatin' good.

Seteth is here. He changed his hair, but he didn't change his alias. I think that fixes it as a sequel to Three Houses, not a prequel as some had speculated.

In conclusion, getting the band back together is the perfect activity to do in an RPG, so I'm very excited for that.
 
Bongo said:
I think that fixes it as a sequel to Three Houses, not a prequel as some had speculated.
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Yeah, even though it doesn't quite make sense from a narrative perspective, I believe we're supposed to understand that 4W is using the same calendar as 3H.
 
I know I am not going to play Fortune's Weave quickly. In fact, I kind of prefer "waiting" on a Fire Emblem game, and picking up general spoilers like "oh that path feels half finished" or "you really want to make a connection with x character" ever since I played Fire Emblem Awakening "blind" and just murdered Tharja forever. But! This week's Nintendo sale is reminding me that Nintendo titles only go on sale every seventh year opposite a blood moon eclipse... So do I just go ahead and buy it at release, and play it later at my leisure? Decisions, decisions...
 
I would assume Fortune's Weave is not included in the Nintendo sale, so I'm not sure what the advantage would be.
 
I almost never day 1 video games these days (or even year 1 them, typically), but I played 3 Houses for like 300 hours across multiple successive playthroughs, so I'm making an exception here. I can't wait for Fire Emblem Thursday. I took a week off work when 3 Houses came out to play it incessantly, but I was single at the time, and I think my wife would frown upon that sort of thing now, and I don't want to get a look, so I guess I'll have to play it like a normal person, which means that the online discourse will leave me behind almost immediately.
 
Universe help me but I'm actually thinking about picking up Fortune's Weave despite caring so little for Three Houses I couldn't even be arsed to get to the first battle. The Nintendo Treehouse event for FW made me think, "Well. Maaaaaybe I should give it another go."
 
Bongo said:
They released an Ask The Developers interview about Fortune's Weave, which includes some information about how they reconcile characters being recruited multiple times on different routes.
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Holy shit, the mad lads finally did it: Fortune's Weave shows stat growth rates in-game. They even left them in as actual honest-to-god percentage growth chances. I would have thought that they'd go with an F-S letter scale instead.

The reconciling of characters across multiple paths sounds... concerning? They don't really go into detail, but I hope it doesn't just make a character that you've recruited 4 times into some kind of unstoppable juggernaut. And I also hope it doesn't average the stats of the various versions either? Honestly, this just leaves me with more questions than I had before.

And then there's this:
Kusakihara: We were very fortunate that so many players enjoyed Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but at the same time, we had an enormous sense of responsibility. We spent a lot of time wondering how we could create something that would surpass it. So initially, we came up with the bold idea of increasing the number of story perspectives from three to eight. The three powers in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are fundamentally at odds with one another. This time, we decided to take the opposite approach, with the stories unfolding along each path ultimately coming together into one. From there, we worked to refine the concept.

Yokota: Suddenly going from three perspectives to eight is a pretty big jump. Kusakihara-san had really developed a clear theme for each protagonist, and I felt it could lead to something really interesting. But with eight protagonists, there was almost too much we could do... It seemed like players would have a lot to keep track of, which could make the game feel complicated. So, we decided to put the focus on four of those protagonists instead.
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This tighter scope is probably better, but "it was too complicated" makes me sad as a reason to abandon the prior idea. Give me the complicated 8-person Fire Emblem Rashomon please.
 
At least the other four lords and their retinues are still in the game and recruitable. For reference, they were Bertrand, Talimun, Orchel, and Anatolia.
 
I could have had GUN BRIDE as an MC?
Artwork_Anatolia.png


Never forget what they took from us.
 
But think of it this way: if she were a main character, you'd only get to have her in your party during one route, but this way you can have her in your party for four routes.
 
