The thing with Somniel being kiiiiinda obsolete is that we can explore the map post battle! IS could just set many world building convos there and have a Caravan (Convoy) setting up their stalls there. It will give the immersion of a group travelling together via Caravan saving the world without needing to go to the hub. Want someone playing on the water you say? Well there are maps with rivers and lakes. Set up tents and fireplace to eat your meal. Play games in the stall. Polish ring inside your tent. Caravan like works well with the post battle explorations. Maybe next game 🤞🏻
I agree. I personally liked the between-mission conversations more in Three Houses, especially since they felt meaningful. Meanwhile, in Engage, most of the conversations only involve the characters' basic personality traits, and that's when the characters don't give you the standard dialogue for getting a lot of kills(?) in battle, in which they give you bond fragments.
Exactly, Fire emblem always had a focus on traveling the land going from campaign to campaign early on and engage still follows that logic, with 3 Houses being the breaker by taking the school approach. even if Fates had the castle, it felt more organic then somniel did. Plus if i recall correctly, you could interact with other peoples castles in meaningful ways. Hell, i never played Fate/Extella LINK (basically a 2nd title in a sequel series to Fate/Extra that took a Musou combat approach) and i feel like when i look at THAT hub area VS somniel, they look way too damn similar in alot of ends. Probably does not help that F.E. Engage is giving me the same vibes of a watered down npc interaction like i am playing a terrible version of a Atelier series game, which i did play Atelier Ryza 2 about a year or two ago. The only excuse WHY we have somniel consists of `oh as the Divine dragon we can beam ourself up and our friends like its star trek` and to make a GENERALIZED location for NPC interaction and mechanic elements. Granted this can easily be cir-cum-vented by bond events could of happened past-tense in generic fields/castles/etc. or they could of had sub-story bond events where they could of re-used a previous map with entry point and enemy grouping to make the `bond events` feel more engaging then generic cut-scene after cut-scene. Ultimately, if they did a extensive patch to address Somniel features, i would hope they just let us do things like the Arena and Bond ring management in the world map menu so outside of doing bond events or achievements, i would have no real reason to go back to it. Hell you can even say the `casual outfit customization` despite it being some hyped up feature was also a nasty bait and a switch since i would rather have the option to CHOOSE which outfit my character would wear in combat, just lock it behind a character changing into the class first... They area already abusing rigging and outfit `overlay` setups to copy-paste the engage type outfits, since they dont really seem to change much between each character, with them mostly using a color swap out for the hair to differentiate them a smidge. But even the things like the Engage attacks are quite literally the same and don`t really have much variation on which character does it to boot.
I seen this mentioned in a subreddit I think, and it's easily the best idea. If IS makes the next game about a rebel/resistance group traveling around with a campfire/tent-esque hub, they'll have figured it out imo. Your camp can be set up the same, but used the battle map as the surrounding environment. It feels way less needlessly tacked on that way. By the end of engage, there was minigames I'd never even done because they just felt like a giant waste of time
Personally, I feel My Castle was the best hub we got. A lot of the side stuff is quickly done. I'm usually in and out in about 10 minutes upwards to an hour (I tend to overcomplicate things) depending on how much prep I need to get done.
Honestly the main problem with the hubs is just quite simply that they have virtually nothing to do with the core-gameplay. Which means it immeadiatly devolves into busy work once the initial novelty wears off, especially if it takes more than 5 minutes between battles to run through all the weird little tasks you need to train your units, get all the supports, etc.
If they really have to keep hubs for future games, I wouldn't mind a "Classic" mode or something, where the hub goes unused and it's just one level after another like the old games.
@@VonFirflirch Or just reduce it to menus. I love the Tellius hubs because they didn't waste my time, but effectively gave me all of the features that the Monastery and Somniel had.
I’ve been going through your catalogue of videos and I’m shocked how low your subscriber count is compared to the quality of videos you produce. You’re so underrated and I’m excited to see your channel flourish.
I don't want to be mean but I think his subs are so low because of his speech problem. It's difficult to listen to him for me, and I imagine many people are the same. The videos also aren't super interesting visually. The scripts are top notch though
Worts of all, FEE already has a better hub. After battles you get to explore the battlefield you just played in. It was just a matter of dropping in the facilities there too. Not only that, but characters react to others deaths exploring, not in the Somniel.
Would have been really great, I agree. But only major actors get a line regarding the current events, and every other character gets either a throwaway copypasta or a "oh boy I was great this map" I stopped talking to characters like 5 Chapters in or something, no point. Which also made running around the map and collecting items nothing but a meaningless chore. The missed potential really is a shame
I haven't played Engage yet but one of its ideas from it that seems really cool (not sure how it was executed there) is getting to hang out on a battlefield post-chapter, look around it for stuff, and chatting with your units. I think that's a concept that could have a lot of legs, and it was something I'd thought about even before the game came out.
I loved this concept! It's really cool to run around the maps you just fought on. I only wish the characters had a little more to say when you talk to them :(
@@actuallizard lol very classic Fire Emblem problem tbh. I've always thought it's one of the big weak points of the series in general, the number of games where I felt like they gave side characters enough to say I can count on one hand :(
@Will D Honestly. It's why I love three houses when we speak to the units. Each character has something unique to say about the assignment before the end of the month. Engage occasionally has some units make comments about the situation or area, but they repeat a lot of the same dialog, which I think depends on if you use them and how well they did in the battlefield
I actually consider the monastery to be one of the best parts of Three Houses, and consider Somniel to be a step down in that regard. I like choosing how to spend your time in order to grow your character and the units under your command. It also helps that Three Houses has my favorite character class systems in the franchise. I also like how, in the monastery, you can talk with characters and see their reactions to current events. You can even see them undergo a bit of character development- Bernadetta spends most of Part 1 holed up in her room, but comes out to put flowers on Jeralt's grave and can be found outside during Part 2. You can even read books in the monastery and learn a lot about the setting. I'll concede that it may not appeal to people who only want to do the story battles, but in Three Houses, the story missions feel like the climax of each month, with you having spent the rest of the month preparing. A big part of Three Houses is buildup and payoff- the war phase wouldn't have been as impactful without the academy phase to lay the groundwork, By comparison, Somniel has mostly generic character dialogue, and most of the minigames didn't add much, so after a while, I only cooked meals for the support points. I don't think Fire Emblem necessarily has to have hub levels like the Monastery in every game, but having good base conversations and facilities that are actually useful would be nice.
I’d be pretty content if they returned to a My Castle type hub, I enjoyed how quick and to the point that hub was so I could get back to the main gameplay (the customization was fairly nice too, especially as it also doubled as a battlefield). I agree on Three Hopes having the best hub of the 3 Switch FE games with hubs, Three Houses and Engage (especially the former) definitely feel like they have too much downtime between battles, personally.
One thing I will give the Somniel credit for is that the Somniel is at least a good tactical position. Not just "this old church is symbolic, let's make it our base of operations even though it makes no sense."
@@DawnmonThe problem is that it’s totally impractical to turn around and make the trek all the way back to the monastery, which the characters in 3H do extremely frequently. Like in Azure Moon for example, one of the last chapters in the game has Dimitri and Byleth’s army capture an enemy fort and kill the Death Knight because it is an important strategic position…but then they turn around and go back to the monastery for a month. It doesn’t make sense as a tactical decision, and makes you wonder why they even bothered capturing the fort in the first place if they weren’t gonna use it as a base of operations to prepare for their invasion of Enbarr.
It does introduce a bit of a plothole in chapter 11. If we have the ability to teleport to our safe floating castle from anywhere on the planet, why are we trying to fight our way to safety? Admittedly, we're never told how that teleportation works. If they said it takes a few minutes of standing still, that would solve the problem.
I have enjoyed the Somniel so far just because of the aesthetic and vibes, but I agree that locking the arena and ring chamber behind different loading screens makes that part a pain
Somniel is, unfortunately, one of my least favorite hub worlds. There's a lot of small little issues that just pile up, the loading screens are a big one, but then also it's just faster and less obtuse to buy items from the world map than via Somniel. It's also so ridiculously large compared to the amount of people that actually inhabit it, the quick travel makes it bearable but what's the point of having a big area if I'm just going to quick travel around. Additionally, the Somniel shares many of the negative aspects of the Monarchy, such as having to spend a lot of time increasing your units' bonds and stats, while providing none of the benefits, there's basically no progression aside from vendor and minigame unlocks. Minigames that feel bland and I'd wish the dev time would have been spent elsewhere instead. Ideally I'd have preferred all of this be accessible via menus, instead of having to go to small little sub areas just for one specific task and sit through 3 loading screens. In any event, good video, I agree with all of it.
