My Switch 2 won’t tell me how many hours I’ve clocked in Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave yet because the game hasn’t been out long enough but I suspect it’s roughly 10 hours. And it feels like I could count on one hand how many of those hours were spent actually weaving some fortunes. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game. I’m enjoying the hell out of these protagonists, and am surprised at how much I’ve been won over by everyone not named Theodora. But my god, do all these bitches talk entirely too much.
Yes, talking is essential to plot development, but there is so much explaining here, getting in the way of actually doing. It feels like every second conversation is a rehash of the one that came before it, like the game has no confidence that I have any faculties of retention. The writing is so overwrought that when a convo kicks in, I feel like I can turn on the game’s auto-advance and briefly tune out because I got the point in the first text panel and the rest is fluff. Jeff Grubb over at Giant Bomb has shared a nice (if spoilery!) example of what I’m talking about.
The game itself is also guilty of overexplaining. I could shave several minutes off my overall hours played if I were to cut out every time a tutorial panel popped up. I understand why they exist. By all means, convey pertinent information to me! But if a game is explaining that all the dots on a world map are called “locations,” something has gone wrong.
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Nintendo, friend, a good editor will tighten this shit up for you.