Well, it's still early going for me, but I'm pretty sure Fortune's Weave is amazing. This game has a fuckload of mechanics, and there's still room for some of them to turn out to be as superfluous and unbalanced as Engage's, but overall it seems really well put together. Here's some things you might want to know:

  • You can totally just recruit a unit in multiple paths and it'll all turn out fine. Don't worry about it.
  • Recruitment requirements for the same characters differ between paths.
  • Characters who don't have support conversations still gain the mechanical benefits from increasing their support level, a la Three Hopes or Unicorn Overlord.
  • Things that you can spend Karma Shards on will affect all routes.
  • If you've completed one path, then most of the quests you completed in that path can be completed automatically in all the other paths, giving you more flexibility in how to use free time.
  • Automatic activities at the inn are a pretty balanced way to spend time, and by far the fastest option in terms of real time.
  • If you deploy a guest character, any EXP they earn will be distributed among your permanent party members, so you're finally no longer disincentivized from using them.
  • Once you gain the ability to spectate battles in the arena, that's where you'll learn a lot about the stories of the four rival factions who were originally planned to have full paths of their own.
  • Weekly activities in Dagsion refresh on Sunday, so it seems beneficial to return to the city once a week.
  • Character icons on the map menu are color-coded, and can indicate not only playable characters you haven't spoken to, but also characters who have new dialog.

I decided to do Dietrich's route first because his guy Fabio looked like exactly the kind of pompous immoral antisocial jackass I always seem to enjoy in these games (cf. Soren, Shinon, Hubert), and I must say he's exceeded my expectations. By extension, the fact that all of the lords have an edge to them and a significant proportion of the playable cast seem to be just plain not nice is oddly refreshing.
 
Does the game get you into The Good Stuff early or is there a lot of talky talky stuff upfront, like in Three Houses?
 
Depends on what you think the good stuff is. There's a lot of story, and there's also a fuckload of mechanics that are usually introduced one or two at a time. There's also a lot of gameplay decisions to make in between battles. Unlike with Three Houses, there's actual strategy expressed through deciding how to spend your time and motivation.

Did you play Shadows of Valentia?
 
I've been playing Leda's route. Really loving it so far, in chapter 5.

Protip: According to RPGSite, you might want to consider making sure you finish one character before you progress another- according to what they discovered, if you finish one character's Part 1 and then start another, there will be certain bonuses added for future playthroughs- your chart of the World Map will retain, making your exploration easier. Also, certain sidequests will already be completed, with rewards already given.
 
It's a talky series in general, but I've found Fortune's Weave a little better about it than Three Houses
 
I've been playing on Hard mode and so far (chapter 5 in Leda's route) it doesn't seem so difficult so far. I have to imagine Normal is really easy so maybe start on Hard if you're a FE veteran.
 
Nodal said:
Is the writing good? I don't really care how much there is vs the quality.
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People who've gotten farther than me and picked other paths seem to be having as much fun with it as I have been. Lots of enjoyable characters, and spaced well so that there are fewer instances of seeing someone just hammer their gimmick consecutively, like when you unlocked half a dozen supports at once during Three Houses. Nobody without a preview copy has finished the game yet unless they were doing something other than paying attention to the writing, so there are few reports.
 
Just did the qualifier in Ch. 5, that was a fun fight. The map design here so far is quite good.
 
A lot of good writing, including that which focuses on quasi-protagonists Anatolia, Talimun, Orchel, and Bertrand, is accessed by the optional activity of s spectating at the arena. Make use of the "reminder" function of the calendar once those start happening.

A less confident game would save some of the details of the story as second-act twists instead of just using it as part of the premise to develop further drama. Yeah, that's that guy's mom; yeah, that person can just put a mind whammy on anyone; yeah, there's other mediators and here's who they are; yeah, this dude is an undercover evil cultist. Try to keep up. They even go so far as to have you recruit the sympathetic turncoat from the villain squad several chapters before you even learn that the villain squad even existed, much less that they were in it (this is like chapter 3). The drama isn't based on secrets between characters nor secrets from the player, which I think will prove convenient as I do all four paths in a row.
 
The writing in Leda's route has been largely pretty bad. Up through chapter 7. The map design has been pretty mediocre too, IMO. In that way it's definitely a sequel to Three Houses.

Leda is pretty pretty, though.
 
Some facts about character recruitment:

Every optional character subject to the recruitment mechanic has, at minimum, a Support level that they must reach with the path's main character, and a Renown level that the character must reach. These numbers are different for each of the four flame lords. Before you can even attempt to recruit them, you have to give them at least one gift, which makes it possible to start building Support with them through meals.

