Topic: Fire emblem fortune's weave

@XenobladeKisekiFan

Same... not touching any other routes, until I finish with Theodora.

After my fumble yesterday, I’m a bit anxious to jump back into the game. Does the initial 32 days for Cai matter all that much? There were so many characters I could’ve potentially recruited that I fear I missed out on. Should I start his route over? I feel like I majorly messed up.

@TerribleTerabytes pretty sure for his first two games matches you can't recruit anybody but that dude called like Goujon or whatever it is you are given for free, but after that point you start building renown to start adding to your ranks.

One edit though: Meals tend to boost bonds faster than gifts (unless you cheat and look up a gift guide online, it is a lot of guess work, but meals make it clear what has the highest impact), so giving units you can recruit at the next renown level gifts (doesn't matter what), opens them up to invite them on meals, so you can get a head start on building those supports ready to recruit when you hit the renown goal. This was a learn from my mistakes I got from Theodora's routes, as you rank up REALLY fast on hers for some reason, and there are some recruitments now delayed cause I didn't start the groundwork early enough (because gifting and having meals is a weekly thing, so you gotta plot and plan).

@TerribleTerabytes I'd say it's not a big deal. Play it out. It's a learning experience. Your first route will be sub-optimal either way so just have fun and worry about finer details on your subsequent routes.

Just noticed that I'm not completely blocked off from Hard mode either. There is an option to replay the prologue and change difficulty on the start screen without losing save data. I'll see how Leda's route is on Normal and adjust accordingly.

@Pizzamorg That’s reassuring to hear, thank you. I guess I just assumed you could freely travel the World map and back to Dagsion at your leisure. Now that I know I have to commit to it, I’ll be more careful with visiting the map from here on out.

I probably missed some side quests, but at least I didn’t screw over my unit numbers or permanently miss anything. I think this system will take some getting used to for me, as the Calendar in Three Houses felt more readable jumping into it, but I at least know how to spend my time now.

@TerribleTerabytes
I'm also at Cai's route around where you are. My rec is to just play it and enjoy yourself. If you love the game, you'll probably end up replaying it anyway at some point.

@uncleMike from what I've played of cai's route the story is amazing and the rest of the game is certainly goty material from what I have seen so far, currently at chapter 5 part 1.

I would say fortune's weave reminds me alot of nihon falcom's trails series the way it handles storytelling and big story reveals is very similar,

Also the music is very similar to the trails games too in some of the exploration areas.

@Polvasti it's weird. You're basically only supposed to switch at the perch when it says it's okay. I heard you have to do it near the start of a chapter, but I don't know if it's true or not. It would seem really odd for a game not to be able to save each characters exact position but I read somewhere it resets the chapter. I would like this verified because I don't want to lose hours of gameplay to lazy programing.

@Misima The game is built for you to do one of the Lord's routes first and then the other three after, since your data carries over after the completion of one of the routes.

The sub-lords were originally meant to be playable, yes- but they cut their roles down in the story because it subtracted from the over-all narrative and only served to make the game more complicated due to how many moving pieces there were. They cut down the roster fairly early into development, so the main game doesn't suffer from it like you say it does.

Also the "hidden mechanics" aren't hidden at all. The game literally points you into the direction of them. You just.. ignored the mechanics outright.

Also, you're only confirming more and more that you've only played one of the four routes in Three Houses. I don't think you're really all that well equipped to say that Three Houses is better, when it looks like you've ignored most of the game- given that one single route isn't enough to gauge the narrative of Three Houses, let alone the gameplay loop. No wonder why you think Three Houses is mystically better than this game lol.

@Misima Your progress is saved when you swap routes, source: me, cause that is how I am playing and seemingly the intended way to play. You can restart from the beginning of the chapter though if you want if you forget what you're doing or whatever or just jump right back in to the very perch you interacted with to jump out. There are some times when you can't swap, like if you're in the middle of a stretch of main campaign progress, but any free time outside of the games you can swap freely.

Dietrich's route is probably the easiest to farm renown in, since every battle that spawns in from Answerer's Cry gives Renown.

I just started and chose Ledas route first. So far, I like the cast of characters and did one battle. Ill continue on later tonight.

The thing I hate most about this game is the save feature.

I go to the map, and I make a mistake and can't reach town in time and your only option is restarting the chapter. This game needs a normal save function.

Definitely, plan to go back to the capitol every week and then run out of time on the road exploring new paths. Do not explore paths even if they're right there until the main objectives are complete. You just teleport back at the end. I hope this game lets me teleport back later.

@Misima what are you talking about now? You can save any time you want from the menu. It has a "normal" save. This is why people accuse you of trolling as 9 out of 10 of your criticisms are just you seemingly ignoring the tools available to you.

My copy came in today, and i've been playing it off and on since then
Pretty enjoyable game! Maybe it's just because it's been awhile since i played a FE, but something feels a bit off. I cannot put my finger on it, though.
I like Cai. Cai is cool. His recruits are killing me, though. You put all these cool characters in front of me and lock them behind high renown. I wanna use Ninae, dang it

@Pizzamorg expecting a response like "it's more hidden than three houses though!" even though both are literally just one button press away i imagine

@Pizzamorg His next complaint is that the game will hand him a game over because he decided to explore until the end of the deadline instead of making his way back to the capital. It doesn't always teleport you back, and there's a tutorial that says as much. It only does when you specifically have a story beat in the capital itself I believe.

@squiddu-real It's insane to me how the guy is acting like Three Houses is some sort of golden standard, when he's basically implied he has literally only played a single route.

Its confusing to me to, as while I would maybe understand the outright refusal to engage with the game's base mechanics and do any kind of prep and planning before making a choice more, if they hated Three Houses, because you would have already made it clear you don't want the "Personafication" of Fire Emblem (even if I don't think in practice the Persona comparisons are very useful, but it is good shorthand)

But this guy acts like Three Houses literally saved them from a burning building and cradled them in their arms afterwards, but if they played Three Houses with the approach they've used on Fortune's Weave, they must have missed like 90% of the content in their route, because that game is significantly more punishing against the player if they refuse to learn and use the tools they are given and plan before making choices.

I just don't understand their criticisms at all.

FW has taken the social sim side of THs, and just refined it and added quality of life to make it easier for the player to engage with and they... don't like that?

Like the core conceit of their criticism seems to be that unless it is done in exactly the same as Three Houses, even if things are improved here, they still hate it, because they just wanted them to make Three Houses again? Like okay then, you're welcome to your stance or whatever, but like they didn't do that, so just wishing for that and getting annoyed every time you play just seems unhealthy.

@Pizzamorg Yeah, this is effectively what bothers me. I don't think its wrong if a person likes Three Houses over Fortune's Weave, but the way this guy is acting is basically him just complaining about minor things that were handled the exact same way in Three Houses.

Like with how he's talking about saves, he's complaining that saving takes pressing a button in a menu (which Three Houses does the exact same thing). There is proper criticism to give Fortune's Weave save system- like the fact that the auto-save is aggressive and you're stuck effectively overwriting a manual save with an auto-save due to the one-save save-file. It makes it hard to flee skermishes if you get into high-level ones on complete accident.

However, all of his criticism boils down to:
"This isn't Three Houses, therefore the game is bad."
"This doesn't have a school setting, therefore the game is bad."

On top of this, I keep saying it- but it really really feels like this guy only played a singular route of Three Houses and didn't bother with the rest of the game. It wouldn't surprise me if he played pretty poorly in Three Houses as well honestly, seeing as how he ignores a lot of simple systems that the game points out to you within the first 10 hours of playing.