Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Tones Down The Romance

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is a masterpiece of a Fire Emblem game, but one beloved element that fans of the series have grown attached to is missing in action this time around–or at least, very downplayed.

Romance has been a staple of the Fire Emblem series for years, especially since Fire Emblem Awakening lets you couple up characters and then access the next generation of their children. Three Houses and Engage continued this tradition to a more limited degree, letting your player-character choose a special someone to share a bond with, and watching other characters pair with their highest support levels. By comparison, Fortune’s Weave takes a step back from this.

Fortune’s Weave does include a robust support system for recruiting characters and accenting their combat abilities, so you’ll still see relationships building between the four main Flame Lords, their retinue of companions, and various other recruitable characters. When looking to recruit a character for combat, you’ll need to meet a certain level of Renown, a universal stat that expresses your fame and reputation, along with Support with a given character. You can earn more Support by giving gifts and inviting them to special events like meals, visits to the bath house, and plays.

All of this will build your Support level, but there aren’t S-tier conversations, and those interactions are only flirtatious at most. Most notably, couples won’t pair off romantically.

That’s not to say that Fortune’s Weave is asexual, however. The characters do have their own romantic lives and the writing recognizes this in the story. As a teenage boy, Cai is a sweet kid who gets teased by older characters about his crushes. Sirocco is a shameless lothario who flirts with just about everyone, and other characters will casually talk about his hookups. Some characters hint at having same-sex attractions, so there’s light queer representation. And of course, the presence of a bathhouse means you can technically see them all in their bathing suits. But those are all presented as parts of the characters themselves, not relationships that you can steer towards your desired goals.

The heroes of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave

You also can’t really go on face-to-face dates with your party members, as you could in previous Fire Emblem games. That system is replaced with a similar system in which your chosen Flame Lord talks with Eshmel, your player-created character. But Eshmel is represented by a white bird nicknamed the Pale Raven when visiting the past Flame Lords, so it’s not exactly presented as a romance.

In the context of the story, romance taking a backseat makes sense. This all takes place during a massive tournament, and each of the four Flame Lord heroes has their own motivation for participating that has nothing to do with finding a partner. Similarly, Eshmel is essentially a futuristic construct made to prevent the impending apocalypse, so it might seem odd to have them partner up with a normal human.

So if you come to Fire Emblem primarily hoping to play matchmaker, Fortune’s Weave will likely leave you disappointed. It’s a fantastic Fire Emblem game, but it does deemphasize the dating-sim aspect that fans enjoyed in previous entries.