Two weeks into Fortune’s Weave, I’ve noticed a distressing pattern start to emerge. Whenever I get deep into a gameplay session I feel myself starting to doze off. It’s not tied to any specific character, and it’s never during any of the big battles, but in the time between story missions, when you while away hours training, dungeon delving, or whatever, I inevitably start to fall asleep. Deeply upsetting considering I really do like this game.
I understand that the opening hours of the game are meant to on-ramp players into the world and what it offers, and browsing Fortune’s Weave-themed conversations on Reddit, I’ve seen that things do get better and more action-focused once you get into part two. But depending on how you play, especially if you want to develop your four lords equally, that might mean anywhere between 15-30 hours’ worth of a boring, soporific slog.
I need to stress that I don’t think the game is bad, just that its first part is poorly paced, and a lot of that has to do with the game’s clash / dungeon-crawling mechanic. Clashes work like traditional turn-based RPG battles and when they were first teased, I thought they’d be a novel addition to Fire Emblem‘s typical grid-based strategy combat. They seemed like a way to squeeze in more battles without bogging the game down with too many fights that can take 5-10 minutes a pop. But clashes, at least at this early stage, are utterly mindless. It’s your party and a group of enemies trading blows back and forth until one of you dies. Sure, you can link attacks with allies for some splashy action and earn support points, but enemies are so paper-thin and toothless that you can turn on auto-attack while you go get your third cup of coffee.
I can see the value in clashes when they’re deployed correctly. At different points in a Flame Lord’s story, there are moments when a clash serves as a neat little narrative encounter. In Dietrich’s story, you can take on bounties, and those fights are against enemies more powerful than the rank-and-file monsters and soldiers you typically fight in a clash. But those variants are few and far between, with the majority of clashes just interrupting me with a mindless chore as I run through a dungeon collecting forge shards or whatever-the-fuck because I have 52 “turns” to kill before my next big fight.
I hope, as I break out of part one of each lord’s story and progress deeper, that the action gets a little denser and more difficult. I think Fortune’s Weave‘s worldbuilding is fascinating and I’m generally delighted by trying to win over all the attractive brown or clown people to my party. But when the game is not explicitly doing that, at least I can catch up on my beauty rest.