The excercises are particularly damming I think. It's literally free stats. Free Strength (or the bad ones). Costs no money, costs no fragments, costs no items. And yet I rarely do it, it's just a chore. I want a free Energy Drop less than I want my minute and a half of brain death between maps. And I'm primarily a Disgaea player, I LIVE to fiddle with menus, squeeze a bit more put of gear, ect. And I just can't be bothered. I think the Monestary demands comparison, and the Monestary was at least SORTA reasonable about letting you just automate some stuff, mash through the two or three thi ga you actually want to do in a few seconds, and just get things done. The only brain aneurism you truly have to suffer is fishing, and even then you're not losing MUCH if you just ignore it (god help you if you optimize Fistfuls of Fish). This thing is sloooooooow. The two facilities you actually want to use most are put behind loading screens, when honestly mashing them together would be ideal if they HAVE to be apart from the rest. The advantage of the Somniel is that the minimum operation is at least quick, but that really really encourages cutting it out entirely tbh. I dunno. I feel the sails go slack if I have to spend more than a few minutes in either. I dunno, this one could just be getting the cascade effect of my annoyance at the Monestary. I want some menus. Menus are pretty good.
I can't agree with the comparison to the Monastery. Basically spend 0 time at all increasing their stats, and increasing their bonds is very short, easy, to the point and just good customizability. The minigames are bland, and also unimportant, their rewards are extremely small and can absolutely be ignored even on maddening. I don't think much dev time WAS spent on these minigames. The loading screens are pretty much the only thing that make it take too much time, I will definitely agree with that, it makes no sense to have the emblem room and the arena be locked behind loading screens.
Honestly, the month long preparation in Three Houses war section of the game makes sense, as sometimes that's how long it can take a medieval army to get ready to move. The problem with that is medieval armies generally stay in a town or encampment near where they just conquered for a little while, they don't withdraw instantly after conquering an area like they do in Three Houses. Plus, medieval armies need to consider the season when they set out in war. For some reason, it seems like Fodlen is at a near-always Summer season condition, which doesn't exactly track with how the months work or the South and Central European landscapes, but it does mean the armies don't need to consider the seasonal condition when preparing to set out.
I honestly thought we were going to get to see snowy environments in 3 houses because of the small intros they did at the beginning of the game with the whole traditions thing. But nope. Sunny and bright out all day long
Yeah. Plus it kinda thrashed the narrative. "We punched through this highly contested border chokepoint! Quickly, everyone retreat to the Monestary for a month so we can come back, nothing will happen to this while we're gone!"
Radiant dawn base was peak fire emblem base. Only game where inventory management and shopping was something to look forward to. There is so much else to do too, skill allocation, bonus exp, base conversations. I just feel right at home in that base and the music never gets old.
I mostly agree with your opinions but I do enjoy the hub worlds for the break from regular fe gameplay. After a long or difficult map just running around doing little easy minigames can rebuild my stamina for the next map by engaging different parts of my brain and letting the strategy part of my brain have a rest.
“This could have been a menu” is the “this could have been an email” of gaming. I mainly just collect items, do the sleep events, arena and feed the dog in the Somniel, everything else feels way too slow to do
I love the concept of these places in FE but with the nerfs to things like bonding and stuff I feel like I slam the breaks in my playthrough just to eat a meal. Take a nap. Buy weapons. Exc. I miss going between towns to buy weapons and the like, I miss the games feeling organic with a natural progression.
The Somniel feels really tedious primarily because of the loading screens, seriously its such nightmares, after every battle if you want to gather your crafting resources/arena/whatever you need to go through a loading screen to get into the somniel, go through a loading screen to quick travel to the arena room, go through a loading screen to go to the ring room if you need to do stuff there, and this is roughly the minimum of what you'll be doing after EVERY SINGLE MAP. That is the main reason it ends up being so tedious
My favorite part of the Monestary in Three Houses was the reused asset of the church for the final map of Shackled Wolves DLC. It made the fight feel connected to the world and fit much better than some other map.
I wish IS had made conversations from post battles like the ones in SoV, actual conversations between characters on what's going on in the story. Also who wins Arena does matter, you get more exp if you win, and the main gain of the mini games the bond fragment points. That said, yeah I agree with most of the issues of Engage's Somniel everyone has
I think the negatives massive number of chores from 3h outweigh the positive from character building etc. I can't do a second playthrough it's just too much. I'm not sure why so many like it? With engage another playthrough feels like a walk in the park in comparison; especially if everything from the hub is ignored except for maybe collecting dog's silver ingots. Also got a rank supports just doing arena with strangers
Part of me hoped the somnial would also adapt to some of the units you recruit, similar to the barracks in awakening that would gain simple yet permanent decorative items when specific units joined, as I'd never seen the red benches and parasol before Kagetsu joined, but then not even a chapter later the area that was in was empty again. Its nice that each royal has a feature but at the same time its a pain that when a non-royal is running it they have to fade to black to bring the "correct" royal in, for example my first flea market was Anna, who it made sense to be running the stall hell you see her by it in several supports BEFORE the actual stall is available but nope we have to fade to black and bring Timerra in.
Thanks for this. I picked up Engage today and was feeling like the hub was just so… lifeless in comparison to Three Houses. Glad to see I’m not the only one.
I feel like the war camp is what we should have gotten in Three Houses during Part 2, sure they say the monastery is a good place to use as a base but during war times it doesn’t make sense to be constantly marching back there then back to the battlefield every month. I’m not really a fan of the hub worlds because I think it takes away from the flow of the game because you can be running for your life like what happens during chapter 10-11 and then back in the Sommiel you’re characters are just chilling in their drip or swimming in the pool. I think it takes away from trying to get into that war feel. Garreg Mach I think still had the feeling like you are at war since characters always have something to say while in the Sommiel characters only have something to say every other map. I am also just not a fan of the activities they have in the Sommiel unlike the activities of the monastery. It’s just little stat boosters for the map and that’s it while it makes sense for the monastery to raise motivation of your students, increase Byleth’s proficiencies, get stat boosters and increase professor level. The only things I ever do in the Sommiel is run around to collect all the ingots and stuff on the floor, feed and pet Sommie, forge, arena and ring skills. While the monastery is huge I just don’t like the layout of the Sommiel it feels so weird and awkward to be running around the place. If they ever do a future hub I would prefer the war camp because it just makes more sense to not have to constantly have your army be back constantly to the same place or just bring the menus back so it’s not to time consuming to have to run around and talk to everyone in their random locations and do all the unnecessary activities
I have had about an hour or so to play engage each day over the past few days. It’s frustrating that in that hour I can get through a map, but spend about the same amount of time messing around in the hub. It should be a 75/25 split at best and it feels far closer to a 50/50.
Y’know I’ve always wondered if Fire Emblem would focus more on having the characters freely traverse the world around them as they travel and give some freedom to explore that world. A good example that comes to my mind would be the Shining Force series where you are free to explore a number of maps and do necessary tasks in those maps. My favorite parts of those maps in the Shining Force was finding secret, powerful characters to add to your army.
100% agreed, the somniel has felt extremely annoying for me largely thanks to loading screens, along with the post battle exploration sections, which must have been a fair amount of work to set up as traversable areas and are an active negative for me.
Id 100% rather have the post battle explorations if something had to be dropped. It's nice have option context if you want it. And the maps already exist, that's where the battle animations happen
I am a bit more fond of the monestary than most, but I do agree a lot with this. Walking around in a hub world does make it feel more like Im part of the game world than a menu does. But the monestary does wear out its welcome. The timeskip and ruination of the monestary would have been a good reason to scale back the chores and traversable area. I am not a fan of Somniel, for the reasons you mentioned. It removes some of the tedium, but also basically all that made it good. As others stated, they might as well have scrapped it and expanded the post battle exploration a bit. It would also not give chapter 11 a little plot hole if we didn't have the demonstrated ability to teleport to safety whwnevwr we want. My other favourite turn based tactics series, XCOM, actually does a decent job with its base. While it functionally controls like a menu, it has the visuals that give some of the benefit of exploration. And rather than chores, the base management feels like a part of the core gameplay to me. Perhaps Fire Emblem could "borrow" a bit from there. Otherwise, I propose a ship as our next hub. Fairly compact to explore, can be withour loading screens, makes sense that we can return to it between battles, can be expanded with new facilities and npcs you pick up along the way, can be part of a defense map when we do a naval battle, could be expanded with artillery or magic crystal that can provide support during battles on the coast... Plus, a pirate theme would be a fun little change to the standard European medival setting of most FE games.
I agree with 100% of this video. By the end of my first run through of 3 Houses, I loved the characters but hated all the in-between chapter work. I did my second route a year later, so the dialogue and support was fresh to me and the monastery wasn't automatically boring to me. But like you said in the video, it was the character interaction that drove it. Everyone in Fodlan was traumatized as hell, so I get scaling that back a bit, but the hero worship and "one-noteness" of a lot of the inital characters in Engage make me not want to do the support stuff, so the Somniel is almost like the worst of both worlds, BUT is mechanically better than the monastery to me.
