Hoshido Recap

[amielleon]

Gameplay:

Hoshido's gameplay is gentle straightforward fun. The enemies have little to no skills. The Dragon Vein spots are "activate me to gain a huge advantage" buttons. If you've played FE games before, Hoshido Hard will probably be a gentle brisk introduction to FE14 mechanics.

Unlike Nohr, you don't need spike stats in Hoshido. You can have your cake and eat it. Well-rounded lance users like Oboro have enough defensive presence to do any defending necessary while also being able to double less speedy opponents. Your General Fire Emblem Sensibilities very much apply here.

... Except that you're also showered with luxuries when it comes to Hoshido weapons. All the mundane healing staves have 1-2 range, which is an incredible benefit. There are naginatas (Naginata of Protection) which grant you a +5 def/res boost--and you can get like three or four of them by game's end. It's like the game goes out of its way to make life easier for you.

It's almost a little too convenient. I sort of wish I'd played it on Lunatic.

A few notes on characters:

Mozume: This was my second time using Mozume. Remember how I was vaguely disappointed but vaguely satisfied on Nohr, finding that she was worthwhile once everyone else started capping their levels with giant gaping stats? Well, I have the general impression that stats are a little better on the Hoshido side. She doesn't seem to stand out as much, and in the end she just felt like too much work for too little payoff. Weaponmaster Mozume just isn't worth it, I think. (In my IK route I paralleled her to Archer ASAP and it was a completely different story. Stay tuned.)

Hinoka: Is amazing. She is the bulkiest pegasus knight I have ever laid eyes on. Hinoka for best Hoshido sib. The only drawback is that none of the naginatas seem to hit all that hard and her strength is slightly below average, so her offensive presence is so-so near the end.

Ryouma: Oddly disappointing aside from his ability to wield his powerful divine weapon.

Takumi: See Ryouma, except he also gets the benefit of being an archer, which keeps him relevant. Still, the only stat he gets a lot of is Skill, which is possibly the most useless stat to spike ever. His speed doesn't even keep up well enough to double middle-speed endgame enemies. Still worth using because he's an archer with a divine weapon.

Sakura: More or less exactly what I expect from an early game cleric, except she gets relatively little Res for some reason.

Oboro: I think I fangirled her a lot but I realize in hindsight that a lot of her utility came from the fact that I let her hog a Naginata of Protection for most of the game. With said Naginata, she had a great def/res line so she did most of the tanking in my game. Her defenses without said Naginata are so-so (although that happens to be enough on Hoshido) although she maintained a decent offensive presence until the end.

Rinka: I originally used her a bunch because I thought she was effectively Hoshido's equivalent of a General. But a General she was not. Later into the game there was a real threat of her being doubled, and her Res was lagging behind. I ended up inadvertantly benching her near the end of the game in favor of some of the kid characters.

Saizou: Gets no speed whatsoever. I was kind of hoping he was a ninja with slightly more strengthy stats, but seriously, halfway through the game he lost the ability to double anything and it felt incredibly disappointing for a unit not specced to deal single strong blows. (Shuriken have rather low natural mights.)

Tsubaki: Inferior in every way to Hinoka. Perfect my ass. Also, nothing in Hoshido really calls for a giant team of fliers. Use someone else.

Kazahana: I really loved Kazahana on my Hoshido route. She had nearly as much strength as she did speed. She was a delightful glass cannon, and halfway through the game she had so much avoid that she wasn't even that glassy all considered. Unfortunately, in my IK playthrough she got practically no strength whatsoever, so I'm wondering if this was a fluke. Still, in this playthrough at least, I let her have one of the dark flier seals in her later levels and she wrecked everything with galeforce. It was great.

Tsukuyomi: Very similar experience to Kazahana--was completely great in Hoshido, had amazing defenses for a mage-type, gave him galeforce, loved him. Then was completely let down in IK. PEMN? Who knows.

The kids: Meh. For some reason, their base stats always look incredibly lackluster. Maybe there is some min/maxy thing you can do with them and they're secretly the best characters ever, but if so, it must be something incredibly subtle.


Story:

Hoshido is approximately 50x more coherent than Nohr.[citation needed]

I got the strong impression that Hoshido is in some sense the True Story of FE14. The plot flows. The places you go make sense, contribute to some greater plot purpose, give you a decent sense of the world. The bad things that happen make sense as expressions of nobility, narrative just desserts, and so on.

It's remarkable how much easier it is to actually like the world and characters on Hoshido route. And despite being the non-gritty route, Hoshido's Kamui carries a greater sense of maturity about her, and the story feels like it has a much weightier sense of loss and sorrow.

