Obviously, spoilers.

Dietrich's Obelisk was obviously designed first.  It's clear from how everything plays out start to finish that this was built around the original vision of the game.

This review is not to trash this one.  There was a lot of good here, held back from some bad.

Dietrich, for his part, has a thirst for fighting that starts with a sea beast he wants revenge with.  It turns out that this sea beast may have been a human, transformed by the power of a Hero's Relic.  This arc is not the full story; but it hits full circle during the final cutscene, and that part was farily well done.

What I Liked

✅ Dietrich is grossly overpowered.  He leveled significantly faster than everyone else, and except for one battle, was never in any danger.  If you make him a Ranger Advanced Class, it improves his weaker traits while strengthening his primary ones, turning him into an all-around beast (no pun intended) and a crit machine.

✅ The duels that allow you to learn skills was more fun than the other gimmicks.  Some of the skills were 'meh', but there were a few that stood out as critically necessary in some battles.

✅ Everyone seemed reasonably simple to hire except for most of Cai's folks (because we missed the paralogue.  But we did get Ultand, who we didn't get to use because it took too long to recruit her).

✅ The dynamic between Esmeralda and Dietrich was good.

✅ Mikaela is an excellent supporting character, both in writing and on the battlefield.

✅ Dietrich's story had a lot of gimmick battles, but none were obscene like Theodora's fight against Cai.

✅ Fabio is one of the better magic users, probably one notch underneath Bonaventure (from Theodora's story).

✅ There's a lot of lore with this one, especially if you're a Three Houses fan.  In fact, a case could be made that Dietrich's story is effectively a paralogue to the events following the beginning of Three Houses (Seiros' battle against Nemesis).

Things are explained that help put a different light on Edelgard and Hubert's quest against the Agarthans, but if you accept what's told here, it means the Church of Seiros was lying about a lot of things.

It also means that while Edelgard had the right idea (the Church of Seiros were essentially false gods), she was just as much a puppet as seen in Three Hopes.

In other words: Three Houses, Three Hopes, and Dietrich's story from Fortune's Weave are some of the best long-term storytelling in the series; superior to other such like Kingdom Hearts (and less pointless confusion).

What I Didn't Like

👎 Fabio as a character felt misleading.  This was supposed to be strong character development, but it ended up making a character that was drawn to look like the definition of evil into a manchild.  The end cutscene was especially offensive.

Part of this is the portrayal of Agarthans in Three Houses; and most likely, they were trying to tell a story that not all Agarthans felt the same way about the humans.  But it came across weakly told.

👎 It felt like it took way too long to recruit certain characters compared to Cai's story.  Not sure why.

👎 The Magic Shard mechanic, where you have to use Answerer to find and defeat certain enemies, felt extremely tedious and unfun.  You obviously weren't required to do this, but without it, skills could not realize their full potential.

👎 Dietrich had arguably the most missable stuff.  Ironically, one of the missables strengthens Answerer, but if you got the Da Mina Sword and smith'd it up, it was just as strong.  Answerer just didn't feel very strong by the mid-game, certainly not like it should have.

👎 No Theodora battle.  Blah.

Summary

For Three Houses fans, Dietrich's story is must-play.  But for this game, it felt lacking behind Cai's.  Certainly better than the women's.  Just wish that the characters were a bit better written and that punches weren't pulled.