I liked the Three Houses hub the somniel absolutely feels tacted on and complete with things I don't want to do (horrible gym button smash minigames). add in load screens for the arena & the ring room and it's like 'gurlll'
My favorite is still the Telius variant. Straight to the point, but just enough flavour to evoke an environment. Everything outside that is just bloat, including moving around to find the right person to talk to instead of just clicking the right menu option.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who compared the Somniel to the Tellius base menu. TBH the only hub I've enjoyed at all was Garreg Mach (I haven't played Three Hopes because I don't like Warriors gameplay). I just prefer menus, the hubs feel like they're there for the sake of being there
Yeah I really enjoyed my time with the Monastery on my first playthrough but it really drags on during repeat ones. It pretty much made me realize that I'm a bigger fan of the menu based base that PoR and RD had.
Personally I feel like the best thing that a hub world can do is make you spend enough time there to make it feel like a home, then have a point where your hub gets attacked. Defending a home that you have spent enough time in to feel a connection to feels far more meaningful than defending some random throne. Fates nailed this.
Have you ever played Breath of Fire 3? They already perfected this with their campsite (portable hub world) and outstanding story/characters. Also, I think a lot of this just comes down to FE3H having better writing. If the Engage characters said a few more sentences when you talk to them, would it even make the game better with the writing still being rather so-so? edit: great video, btw.
I personally feel that the Monastery in 3 Houses would've worked better, if there was something new when you enter into the war phase. For example, if you could upgrade the Monastery or re-unlock things you could do during the White Cloud phase, but couldn't because the Monastery was damaged.
What I want is the removal of a central hub, but an expansion of Engage's after map exploration. I don't want to see the same scenery every time. I like to feel I'm traveling around the world. Give my army a caravan that travels around, much like Path of Radiance. The shops travel in covered wagons. Your units set up tents. One area may have a mine for minerals, another a forest for hunting and gathering wood. Another may have a town with locals that have some side quests and unique shop items. A treasure vault to loot in another, and another with a lake to fish in. I hated every minute of the monastary in three houses. Outside of supports, I don't think there was a sentence of dialog worth reading. I was actively keeping track. Not overstating things. The Somniel looks a lot nicer, and has much less you need to do (although the game could have made it clearer which tasks mattered, and which were an utter waste of time. Polishing bond rings? Why do I keep seeing this type of thing show up? Who asks for this?) But in both cases, you're being presented with the same tedious activities in the same location every time. Mix it up!
I think if a patch reduces the loading screens exponentially to where it’s almost instant, the Somniel will be better in mind than the Monastery. As of now they’re pretty equal in how tedious they feel versus what you get out of them.
To somewhat contradict the point about the chore rewards being small, there's the fishing minigame (because of course). Fishing in daytime with the best rod can produce thousands of Bond Fragments. This is after Three Houses put Professor Level experience into its own fishing minigame, which was also a notorious time sink. Most of these Somniel minigames just feel like they're there for the sake of padding a list of features. They're not interesting, and they keep the player from getting to the genuinely good part of the game. And then there are the wake-up conversations, which have extra characterization in them and are hidden behind the loading screen for Alear's room.
A big purpose the hubs have to me is that they let you take a break between core-gameplay sections. Not sure how common this sentiment is, but I like just having a place to mess around in, no big objectives just chilling out and exploring. I just wish the activities in the FE hubs were more fun
You get to walk around the map after the battles in Engage, I feel like just having supports and shops there would have been fine and the conversations would be more applicable to the current events
Something I think could be cool is if they treated the Hub World a lot more like the bases in monster hunter games. where everything is right there in the open and you can walk to it and access what you need. Condense them down a bit and make them quicker to traverse around and all of the characters are easier to get to. They could also combine some features together. For example, they could make it so that you could opt to pay the blacksmith a little extra cash to use their tools yourself and you get to bring someone else in with you to help. so you're forging your weapons and getting extra support levels at the same time. Or bringing someone with you to the market to shop gives you support and the chance for them to haggle. and different characters are better at haggling different things than others. more support, possibility of a lower item price. This one is also a pipe dream that will likely never happen unless I made my own FE game. But they could also make the hub a bit more interesting to traverse in by giving your character more traversal options. If i could make my own game, main character would be of the thief class and the way they move around the hub is through parkour methods. but since they are an active part of the army, its just written off as training purposes and nobody is really bothered by it. Id also have this feature used more in gameplay where in certain maps if not all of them you have the ability to recon of the map. Which is similar to the Engage post battle map traversal, mixed with the Echoes dungeons. Since your a Thief you go around the map youre going to be fighting on to gain an advantage. If you choose to just go into the map without recon then its just a regular FE map as its always been. But deciding to do recon can get you other things like locating alternate entry points so you can choose a more favorable starting position. stealing from chests or from enemy units early. listening in on enemy conversations to learn that reinforcements will enter from the top left on turn 5 ahead of time. locating traps that would otherwise be inaccessible. like noticing before battle that the chandeliers are fragile and can be broken from this exact spot, and doing so in battle will create a fog of war for the enemy. you can see them but they wont react to you unless you are right on top of them. And then there can be drawbacks. since you're a thief you do things stealthily and getting caught can cause reinforcements to arrive sooner or immediately. certain areas of the map might be more fortified or blocked off. units could be rearranged entirely. traps could be set for your army instead, etc.
I much rather have menus. Hub worlds are a nuisance in fire emblem. Although, I think if we had the option of using a menu and the hub world, I'd love it more. The hub world in three houses was good, but by the mid game I stopped frequently visiting and in my second play through I did not use it as much cause i just couldn't care. Which led me to miss Edelgard's event. I would prefer better support conversations and more maps, than a hub world to be honest
Do pushups instead of sit-ups, the strength boost from pushups is much better than the HP boost from sit-ups. That said I sort of agree that the Somniel is only a partial improvement over the monastery. Definitely don't miss all the chores of the monastery, but I do wish everyone had more to say between chapters at the Somniel. Seems like it is only the new recruits or people directly affected by the next story event that have commentary when you're in the Somniel. I never played Three Hopes so no comment there.
I found it a little disingenuous that while doing the lucina bond 18 skill inherit you ran across to the ring chamber when you can inherit skills in the arena as well.
I'm only a few hours into my first playthrough but have already started skipping every post-battle exploration and most Somniel activities. As soon as the game mentioned that any bond fragments you miss will just be given to you, I thought "what's the point, then?" And once that seed is planted, it doesn't go away.
Engage had the perfect setup to not need a hub, letting you run around the location of each map after the battle to talk to your allies for characterisation moments similar to 3 houses and it just, doesn't do that, for no reason beyond engage having a very basic barebones story and more limited characters. (If you enjoy engage's writing that's fine, but it is significantly simpler than 3 houses and msot characters are much more flanderised gimmicks in engage, even if some of them are fun or interesting)
i played Engage for the last week bought the dlc early and everything and i found it so tedious to travelling across the cafe from the ring room for inheritance and then back to the area to level the next bond, every point you made about three houses and engage was exactly what i was think my whole first play through
Wait are you saying you get a unit to level 5 or 10 or whatever bond then inherit skills then go back to arena to level up another bond level? Wouldn’t it be better to just level up all the bond levels to whatever you need before starting inheritance? Sure you might waste fragments not knowing the sp cost of skills, but you just have to think of it as an investment since many good skills are 1k plus and getting each character there takes a while. You can see unit sp in the inventory, so you could just guess how many skills you might be able to inherit. I think running back and forth seems silly
@@anthonynguyen1289 yup thats how the game works it was a giant pain, to do all those things WORST PART ABOUT ARENA IS THAT YOU HAVE CYCLE THROUGH MENU OVER AND OVER AGAIN AFTER EACH BATTLE BECAUSE IT BRING YOU OUT OF ARENA MENU AFTER EACH BATTLE
In terms of size, the somniel is better, in terms of what is offered, it is just a stripped down version of the monistary. I have stalled out in play just after collecting the desert rings. The chore aspect of hunting down skirmishes is still a thing, just through the overworld, and I have yet to find a good way to train my bench so I have units levels away from being field viable.
Really minor, but the game charging you legitimate gameplay resources at the botique for outfits that don't even appear the bulk of the time you'll be seeing your units just demonstrates to me how little thought went into the Somniel (or that they had bigger intentions that got cut down dramatically befofe the final product).
3H is play only once type of game for me due to this (ok I managed 2 playthroughs, but I don't want to see Monastery EVER again in my life), meanwhile I have around 3k hours in GBA era games and hacks because I can just press start once or twice and immediately get to next battle prep - this is vital to ensure replayability. Fluff is nice first time around but kills the game on subsequent runs. So far Engage is indeed less tedious but I will see if indeed junk filler amounts to being unbearable by the end of it. It's better than 3H, but would be indeed better if it was not there at all.
I guess I don't really think of them as hubs in the same way as the somnoel and monastery, but I like them. I thought they added a lot of flavor to the game without being obtrusive
I think the biggest problem with the fire emblem series is that cavalry and fliers are objectively the best units in basically every game and there's no reason not to make every unit you can into a mounted unit.