I was also disappointed (with Nohr) when I found out that many of my favorite scenes from Nohr were basically cut'n'paste adaptations of scenes from Hoshido. And in many ways, Hoshido's depiction of Nohr and its characters was much richer than on Nohr route. Elize actually plays a role in the story, you learn about the relative importance of Marx and Leon, and you actually see what it's like in Nohr's capital. It left me with the feeling that if you're here for the story, there is very nearly no reason to play Nohr at all. (The only reasons left are probably the Nohrsibs bopping idiot!Kamui on the head and telling them how to survive in the general vicinity of Evil Daddy, and Cool Shit Marx Does In The End. If you want Nohrsib supports, go play Invisible Kingdom.)

In any case, Hoshido is pretty well-told. There are some elements that feel cheap, but it's well-conceived as a whole, and it gets some very important things right about politics that FE13 had outright ignored.

Unfortunately, you do get the nagging feeling that Hoshido is not complete. So Aqua has A Curse which comes up repeatedly as a major issue in the plot--and by the end, she and her curse are still largely a mystery to you. And what's up with these invisible soldiers? No one seems to know. And hey what about these Nosferatu which are a recurring enemy? No one knows.

Typically in Fire Emblem narrative structures, Garon and/or Macbeth would be merely the human meatpuppets dancing to a greater evil's tune. In Hoshido, you get the impression that this is the case--in fact, you are shown proof that this is the case--but there's something strangely empty about the story's reassurances that you've taken care of that greater evil.

If you want the full story, you get to shell out $20 for Invisible Kingdom. Yay.

PS: The FE13 child characters in Nohr were actually decently handled, but the FE13 parent reincarnations in Hoshido are largely awful and egregiously shallow (the exception being Grey's recruitment chapter). You may be happier if you do not go out of your way to obtain the kids.

SJ Stuff:

The women in Hoshido are markedly less bombastic. That in itself is kind of off-putting, the implication that Boobs = Secretly Crazy Bad Woman. On the whole they seem less gimmicky, although I find that this is also true of the men.

Unfortunately when it comes to plot presence, Hoshido's sisters aren't much better than Nohr's sisters--it's mostly Ryouma being obnoxiously perfect or Takumi being intermittently distrustful and/or possessed. Elize has a surprising amount of presence in this route, but her plotline comes to a very Female Character end which largely negates the agency it seemed to promise, which is disappointing.

What is cool, though, is the presence of Crimson and Yuugiri. ... The fact that I feel this excited about the fact that Hoshido actually kept up a long tradition of vaguely masculine military women (Off the top of my head: Echidna, Vaida, Tanith, Flavia) might speak more negatively about Nohr than it does positively about Hoshido but eh. I appreciate Crimson and Yuugiri. I happen to appreciate Crimson even more on the Invisible Kingdom route but that's a story for another day.

ETA: Oh yeah. I forgot to talk about the lesbian option, Shara.

Shara is horrible and I'm deeply disappointed that she's the only lesbian option. (S support was surprisingly sweet and genuine, but it does not at all make up for the fact that C-A was basically just "please stop being so creepy". At least Kamui/Zero had supports that were legitimately about getting to know each other, geez.)

Misc Atmospheric Stuff:

There are some cute touches used to differentiate the two cultures. I think the different foods you get in MyCastle was my favorite cue, and I think I might like that the Hoshido characters speak in a more proper Japanese way while the Nohr characters talk in a blunt anime modern-English-loanword-filled way of speaking. But I also feel like there were a lot of wasted opportunities.

I was kind of disappointed to find that a lot of the music on Hoshido route is the same as the music on the Nohr route. In fact, I'm not sure if there are any tracks outside of the movies that are unique to either side.

It feels a bit like the distinction goes halfway--that there's the pizzaz and garnish to make a recognizable difference between these two cultures, but there is nothing that conveys anything at the level of true culture shock.

But then, this is probably unfair to FE14. I don't think any Fire Emblem game has ever conveyed a full, rich, distinct, not-cheaply-exoticized culture. In many ways, FE14 probably approaches the subject with more earnestness than most of its predecessors.

In the Leon/Takumi B support (which is technically Invisible Kingdom content but I'm in the mood to talk about this) they start asking each other about their likes and dislikes--mostly because they're hoping that they have nothing in common. Takumi likes miso soup, and he explains the general idea of miso soup, being a foodstuff consisting of putting various savory ingredients in hot water, plus miso. And Leon is like, well shit, I actually really like stew, which is basically the same thing. And so on and so forth with chess and shogi and whatnot. And there's something extremely earnest about that kind of cross-cultural connection, where you discover a human from this other place who basically has the same tastes as you, except coded in their culture. I had a similar feeling from my friendship with Sukesou--hitherto I was kind of like "but how will I ever keep a Japanese penpal, I do not even like talking to most people in English," but then I met a slash fangirl in FE fandom with a taste for stories about loss of innocence and it was great. ^3^

Anyway, I'm getting egregiously off-topic in this post, so I'll wrap up here. I'll probably get around to writing the Invisible Kingdom recap after I get frustrated with Nohr Lunatic. :'D