Warzone Fortune's Keep has done the impossible. Not only has it convinced me to return to the battle royale after months away, but it's officially replaced Rebirth Island as the best Warzone map yet. Rebirth Island was just reintroduced back into the Call of Duty: Warzone playlist rotation, but I haven't played a match on it – and I don't know if I will.
As someone who has loudly and proudly held a candle for Rebirth Island since its introduction in December 2020, the fact that I'd rather play Fortune's Keep is a testament to the quality of the new map, which was introduced in Warzone Season 4 as the featured Resurgence experience. It's full of beautifully designed buildings, traversal variety, and tons of places to get into tense, condensed firefights – Fortune's Keep has reinvigorated this battle royale and reminded me of why I continue to return to it all these years later.
Variety is the spice of fights
At first, I found Fortune's Keep a bit dense and overwhelming, especially since I was jumping back into Warzone after several months. My Resurgence matches would end rather quickly, offering me precious little time to explore the underground caves, ankle-deep waters, and beautiful Mediterranean-style town. But once I refamiliarized myself with Warzone's gunplay and had some time alive to properly explore the new map, I was instantly hooked.
Fortune's Keep is all about variety. On this rather small island there are both dense, layered networks of paths above and below ground, as well as several wide-open areas dotted with cover. The map has a level of verticality that is quite honestly unexpected, with ziplines and redeploy balloons scattered around the caves and multilevel buildings filled with ladders, balconies, and windows that open to elevated back alleys. But unlike the larger core battle royale maps of Caldera and Verdansk – and even Rebirth Island, to a lesser extent – there's no well-covered, extra-tall monolith where snipers can camp for entire matches. Everything on Fortune's Keep is only a few stories high, and all the better because of it.
Gone are the wide-open sightlines of all three previous maps, and in their place are plenty of areas that funnel players into close-quarters fights – many of which unfurl as you sprint around corners desperate for cover, or as you get lost in the island's many winding corridors and dimly lit subterranean tunnels. The Town location exemplifies Fortune Keep's thrillingly tight combat, with several multi-level buildings that are easy to get lost in but just as easy to exploit and use against your enemies. Every time I enter Town, my heart is in my throat as I try to hop through windows and slide around corners to evade gunfire. The graveyard overlooking Town seems like it would be a place to easily spy on and pick off enemy combatants, but the varying elevations of the surrounding areas mean camping in a building's window is just as unsafe as darting through the tombstones.
Fortune's Keep also looks beautiful, with a vibrant color palette and ornate Italian-inspired architecture that stands in stark contrast to the brutalism of Verdansk and the militaristic functionality of Rebirth Island. When I'm not being actively shot at, I like to think about how much fun I'd have on vacation here. I could swim in the turquoise waters of Smuggler's Cove, get tipsy at a tasting at the winery, and stay in a little old nonna's garlic-tinged AirBnB in Town. Fortune's Keep feels like a real place, not a barren space moonlighting as a Russian-ish town or an island created solely to imprison people.
A breath of fresh ocean air
Fortune's Keep is not for the faint of heart. Expect to be attacked no matter where you go, especially as you near the final few circles. This is not a map where you can cheesily camp for a few rounds and pop out during the waning moments to snatch a win out from another team's grasp – and that's part of what makes it so special. You may not have to prove your skill in a 1v1 battle just to return to the battlefield (remember, you can come back every time you die, so long as Resurgence is open) but that doesn't mean this is a game mode and map for green players.
But what's beautiful about Fortune's Keep is that it never feels unfair. You may be constantly getting attacked no matter where you run, but there are so many ways for you to get out of a sticky situation that it almost always feels like you stand a chance. All three previous maps (Verdansk, Rebirth Island, and Caldera) were limited in terms of traversal, with only a few routes available to get out of sticky situations. Verdansk became defined by snipers overlooking its many open fields, while Caldera's layout was all about open, vulnerable spaces stretching between densely populated hubs. And even though I adore Rebirth Island, getting trapped over by the Nova 6 factory was always a nightmare, as was trying to make it to Decon Zone from the prison roof while the gas was closing in. But Fortune's Keep plays with space in a way like no other Warzone map has before it, offering you myriad windows to jump out of, trellises to climb up, and ledges to mantle onto.
What's beautiful about Fortune's Keep is that it never feels unfair.
It's because of these traversal opportunities that Fortune's Keep always feels fresh. Even though my squad drops into the same place three matches in a row (Town, of course), each match plays out differently because of the density of the area and the opportunities it affords. In one round, we get pinned between squads in Graveyard and Overlook, who descend upon us in the low-lying town streets, eliminating us before we even make the final 10. In another, we hold down a single building until the final circle, rotating out to different rooftops to pick off teams in surrounding areas.
In a winning match, we ran out of Town in the late game and dropped into the Grotto's caves during a Fire Sale, raining airstrikes down on the squads above us until there were only two teams remaining. On Fortune's Keep, I never know what's going to happen next, and I always felt like I had a way out, which is a feeling I haven't gotten while playing this game in ages. Thanks to Fortune's Keep's beautiful visuals and wildly fun layout, I'm having consistent fun again in Warzone for the first time in months.
If you haven't already, check out our definitive ranking of the best Call of Duty games.