At least the music is good…I put a podcast on during the hub which helps with the loading times and tediousness also I picked up over 60 nuts in my first play through. Lol
I do disagree that the Somniel could just be a menu only because I find traveling a hub simply more immersive and enjoyable than going between menu options. Having a menu option could be nice for the people that want it, sure, but I'd be sad if it weren't there at all, and I think that over-loading the menu with a bunch of different options is rather unappealing. I sincerely don't believe that menus are 1:1 replacements for hubs and vice versa; Even in other games where people criticize a hub, saying it could just be a menu, I feel it adds charm, feeling, and personality to the downtime.
The Somniel is not engaging for me. I feel like I just repeat the same things over and over dine -> arena -> ring chamber -> collect items -> training -> fish -> wyvern ride -> sleep . I feel like I doing chores instead of playing the game :( . I wish there are missions like in three houses and proper npc's (sob gatekeeper)
since I played FE in order of Fates > Awakening > Echoes > Three Houses > Engage, I started with the support system that lead to legacy characters. I miss the legacy characters. Not only was it an interesting way to sort of fine tune and cultivate your final team for late game since the kids of the units had better stats based on the combo of the parents, I really enjoyed the romances, some of them were funny, some heartwarming and some super wholesome. Now in engage I don't feel incentivised enough to bother much at all with the support system since you can't pair units up anymore like you could in Fates/Awakening or even what they did in TH. Now it's replaced with the Emblem Ring system, which is cool on its own, but the supports (as far as I know, haven't finished Engage yet) don't lead to romance, and since I find most of the characters extremely obnoxious and cringey, I have no interest in even viewing the support dialogues. A couple have been interesting so far, but it's only been with Diamant, Jade and Ivy so far that I've found the dialogues even bearable, not even necessarily enjoyable, since most of the characters are obnoxiously reverent of the main character from the moment you get them. (Framme is the cringiest one by far, followed by Amber imo. I thought Alcryst was gonna be this cool, intimidating Takumi-esque character... until he threw himself at the Divine Dragon's feet and apologized obnoxiously and turned out to be a broken record of self-deprication. Though I'll admit he has an interesting support dialogue with Celine.)
I agree with pretty much everything expressed in this video. I also feel like the point about 3H's monastery causing part 2 contrivances is exacerbated with the Somniel. Granted, Engage has a tone very different from 3H, but as far as I can tell the main character just... warps the whole army there? Whenever they want? And then they can just warp back out and end up anywhere on the continent? It seems like logistics are not meant to be taken that seriously in Engage, which personally disconnects me from a lot of the story.
I agree but I still like the Somniel less than the Monastery. Yes the monastery really really dragged and became so tedious that I often struggled to continue/go through repeat playthroughs, but the Somniel never had the same level of charm from the start. And the loading screens really add up since the most important things, the arena/bonding and bond ring stuff, both have their own separate rings. At least in a zelda game the minigames are fun but fire emblem just has me pressing the A but for no reason in these games like what is the point???
I think I am somwhat forgiving of Engage's lack of meaningful inbetween mission conversations because it has been very clear from the getgo that Engage's story and writing was never meant to be as dense as 3H was. For a much more straightforward Good guys vs the Bad guys you don't need a whole lot of intrigue so these convo's aren't /as/ necessary as they were for a game like 3H. Though to be honest they really are lacking in Engage's Somniel. Most mechanics in Somniel you can basically skip, but some of that is not properly communicated by the game. Like your workout bonuses not stacking with food or tonics for example is a huge piece of information that the game outright does not tell you and could save you loads of time. In 3H skipping out on monastary tasks was downright detrimental to your unit's combat performance, but in Somniel you can more or less do a quick routine of arena/bond fragments/food and you're good to go. Which could have been some menu's like in the Tellius games. Like you said about 3H's war phase, constantly returning to the hub world for game mechanic reason's takes me out of the story and requires the plot to be written around having to constantly return. I think the game that did it best was Shadows of Valentia. Villages and locations you come across are where you get to know your army and buy your equipment.
Hubs in FE are honestly awful. My Castle was... fine, I guess, but I feel like going that direction pushes them into adding superfluous features and complexity that harm the game or at least are development time not well spent (e.g. Lottery Shop, farming/mining resources for forging and meals). Tellius base convos, meanwhile, were so hype on my first playthrough. And then after that I can just ignore them and just do my inventory management and such. If we truly must have a hub, I don't understand why we can't just have a menu in addition. It's the equivalent of turning off animations. I'll do stuff the fancy way for awhile, but then I want to go power user! But even more than that, why in god's name did Engage not give you access to the forge in battle preps. It's literally just a menu! I feel similarly about skill inheritance and bond rank, but the forge is particularly egregious b/c there's no real difference between it and the armory or shop. Every time I decide I want to forge something after I'm already in battle preps, I die a little inside.
Honestly even the 3 Hopes hub sucks, despite being a big improvement over the monastery it's still a chore to run around and talk to everyone when all of it could've been menus Unless they can pull off something like My Castle again (no load times, quick traversal, straight to the point menus), hubs are never gonna work in FE
Monastery is really good actually.. Probably right that is annoying on subsequent playthroughs.. but first playthrough is the most important. Somniel is hot garbage.. Every activity barely does anything, is annoying, or has a load screen.. bond fragments have almost no value unless you are switching and maxing emblem rings frequently.
The Somniel is so boring 😭 like all the minigames aren't fun and take forever. The wyvern riding is the only one that is kinda fun, but it only has like 3 levels. The Somniel is also so removed from the world, which is the opposite of the monastery. But like. It feels like I have to do it between every battle bc of how hard resources are to get
I have played FE7, 9, 10, and Fates, with Fates being the only FE with a hub. I really dislike the idea of a hub and level select in a FE game, it feels more like busywork keeping me away from the core of the game, but since resources have to be spent developing and polishing it, given the HUB is where you'll spend most of your time in that game given how short each map individually is, it comes across as the HUB being the core mechanic while the story and gameplay are secondary to it. I much prefer the classic version of simple yet effective and intuitive menus for the parts between maps. That gave the devs more time and resources to allocate to the creation of the maps and script, which made them much more creative and engaging than what Modern FE has been putting out.
Hubs and world maps just aren't conducive to Fire Emblem as far as I'm concerned. Somniel, the Monastery, and every single world map make the game take forever and are filled with inane side tasks that skipping makes you lose out on potential resources and stats at the expense of time and in my case, sanity. Even just compare Sacred Stones to its two previous entries. Giving you access to a grind tower ruins the lvl curve, having various shops at your finger tips makes you gluttonous and wasteful, and just moving through the map causes an uptick in the time you spend away from the actual gameplay. I love Echoes to death but I still hated all the overworld, grinding, and money farming. Hopes was also a general downgrade from 3H cause while they streamlined everything, all the activities were basically useless except training. Grinding in JRPGs can and does work, Agarest is a masterpiece that all but requires grinding and a spreadsheet (I know, I made one). But its not like Fire Emblem, it doesn't use smaller numbers like FE does. Fire Emblem just doesn't need all this filler to drag out its playtime.
Garreg Mach was a chore from the very start. At no point was it ever engaging or fun. Engage has its characters react to the story in the post-battle maps.
The thing with Somniel being kiiiiinda obsolete is that we can explore the map post battle! IS could just set many world building convos there and have a Caravan (Convoy) setting up their stalls there. It will give the immersion of a group travelling together via Caravan saving the world without needing to go to the hub.
Want someone playing on the water you say? Well there are maps with rivers and lakes. Set up tents and fireplace to eat your meal. Play games in the stall. Polish ring inside your tent. Caravan like works well with the post battle explorations.
Maybe next game 🤞🏻
I agree. I personally liked the between-mission conversations more in Three Houses, especially since they felt meaningful. Meanwhile, in Engage, most of the conversations only involve the characters' basic personality traits, and that's when the characters don't give you the standard dialogue for getting a lot of kills(?) in battle, in which they give you bond fragments.
Exactly, Fire emblem always had a focus on traveling the land going from campaign to campaign early on and engage still follows that logic, with 3 Houses being the breaker by taking the school approach. even if Fates had the castle, it felt more organic then somniel did. Plus if i recall correctly, you could interact with other peoples castles in meaningful ways.
Hell, i never played Fate/Extella LINK (basically a 2nd title in a sequel series to Fate/Extra that took a Musou combat approach) and i feel like when i look at THAT hub area VS somniel, they look way too damn similar in alot of ends. Probably does not help that F.E. Engage is giving me the same vibes of a watered down npc interaction like i am playing a terrible version of a Atelier series game, which i did play Atelier Ryza 2 about a year or two ago.
The only excuse WHY we have somniel consists of `oh as the Divine dragon we can beam ourself up and our friends like its star trek` and to make a GENERALIZED location for NPC interaction and mechanic elements.
