Somehow, it's possible to beat the entirety of Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave without recruiting its four central characters, The Flame Lords.
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave doesn't follow the familiar structure laid out in most other games from Nintendo's SRPG series. In this one, players create their own character who exists in an apocalyptic present day and needs to travel back in time to recruit The Flame Lords - each of them has their own full-fat, completely unique route and storyline that can take hours to see through.
After pulling them into the present day, you're off to defeat Fortune's Weave's true threat together. Or you can, you know, maybe forget The Flame Lords in the past and foolishly jump into much-tougher battles from the get-go.
That's exactly what YouTuber LagSpike776 did, despite the game itself repeatedly warning against this method. "Just beat Fortune's Weave with no Flame Lords," they recently tweeted. "Yes, you heard that right… Was it fun? F*** no."
An hour-long video detailing the full madness, embedded above, was uploaded sometime after - in case you wanted tips on how to cheese your way through the end-game fights. Rather than having Cai, Dietrich, Theodora and Leda along for the ride, their roster only had Hong Hua, Troy and Eshmel.
The Flame Lordless run took them around 40 hours to beat, and that's all while playing the new Switch 2 game on Hard/Classic mode. That means the series' signature permadeath feature is on, battles get significantly harder, and your ability to rewind turns is restricted. The game's been out for 10 days or so, I should add.
Ignoring all the obelisks isn't something I'd recommend for a first timer. Seeing how these four characters' stories zig and zag past each other, before finally reaching the same destination, is really satisfying. But I imagine leaving The Flame Lords where/when they are would make for fun second-playthrough challenge.