Renown correlates mainly to your progress through the main quest, as winning in the games is the biggest source of it; neglecting subquests or your lord's unique mechanics might leave you a bit behind the curve. No character requires more than 10 Renown to recruit, while the cap is 12, so you'll eventually be able to get anyone. The Renown requirement for recruitment is basically an indication of how early you can get them.

The Support requirement is more constraining. The characters requiring only support level 1 are free and tend to be very useful for the upcoming main story quest. Characters requiring support level 2 are pretty easy to pick up and will keep your army well-rounded. Characters requiring support level 3 need a long time to work on them and carry a high opportunity cost, since meals and gifts both count as weekly events that refresh on Sunday. So you'd better choose one that you really like. Getting someone with high support but low renown can be a real project, and catching 'em all might require taking advantage of the fact that support points can never be revoked, even if you change paths or return to an earlier chapter.

Most recruitable characters also have a "Negotiation" requirement. This means will also request an item delivery, and while you can't see what the items are until you meet the Support and Renown requirements, it will give you an indication of whether it's common/cheap or rare/expensive. Sometimes it'll be something you can only acquire in the overworld in hard-to-reach areas, sometimes it'll be something you can just buy anywhere.

Additionally, some of them will require you to clear a quest before you can recruit them. That might be a simple, lenient subquest that they give you as soon as you attempt to recruit them, or it might be a paralogue.

Paralogues can be missed! This mechanic kicks in starting in calendar month 9. The availability to accept or complete paralogues is sometimes constrained by very tight deadlines, and unlike main quests, you can't automatically travel to their destination, so they can be both overlooked and permanently missed. Top men are working on compiling a spoiler-free list of the relevant date ranges in each path. It is possible for a character with a low Renown requirement to still require a paralogue that can't be started until much later.

(Speaking of things that can be overlooked and permanently missed, there are random scenes like base conversations that can be viewed on certain dates in Dagsion. These appear on the map with a faint animation while they're available, but the Dagsion map can't be viewed while you're not in Dagsion, so hopefully there'll be a list of those someday too. But I'm not gonna sweat it.)

Not every character can be recruited in every route. However, among the characters who never join automatically in any route, there is only one who's exclusive to a single route: Gaitz can only be recruited by Dietrich. And that's a difficult one to get, requiring 3 support, 10 renown, and a paralogue that's only accessible for a single day.

In general, if you're going to recruit someone, it's best to get them in as early a chapter as you can. This is because of the way that automatic level scaling works. Characters who are recruited later tend to have lower stats on average than they would if they had been gaining EXP normally. This is so weird that I think it might be a bug, and therefore liable to be patched out in the future. They suspect maybe that they're only applying their personal growth rates to automatic leveling, and excluding the increasingly significant class modifiers to growth rates. This is bad news for characters with high Renown requirements.
 
To add to Bongo's post- it only really seems like a couple recruitments are really necessary because so far, battles have been only allowing a smaller number of characters to deploy. In a typical FE you'd at least get to deploy at least 10 or so characters, but so far in FW (in chapter 8 of Leda's path) I haven't had a single battle where I have deployed more than 7 of my own units, not including guest characters. I have a grand total of 13 characters in my army and some of them are falling behind because I just haven't needed to use them much. So the game as it stands encourages you to focus on recruiting a smaller number of characters.
 
I'm told that higher deployment limits become a thing after part 1.

I have also been told (but not seen for myself) the secret of what happens when you recruit a character in multiple paths: in part 3, you have the option to merge two versions of any character, so that they gain the highest of the stats, skill ranks, class certifications, and I assume spell scrolls acquired in any instance of parts 1 and 2. It costs 300 karma shards to do this. It can only merge two instances, so if you recruited a character more than twice you can spend 600 karma shards to merge three instances, or 900 to merge four instances, with corresponding diminishing returns.

This seems able to do a lot to compensate for the quirks of the auto-leveling system. It's also a good way to express favoritism for characters who have multiple viable builds, especially those who can go down a physical or magical career.
 
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