Granted this can easily be cir-cum-vented by bond events could of happened past-tense in generic fields/castles/etc. or they could of had sub-story bond events where they could of re-used a previous map with entry point and enemy grouping to make the `bond events` feel more engaging then generic cut-scene after cut-scene.
Ultimately, if they did a extensive patch to address Somniel features, i would hope they just let us do things like the Arena and Bond ring management in the world map menu so outside of doing bond events or achievements, i would have no real reason to go back to it.
Hell you can even say the `casual outfit customization` despite it being some hyped up feature was also a nasty bait and a switch since i would rather have the option to CHOOSE which outfit my character would wear in combat, just lock it behind a character changing into the class first...
They area already abusing rigging and outfit `overlay` setups to copy-paste the engage type outfits, since they dont really seem to change much between each character, with them mostly using a color swap out for the hair to differentiate them a smidge. But even the things like the Engage attacks are quite literally the same and don`t really have much variation on which character does it to boot.
Honestly the best hub idea I've seen
I seen this mentioned in a subreddit I think, and it's easily the best idea.
If IS makes the next game about a rebel/resistance group traveling around with a campfire/tent-esque hub, they'll have figured it out imo. Your camp can be set up the same, but used the battle map as the surrounding environment.
It feels way less needlessly tacked on that way. By the end of engage, there was minigames I'd never even done because they just felt like a giant waste of time
I'm hoping that if they really do make a remake to Genealogy, it will implement this idea in some fashion.
Personally, I feel My Castle was the best hub we got. A lot of the side stuff is quickly done. I'm usually in and out in about 10 minutes upwards to an hour (I tend to overcomplicate things) depending on how much prep I need to get done.
Honestly the main problem with the hubs is just quite simply that they have virtually nothing to do with the core-gameplay.
Which means it immeadiatly devolves into busy work once the initial novelty wears off, especially if it takes more than 5 minutes between battles to run through all the weird little tasks you need to train your units, get all the supports, etc.
If they really have to keep hubs for future games, I wouldn't mind a "Classic" mode or something, where the hub goes unused and it's just one level after another like the old games.
@@VonFirflirch Or just reduce it to menus. I love the Tellius hubs because they didn't waste my time, but effectively gave me all of the features that the Monastery and Somniel had.
I’ve been going through your catalogue of videos and I’m shocked how low your subscriber count is compared to the quality of videos you produce. You’re so underrated and I’m excited to see your channel flourish.
I 2nd this. Just found him this morning
I don't want to be mean but I think his subs are so low because of his speech problem. It's difficult to listen to him for me, and I imagine many people are the same. The videos also aren't super interesting visually. The scripts are top notch though
Worts of all, FEE already has a better hub. After battles you get to explore the battlefield you just played in. It was just a matter of dropping in the facilities there too. Not only that, but characters react to others deaths exploring, not in the Somniel.
Would have been really great, I agree. But only major actors get a line regarding the current events, and every other character gets either a throwaway copypasta or a "oh boy I was great this map"
I stopped talking to characters like 5 Chapters in or something, no point. Which also made running around the map and collecting items nothing but a meaningless chore. The missed potential really is a shame
I haven't played Engage yet but one of its ideas from it that seems really cool (not sure how it was executed there) is getting to hang out on a battlefield post-chapter, look around it for stuff, and chatting with your units. I think that's a concept that could have a lot of legs, and it was something I'd thought about even before the game came out.
I loved this concept! It's really cool to run around the maps you just fought on. I only wish the characters had a little more to say when you talk to them :(
@@actuallizard lol very classic Fire Emblem problem tbh. I've always thought it's one of the big weak points of the series in general, the number of games where I felt like they gave side characters enough to say I can count on one hand :(
@Will D Honestly. It's why I love three houses when we speak to the units. Each character has something unique to say about the assignment before the end of the month. Engage occasionally has some units make comments about the situation or area, but they repeat a lot of the same dialog, which I think depends on if you use them and how well they did in the battlefield
I actually consider the monastery to be one of the best parts of Three Houses, and consider Somniel to be a step down in that regard.
I like choosing how to spend your time in order to grow your character and the units under your command. It also helps that Three Houses has my favorite character class systems in the franchise.
I also like how, in the monastery, you can talk with characters and see their reactions to current events. You can even see them undergo a bit of character development- Bernadetta spends most of Part 1 holed up in her room, but comes out to put flowers on Jeralt's grave and can be found outside during Part 2.
You can even read books in the monastery and learn a lot about the setting.
I'll concede that it may not appeal to people who only want to do the story battles, but in Three Houses, the story missions feel like the climax of each month, with you having spent the rest of the month preparing. A big part of Three Houses is buildup and payoff- the war phase wouldn't have been as impactful without the academy phase to lay the groundwork,
By comparison, Somniel has mostly generic character dialogue, and most of the minigames didn't add much, so after a while, I only cooked meals for the support points.
I don't think Fire Emblem necessarily has to have hub levels like the Monastery in every game, but having good base conversations and facilities that are actually useful would be nice.
I’d be pretty content if they returned to a My Castle type hub, I enjoyed how quick and to the point that hub was so I could get back to the main gameplay (the customization was fairly nice too, especially as it also doubled as a battlefield). I agree on Three Hopes having the best hub of the 3 Switch FE games with hubs, Three Houses and Engage (especially the former) definitely feel like they have too much downtime between battles, personally.
One thing I will give the Somniel credit for is that the Somniel is at least a good tactical position. Not just "this old church is symbolic, let's make it our base of operations even though it makes no sense."
Correct me if I’m wrong, is Garreg Mach not also a good tactical position being in the middle of Fodlan?
@@DawnmonThe problem is that it’s totally impractical to turn around and make the trek all the way back to the monastery, which the characters in 3H do extremely frequently. Like in Azure Moon for example, one of the last chapters in the game has Dimitri and Byleth’s army capture an enemy fort and kill the Death Knight because it is an important strategic position…but then they turn around and go back to the monastery for a month. It doesn’t make sense as a tactical decision, and makes you wonder why they even bothered capturing the fort in the first place if they weren’t gonna use it as a base of operations to prepare for their invasion of Enbarr.
It does introduce a bit of a plothole in chapter 11. If we have the ability to teleport to our safe floating castle from anywhere on the planet, why are we trying to fight our way to safety?
Admittedly, we're never told how that teleportation works. If they said it takes a few minutes of standing still, that would solve the problem.
I have enjoyed the Somniel so far just because of the aesthetic and vibes, but I agree that locking the arena and ring chamber behind different loading screens makes that part a pain
Somniel is, unfortunately, one of my least favorite hub worlds. There's a lot of small little issues that just pile up, the loading screens are a big one, but then also it's just faster and less obtuse to buy items from the world map than via Somniel. It's also so ridiculously large compared to the amount of people that actually inhabit it, the quick travel makes it bearable but what's the point of having a big area if I'm just going to quick travel around.
Additionally, the Somniel shares many of the negative aspects of the Monarchy, such as having to spend a lot of time increasing your units' bonds and stats, while providing none of the benefits, there's basically no progression aside from vendor and minigame unlocks. Minigames that feel bland and I'd wish the dev time would have been spent elsewhere instead. Ideally I'd have preferred all of this be accessible via menus, instead of having to go to small little sub areas just for one specific task and sit through 3 loading screens.
In any event, good video, I agree with all of it.
The excercises are particularly damming I think.
It's literally free stats. Free Strength (or the bad ones). Costs no money, costs no fragments, costs no items.
And yet I rarely do it, it's just a chore. I want a free Energy Drop less than I want my minute and a half of brain death between maps.
And I'm primarily a Disgaea player, I LIVE to fiddle with menus, squeeze a bit more put of gear, ect. And I just can't be bothered.
I think the Monestary demands comparison, and the Monestary was at least SORTA reasonable about letting you just automate some stuff, mash through the two or three thi ga you actually want to do in a few seconds, and just get things done. The only brain aneurism you truly have to suffer is fishing, and even then you're not losing MUCH if you just ignore it (god help you if you optimize Fistfuls of Fish).
This thing is sloooooooow. The two facilities you actually want to use most are put behind loading screens, when honestly mashing them together would be ideal if they HAVE to be apart from the rest.
The advantage of the Somniel is that the minimum operation is at least quick, but that really really encourages cutting it out entirely tbh.
I dunno. I feel the sails go slack if I have to spend more than a few minutes in either. I dunno, this one could just be getting the cascade effect of my annoyance at the Monestary.
I want some menus. Menus are pretty good.
Somniel definitely takes too much time and ignoring a lot of the things it offers is unwise on maddening.
I can't agree with the comparison to the Monastery. Basically spend 0 time at all increasing their stats, and increasing their bonds is very short, easy, to the point and just good customizability. The minigames are bland, and also unimportant, their rewards are extremely small and can absolutely be ignored even on maddening. I don't think much dev time WAS spent on these minigames. The loading screens are pretty much the only thing that make it take too much time, I will definitely agree with that, it makes no sense to have the emblem room and the arena be locked behind loading screens.
