The Heroic Games have started, and there are four champions to steer through them. Intelligent Systems’ new tactical RPG launches today, 17 September, exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is out now, and it is a big download. Check your storage before anything else. The Australian eShop listing asks for 29.5GB of free space.
Consoles short on room have an option. The listing confirms the game is compatible with microSD Express cards, so that is the card type to look for if an upgrade is needed.
The game is single player. Cloud saves are supported with a Nintendo Switch Online membership, so turn that on before getting deep into a campaign. It is rated M in Australia for mature themes and violence.
Language options on the Australian listing cover English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
What the story is
The setup is on the eShop page itself: “The Dagdan Empire has prospered under the rule of gods for 1,500 years. The capital, Dagsion, plays host to the Heroic Games – the winner of which is granted one wish.”
Four heroes are chasing that wish. Nintendo names them as Cai, Dietrich, Theodora and Leda, and each has a separate storyline. According to the Nintendo UK page, players can switch between those stories at will. All four routes build towards a final fight against a resurrected demon god.
Each of the four has a different reason to compete. Gematsu’s rundown of the overview trailer has Cai trying to rescue his father, and Dietrich as a swordsman looking for stronger opponents. Theodora is a queen chasing her homeland’s dream. Leda is a musician out for revenge.
Nintendo’s own tagline sums up the twist. The aim is to “change the past to save the future”, with the player character travelling through time to guide those heroes. Gematsu names the demon god as Balor.
Series fans will want to know where this sits. Wikipedia places it in the same universe as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Whether it is a prequel or a sequel has not been confirmed, so that argument will not be settled on day one.
The same entry lists a customisable protagonist, Eshmel, sent by the goddess Sothis to save Dagda. It also lists a lot of returning Three Houses machinery: Combat Arts, Gambits, weapon durability, Crests and Hero’s Relics, plus a calendar system for planning exploration, training and recruitment. Nintendo’s own pages do not spell all of that out, so treat the list as a guide rather than gospel until you are in the game.
It has been a year in the making, publicly at least. Nintendo announced Fortune’s Weave in September 2025 with a 2026 window, and the overview trailer that fills in most of the systems only arrived on 14 September, three days before launch.
How the fights work
Combat is classic Fire Emblem. It is turn-based, on grid maps, with unit classes, weapon choice and positioning doing the heavy lifting. The new layer is Blaze Arts.
Blaze Arts are each hero’s signature moves, and they cost HP. Using them fills a gauge that hands out bonuses. Overcharge that gauge, though, and the bonuses turn into penalties. It is the one detail from the seven-minute overview trailer worth remembering on the first tough map. Firing off every Blaze Art the moment it is ready is the quickest way to get punished.
Between matches the action moves to Dagsion. That is where allies get recruited, relationships get built, and training happens. Heroes also level up blessings from the gods, which carry advantages into battle.
Beyond the city walls there is a world map. It holds quests, resources to gather, dungeons to explore and roaming enemies to fight, so the Heroic Games are not the only thing filling the calendar.
There is also a series first to try straight away. Fortune’s Weave supports mouse controls using the Joy-Con 2 controllers. A grid-based tactics game is a natural place to test the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode. It plays in handheld, tabletop and TV modes, with HDR and surround sound support for setups that have them.
Before you start tonight
- Clear 29.5GB, or grab a microSD Express card
- Turn on Nintendo Switch Online cloud saves
- Watch the overview trailer for the systems explained first
- Try the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls on the first map
Check the eShop or your local retailer for pricing. We could not confirm an Australian price from Nintendo directly, so we are not quoting one here.
This is launch news, not a review. We have not played Fortune’s Weave yet, so there is no verdict and no score in this piece. Reviews are landing now, and we will have more once we have spent real time in the Heroic Games.
Nintendo eShop Australia – Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave listing, Nintendo UK – product page and features, Nintendo – announcement, Gematsu – overview trailer details, Nintendo on YouTube – overview trailer, Wikipedia – Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave