Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, a video game released on September 17, has sparked surprise among players who have completed it without recruiting any of the Flame Lords—key characters in the story. The game, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo, follows a time-traveling adventure where players gather a team of four Flame Lords: Cai, Dietrich, Theodora, and Leda. However, a YouTuber named LagSpike776 recently completed the game without recruiting any of these characters, a challenge that took him 40 hours and was documented in a nearly one-hour video. LagSpike776 bypassed the traditional storyline and went directly to face the final boss, skipping what would normally be dozens of hours of gameplay. This approach, however, came with significant difficulty, as he played through the game's Hard / Classic mode, which features a permanent death system—meaning if a character dies, they stay dead. Despite the game developers' warnings against such a strategy, LagSpike776 completed the challenge, though he described the experience as anything but enjoyable, writing on X, "Was it fun? F*** no." Reactions to the feat were mixed. Some online users called it "impressive," while others noted that watching the video made them feel "completely crazy and really not fun." Despite the difficulty of this alternative route, Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave has been praised by both critics and players. The game has been compared to titles like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Blood of Dawnwalker, which allow for more flexible approaches to the story. Critics have described it as "properly colossal," and one reviewer, Jeremy (also known as KikiToès), called it "one of the best RPGs of the year," with over 65 hours of gameplay. On Metacritic, the game has a metascore of 89/100 based on 71 reviews, while players have given it an 8.9/10 rating, based on 666 reviews.