Honestly, the month long preparation in Three Houses war section of the game makes sense, as sometimes that's how long it can take a medieval army to get ready to move. The problem with that is medieval armies generally stay in a town or encampment near where they just conquered for a little while, they don't withdraw instantly after conquering an area like they do in Three Houses. Plus, medieval armies need to consider the season when they set out in war. For some reason, it seems like Fodlen is at a near-always Summer season condition, which doesn't exactly track with how the months work or the South and Central European landscapes, but it does mean the armies don't need to consider the seasonal condition when preparing to set out.
I honestly thought we were going to get to see snowy environments in 3 houses because of the small intros they did at the beginning of the game with the whole traditions thing. But nope. Sunny and bright out all day long
Yeah.
Plus it kinda thrashed the narrative.
"We punched through this highly contested border chokepoint! Quickly, everyone retreat to the Monestary for a month so we can come back, nothing will happen to this while we're gone!"
Radiant dawn base was peak fire emblem base. Only game where inventory management and shopping was something to look forward to. There is so much else to do too, skill allocation, bonus exp, base conversations. I just feel right at home in that base and the music never gets old.
I liked the hub in fates best.
You could base build to make it as stream lined as possible, or make it pretty. You can also talk to your characters.
I mostly agree with your opinions but I do enjoy the hub worlds for the break from regular fe gameplay. After a long or difficult map just running around doing little easy minigames can rebuild my stamina for the next map by engaging different parts of my brain and letting the strategy part of my brain have a rest.
Totally valid, there is definitely a certain charm to hanging out with your buds between chapters
“This could have been a menu” is the “this could have been an email” of gaming. I mainly just collect items, do the sleep events, arena and feed the dog in the Somniel, everything else feels way too slow to do
You deserve so many more subs man the effort you put into these videos and their scripts are clear
I love the concept of these places in FE but with the nerfs to things like bonding and stuff I feel like I slam the breaks in my playthrough just to eat a meal. Take a nap. Buy weapons. Exc.
I miss going between towns to buy weapons and the like, I miss the games feeling organic with a natural progression.
The Somniel feels really tedious primarily because of the loading screens, seriously its such nightmares, after every battle if you want to gather your crafting resources/arena/whatever you need to go through a loading screen to get into the somniel, go through a loading screen to quick travel to the arena room, go through a loading screen to go to the ring room if you need to do stuff there, and this is roughly the minimum of what you'll be doing after EVERY SINGLE MAP. That is the main reason it ends up being so tedious
My favorite part of the Monestary in Three Houses was the reused asset of the church for the final map of Shackled Wolves DLC. It made the fight feel connected to the world and fit much better than some other map.
you make the best fe videos in my opinion. very well thought out and insightful. hope more people start watching you!
I enjoyed the hubs in Echoes, either with the village still-life style menus, or even the dungeons, which I could argue to be hubs as well.
I wish IS had made conversations from post battles like the ones in SoV, actual conversations between characters on what's going on in the story. Also who wins Arena does matter, you get more exp if you win, and the main gain of the mini games the bond fragment points. That said, yeah I agree with most of the issues of Engage's Somniel everyone has
I think the negatives massive number of chores from 3h outweigh the positive from character building etc. I can't do a second playthrough it's just too much. I'm not sure why so many like it?
With engage another playthrough feels like a walk in the park in comparison; especially if everything from the hub is ignored except for maybe collecting dog's silver ingots.
Also got a rank supports just doing arena with strangers
Part of me hoped the somnial would also adapt to some of the units you recruit, similar to the barracks in awakening that would gain simple yet permanent decorative items when specific units joined, as I'd never seen the red benches and parasol before Kagetsu joined, but then not even a chapter later the area that was in was empty again.
Its nice that each royal has a feature but at the same time its a pain that when a non-royal is running it they have to fade to black to bring the "correct" royal in, for example my first flea market was Anna, who it made sense to be running the stall hell you see her by it in several supports BEFORE the actual stall is available but nope we have to fade to black and bring Timerra in.
Thanks for this. I picked up Engage today and was feeling like the hub was just so… lifeless in comparison to Three Houses. Glad to see I’m not the only one.
Really interested in your thoughts about the games balance!
I feel like the war camp is what we should have gotten in Three Houses during Part 2, sure they say the monastery is a good place to use as a base but during war times it doesn’t make sense to be constantly marching back there then back to the battlefield every month. I’m not really a fan of the hub worlds because I think it takes away from the flow of the game because you can be running for your life like what happens during chapter 10-11 and then back in the Sommiel you’re characters are just chilling in their drip or swimming in the pool. I think it takes away from trying to get into that war feel. Garreg Mach I think still had the feeling like you are at war since characters always have something to say while in the Sommiel characters only have something to say every other map.
I am also just not a fan of the activities they have in the Sommiel unlike the activities of the monastery. It’s just little stat boosters for the map and that’s it while it makes sense for the monastery to raise motivation of your students, increase Byleth’s proficiencies, get stat boosters and increase professor level. The only things I ever do in the Sommiel is run around to collect all the ingots and stuff on the floor, feed and pet Sommie, forge, arena and ring skills.
While the monastery is huge I just don’t like the layout of the Sommiel it feels so weird and awkward to be running around the place.
If they ever do a future hub I would prefer the war camp because it just makes more sense to not have to constantly have your army be back constantly to the same place or just bring the menus back so it’s not to time consuming to have to run around and talk to everyone in their random locations and do all the unnecessary activities
I have had about an hour or so to play engage each day over the past few days. It’s frustrating that in that hour I can get through a map, but spend about the same amount of time messing around in the hub. It should be a 75/25 split at best and it feels far closer to a 50/50.
Y’know I’ve always wondered if Fire Emblem would focus more on having the characters freely traverse the world around them as they travel and give some freedom to explore that world. A good example that comes to my mind would be the Shining Force series where you are free to explore a number of maps and do necessary tasks in those maps. My favorite parts of those maps in the Shining Force was finding secret, powerful characters to add to your army.
I think the best compromise for most games is combine the Base from the Tellius series with the after battle maps in Engage
100% agreed, the somniel has felt extremely annoying for me largely thanks to loading screens, along with the post battle exploration sections, which must have been a fair amount of work to set up as traversable areas and are an active negative for me.
Id 100% rather have the post battle explorations if something had to be dropped. It's nice have option context if you want it. And the maps already exist, that's where the battle animations happen
I am a bit more fond of the monestary than most, but I do agree a lot with this. Walking around in a hub world does make it feel more like Im part of the game world than a menu does. But the monestary does wear out its welcome. The timeskip and ruination of the monestary would have been a good reason to scale back the chores and traversable area.
I am not a fan of Somniel, for the reasons you mentioned. It removes some of the tedium, but also basically all that made it good. As others stated, they might as well have scrapped it and expanded the post battle exploration a bit. It would also not give chapter 11 a little plot hole if we didn't have the demonstrated ability to teleport to safety whwnevwr we want.
My other favourite turn based tactics series, XCOM, actually does a decent job with its base. While it functionally controls like a menu, it has the visuals that give some of the benefit of exploration. And rather than chores, the base management feels like a part of the core gameplay to me. Perhaps Fire Emblem could "borrow" a bit from there.
Otherwise, I propose a ship as our next hub. Fairly compact to explore, can be withour loading screens, makes sense that we can return to it between battles, can be expanded with new facilities and npcs you pick up along the way, can be part of a defense map when we do a naval battle, could be expanded with artillery or magic crystal that can provide support during battles on the coast... Plus, a pirate theme would be a fun little change to the standard European medival setting of most FE games.
I agree with 100% of this video. By the end of my first run through of 3 Houses, I loved the characters but hated all the in-between chapter work. I did my second route a year later, so the dialogue and support was fresh to me and the monastery wasn't automatically boring to me. But like you said in the video, it was the character interaction that drove it.
Everyone in Fodlan was traumatized as hell, so I get scaling that back a bit, but the hero worship and "one-noteness" of a lot of the inital characters in Engage make me not want to do the support stuff, so the Somniel is almost like the worst of both worlds, BUT is mechanically better than the monastery to me.
Yeah ive had one too many "yyyyyyour the dddivine dragoonn????(?(,???" cutscenes so im just skipping alears supports from now on
@@leaffinite2001 you would think everyone would know what Alear looks like since they were sleeping and not aging for thousands of years.
I liked the Three Houses hub the somniel absolutely feels tacted on and complete with things I don't want to do (horrible gym button smash minigames).
add in load screens for the arena & the ring room and it's like 'gurlll'
My favorite is still the Telius variant. Straight to the point, but just enough flavour to evoke an environment. Everything outside that is just bloat, including moving around to find the right person to talk to instead of just clicking the right menu option.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who compared the Somniel to the Tellius base menu. TBH the only hub I've enjoyed at all was Garreg Mach (I haven't played Three Hopes because I don't like Warriors gameplay). I just prefer menus, the hubs feel like they're there for the sake of being there
Yeah I really enjoyed my time with the Monastery on my first playthrough but it really drags on during repeat ones. It pretty much made me realize that I'm a bigger fan of the menu based base that PoR and RD had.
Personally I feel like the best thing that a hub world can do is make you spend enough time there to make it feel like a home, then have a point where your hub gets attacked. Defending a home that you have spent enough time in to feel a connection to feels far more meaningful than defending some random throne. Fates nailed this.
Have you ever played Breath of Fire 3? They already perfected this with their campsite (portable hub world) and outstanding story/characters.
Also, I think a lot of this just comes down to FE3H having better writing. If the Engage characters said a few more sentences when you talk to them, would it even make the game better with the writing still being rather so-so?
edit: great video, btw.
Interesting stuff! Great video.
I personally feel that the Monastery in 3 Houses would've worked better, if there was something new when you enter into the war phase. For example, if you could upgrade the Monastery or re-unlock things you could do during the White Cloud phase, but couldn't because the Monastery was damaged.
What I want is the removal of a central hub, but an expansion of Engage's after map exploration.
I don't want to see the same scenery every time. I like to feel I'm traveling around the world. Give my army a caravan that travels around, much like Path of Radiance. The shops travel in covered wagons. Your units set up tents. One area may have a mine for minerals, another a forest for hunting and gathering wood. Another may have a town with locals that have some side quests and unique shop items. A treasure vault to loot in another, and another with a lake to fish in.
I hated every minute of the monastary in three houses. Outside of supports, I don't think there was a sentence of dialog worth reading. I was actively keeping track. Not overstating things. The Somniel looks a lot nicer, and has much less you need to do (although the game could have made it clearer which tasks mattered, and which were an utter waste of time. Polishing bond rings? Why do I keep seeing this type of thing show up? Who asks for this?) But in both cases, you're being presented with the same tedious activities in the same location every time. Mix it up!
Quality Thumbnail and even greater content!
Honestly the hup that doesn't feel like a chore after the mid game is my castle. Maybe because it's the smallest, I don't know
I think if a patch reduces the loading screens exponentially to where it’s almost instant, the Somniel will be better in mind than the Monastery. As of now they’re pretty equal in how tedious they feel versus what you get out of them.
“Nothing to report” *cries*
I hate how we can't forge or inherit skills in the pre menu...
the arena and the ring chamber being in the same loaded indoor location would pretty much fix somniel for me, those loadings are a pain
To somewhat contradict the point about the chore rewards being small, there's the fishing minigame (because of course). Fishing in daytime with the best rod can produce thousands of Bond Fragments. This is after Three Houses put Professor Level experience into its own fishing minigame, which was also a notorious time sink.
Most of these Somniel minigames just feel like they're there for the sake of padding a list of features. They're not interesting, and they keep the player from getting to the genuinely good part of the game.
And then there are the wake-up conversations, which have extra characterization in them and are hidden behind the loading screen for Alear's room.
A big purpose the hubs have to me is that they let you take a break between core-gameplay sections. Not sure how common this sentiment is, but I like just having a place to mess around in, no big objectives just chilling out and exploring. I just wish the activities in the FE hubs were more fun
You get to walk around the map after the battles in Engage, I feel like just having supports and shops there would have been fine and the conversations would be more applicable to the current events
Something I think could be cool is if they treated the Hub World a lot more like the bases in monster hunter games. where everything is right there in the open and you can walk to it and access what you need. Condense them down a bit and make them quicker to traverse around and all of the characters are easier to get to. They could also combine some features together. For example, they could make it so that you could opt to pay the blacksmith a little extra cash to use their tools yourself and you get to bring someone else in with you to help. so you're forging your weapons and getting extra support levels at the same time. Or bringing someone with you to the market to shop gives you support and the chance for them to haggle. and different characters are better at haggling different things than others. more support, possibility of a lower item price.
This one is also a pipe dream that will likely never happen unless I made my own FE game. But they could also make the hub a bit more interesting to traverse in by giving your character more traversal options. If i could make my own game, main character would be of the thief class and the way they move around the hub is through parkour methods. but since they are an active part of the army, its just written off as training purposes and nobody is really bothered by it.
Id also have this feature used more in gameplay where in certain maps if not all of them you have the ability to recon of the map. Which is similar to the Engage post battle map traversal, mixed with the Echoes dungeons. Since your a Thief you go around the map youre going to be fighting on to gain an advantage. If you choose to just go into the map without recon then its just a regular FE map as its always been.
But deciding to do recon can get you other things like locating alternate entry points so you can choose a more favorable starting position. stealing from chests or from enemy units early. listening in on enemy conversations to learn that reinforcements will enter from the top left on turn 5 ahead of time. locating traps that would otherwise be inaccessible. like noticing before battle that the chandeliers are fragile and can be broken from this exact spot, and doing so in battle will create a fog of war for the enemy. you can see them but they wont react to you unless you are right on top of them.
And then there can be drawbacks. since you're a thief you do things stealthily and getting caught can cause reinforcements to arrive sooner or immediately. certain areas of the map might be more fortified or blocked off. units could be rearranged entirely. traps could be set for your army instead, etc.
I much rather have menus. Hub worlds are a nuisance in fire emblem. Although, I think if we had the option of using a menu and the hub world, I'd love it more. The hub world in three houses was good, but by the mid game I stopped frequently visiting and in my second play through I did not use it as much cause i just couldn't care. Which led me to miss Edelgard's event.
I would prefer better support conversations and more maps, than a hub world to be honest
Do pushups instead of sit-ups, the strength boost from pushups is much better than the HP boost from sit-ups. That said I sort of agree that the Somniel is only a partial improvement over the monastery. Definitely don't miss all the chores of the monastery, but I do wish everyone had more to say between chapters at the Somniel. Seems like it is only the new recruits or people directly affected by the next story event that have commentary when you're in the Somniel. I never played Three Hopes so no comment there.
I found it a little disingenuous that while doing the lucina bond 18 skill inherit you ran across to the ring chamber when you can inherit skills in the arena as well.
At the time this video was made you couldn't inherit skills in the arena, that was added in patch 1.3.
Hot take, 2D sprite maps and traversal are just smoother and look better. This is why fates always feels to nice to move units around
I'm only a few hours into my first playthrough but have already started skipping every post-battle exploration and most Somniel activities. As soon as the game mentioned that any bond fragments you miss will just be given to you, I thought "what's the point, then?" And once that seed is planted, it doesn't go away.
Engage had the perfect setup to not need a hub, letting you run around the location of each map after the battle to talk to your allies for characterisation moments similar to 3 houses and it just, doesn't do that, for no reason beyond engage having a very basic barebones story and more limited characters. (If you enjoy engage's writing that's fine, but it is significantly simpler than 3 houses and msot characters are much more flanderised gimmicks in engage, even if some of them are fun or interesting)
wouldn't you say the dungeon crawling in shadows of valentia is a good substitute for a hub world? imo that needs to come back
Yeah I hope they figure out a way to make a cool hub that isnt tedious and kinda boring
i played Engage for the last week bought the dlc early and everything and i found it so tedious to travelling across the cafe from the ring room for inheritance and then back to the area to level the next bond, every point you made about three houses and engage was exactly what i was think my whole first play through
Wait are you saying you get a unit to level 5 or 10 or whatever bond then inherit skills then go back to arena to level up another bond level? Wouldn’t it be better to just level up all the bond levels to whatever you need before starting inheritance? Sure you might waste fragments not knowing the sp cost of skills, but you just have to think of it as an investment since many good skills are 1k plus and getting each character there takes a while. You can see unit sp in the inventory, so you could just guess how many skills you might be able to inherit. I think running back and forth seems silly
@@anthonynguyen1289 yup thats how the game works it was a giant pain, to do all those things
WORST PART ABOUT ARENA IS THAT YOU HAVE CYCLE THROUGH MENU OVER AND OVER AGAIN AFTER EACH BATTLE BECAUSE IT BRING YOU OUT OF ARENA MENU AFTER EACH BATTLE
In terms of size, the somniel is better, in terms of what is offered, it is just a stripped down version of the monistary. I have stalled out in play just after collecting the desert rings. The chore aspect of hunting down skirmishes is still a thing, just through the overworld, and I have yet to find a good way to train my bench so I have units levels away from being field viable.
Really minor, but the game charging you legitimate gameplay resources at the botique for outfits that don't even appear the bulk of the time you'll be seeing your units just demonstrates to me how little thought went into the Somniel (or that they had bigger intentions that got cut down dramatically befofe the final product).
I personally dont mind hubs, it gives some breathing space between intense chapters on higher difficulties.
3H is play only once type of game for me due to this (ok I managed 2 playthroughs, but I don't want to see Monastery EVER again in my life), meanwhile I have around 3k hours in GBA era games and hacks because I can just press start once or twice and immediately get to next battle prep - this is vital to ensure replayability. Fluff is nice first time around but kills the game on subsequent runs. So far Engage is indeed less tedious but I will see if indeed junk filler amounts to being unbearable by the end of it. It's better than 3H, but would be indeed better if it was not there at all.
what are your thoughts on the fairly static hubs of echoes
I guess I don't really think of them as hubs in the same way as the somnoel and monastery, but I like them. I thought they added a lot of flavor to the game without being obtrusive
I think the biggest problem with the fire emblem series is that cavalry and fliers are objectively the best units in basically every game and there's no reason not to make every unit you can into a mounted unit.
Great video! Ty
Best hub was the Menu from awakening
I don’t like hubs. I started just wanting to skip the monastery and I think it’s probably why I never actually finished the game
At least the music is good…I put a podcast on during the hub which helps with the loading times and tediousness also I picked up over 60 nuts in my first play through. Lol
I liked My Castle
I like the Somniel better than the Monastery simply because it's smaller, and looks prettier.
Base camps to roam around in is fun
Or the games could go the way echoes shadows of valentia went, where there are many hubs but they are small and different.
I do disagree that the Somniel could just be a menu only because I find traveling a hub simply more immersive and enjoyable than going between menu options. Having a menu option could be nice for the people that want it, sure, but I'd be sad if it weren't there at all, and I think that over-loading the menu with a bunch of different options is rather unappealing. I sincerely don't believe that menus are 1:1 replacements for hubs and vice versa; Even in other games where people criticize a hub, saying it could just be a menu, I feel it adds charm, feeling, and personality to the downtime.
YES IT IS A BIG DEAL, I'M NOT ENJOYING PLAYING THIS GAME DUE TO THE ABOVE MENTIONED ISSUES, yes caps are needed, because this is how I feel!
The Somniel is not engaging for me. I feel like I just repeat the same things over and over dine -> arena -> ring chamber -> collect items -> training -> fish -> wyvern ride -> sleep . I feel like I doing chores instead of playing the game :( . I wish there are missions like in three houses and proper npc's (sob gatekeeper)
since I played FE in order of Fates > Awakening > Echoes > Three Houses > Engage, I started with the support system that lead to legacy characters. I miss the legacy characters. Not only was it an interesting way to sort of fine tune and cultivate your final team for late game since the kids of the units had better stats based on the combo of the parents, I really enjoyed the romances, some of them were funny, some heartwarming and some super wholesome. Now in engage I don't feel incentivised enough to bother much at all with the support system since you can't pair units up anymore like you could in Fates/Awakening or even what they did in TH. Now it's replaced with the Emblem Ring system, which is cool on its own, but the supports (as far as I know, haven't finished Engage yet) don't lead to romance, and since I find most of the characters extremely obnoxious and cringey, I have no interest in even viewing the support dialogues. A couple have been interesting so far, but it's only been with Diamant, Jade and Ivy so far that I've found the dialogues even bearable, not even necessarily enjoyable, since most of the characters are obnoxiously reverent of the main character from the moment you get them. (Framme is the cringiest one by far, followed by Amber imo. I thought Alcryst was gonna be this cool, intimidating Takumi-esque character... until he threw himself at the Divine Dragon's feet and apologized obnoxiously and turned out to be a broken record of self-deprication. Though I'll admit he has an interesting support dialogue with Celine.)
I hope intelligent systems sees this
You have to go back to the Somniel after every battle not just every chapter. or else you miss out on a bunch of things.
Considering the monastery becomes annoying on repeated playthrough, I wonder how much people only played 3houses once
I agree with pretty much everything expressed in this video. I also feel like the point about 3H's monastery causing part 2 contrivances is exacerbated with the Somniel. Granted, Engage has a tone very different from 3H, but as far as I can tell the main character just... warps the whole army there? Whenever they want? And then they can just warp back out and end up anywhere on the continent? It seems like logistics are not meant to be taken that seriously in Engage, which personally disconnects me from a lot of the story.
I agree but I still like the Somniel less than the Monastery. Yes the monastery really really dragged and became so tedious that I often struggled to continue/go through repeat playthroughs, but the Somniel never had the same level of charm from the start. And the loading screens really add up since the most important things, the arena/bonding and bond ring stuff, both have their own separate rings. At least in a zelda game the minigames are fun but fire emblem just has me pressing the A but for no reason in these games like what is the point???
I hope the next Fire Emblem game triples down even harder on the between map activities
Mycastle was the best, it felt like an upgraded version of the base castles in fe4.
I agree, my only real complaint is just how many mechanics were tied to the online features or just waiting for real world time to pass.
All I do is grab my ingot from the dogs and see if I can get good level ups in the Arena. It's a lot better than Three Houses.
yeah but I can give poop to characters I don't like in the somniel hub therefore best game-
‘The problem with god’ energy
I think I am somwhat forgiving of Engage's lack of meaningful inbetween mission conversations because it has been very clear from the getgo that Engage's story and writing was never meant to be as dense as 3H was. For a much more straightforward Good guys vs the Bad guys you don't need a whole lot of intrigue so these convo's aren't /as/ necessary as they were for a game like 3H. Though to be honest they really are lacking in Engage's Somniel.
Most mechanics in Somniel you can basically skip, but some of that is not properly communicated by the game. Like your workout bonuses not stacking with food or tonics for example is a huge piece of information that the game outright does not tell you and could save you loads of time. In 3H skipping out on monastary tasks was downright detrimental to your unit's combat performance, but in Somniel you can more or less do a quick routine of arena/bond fragments/food and you're good to go.
Which could have been some menu's like in the Tellius games. Like you said about 3H's war phase, constantly returning to the hub world for game mechanic reason's takes me out of the story and requires the plot to be written around having to constantly return. I think the game that did it best was Shadows of Valentia. Villages and locations you come across are where you get to know your army and buy your equipment.
Fódlan as in Fód-Lyn
Not Fód-lawn
Hubs in FE are honestly awful. My Castle was... fine, I guess, but I feel like going that direction pushes them into adding superfluous features and complexity that harm the game or at least are development time not well spent (e.g. Lottery Shop, farming/mining resources for forging and meals). Tellius base convos, meanwhile, were so hype on my first playthrough. And then after that I can just ignore them and just do my inventory management and such.
If we truly must have a hub, I don't understand why we can't just have a menu in addition. It's the equivalent of turning off animations. I'll do stuff the fancy way for awhile, but then I want to go power user!
But even more than that, why in god's name did Engage not give you access to the forge in battle preps. It's literally just a menu! I feel similarly about skill inheritance and bond rank, but the forge is particularly egregious b/c there's no real difference between it and the armory or shop. Every time I decide I want to forge something after I'm already in battle preps, I die a little inside.
My castle really was the best version
Honestly even the 3 Hopes hub sucks, despite being a big improvement over the monastery it's still a chore to run around and talk to everyone when all of it could've been menus
Unless they can pull off something like My Castle again (no load times, quick traversal, straight to the point menus), hubs are never gonna work in FE
Monastery is really good actually.. Probably right that is annoying on subsequent playthroughs.. but first playthrough is the most important.
Somniel is hot garbage.. Every activity barely does anything, is annoying, or has a load screen.. bond fragments have almost no value unless you are switching and maxing emblem rings frequently.
The Somniel is so boring 😭 like all the minigames aren't fun and take forever. The wyvern riding is the only one that is kinda fun, but it only has like 3 levels. The Somniel is also so removed from the world, which is the opposite of the monastery. But like. It feels like I have to do it between every battle bc of how hard resources are to get
I have played FE7, 9, 10, and Fates, with Fates being the only FE with a hub.
I really dislike the idea of a hub and level select in a FE game, it feels more like busywork keeping me away from the core of the game, but since resources have to be spent developing and polishing it, given the HUB is where you'll spend most of your time in that game given how short each map individually is, it comes across as the HUB being the core mechanic while the story and gameplay are secondary to it.
I much prefer the classic version of simple yet effective and intuitive menus for the parts between maps. That gave the devs more time and resources to allocate to the creation of the maps and script, which made them much more creative and engaging than what Modern FE has been putting out.
Hubs and world maps just aren't conducive to Fire Emblem as far as I'm concerned. Somniel, the Monastery, and every single world map make the game take forever and are filled with inane side tasks that skipping makes you lose out on potential resources and stats at the expense of time and in my case, sanity. Even just compare Sacred Stones to its two previous entries. Giving you access to a grind tower ruins the lvl curve, having various shops at your finger tips makes you gluttonous and wasteful, and just moving through the map causes an uptick in the time you spend away from the actual gameplay. I love Echoes to death but I still hated all the overworld, grinding, and money farming. Hopes was also a general downgrade from 3H cause while they streamlined everything, all the activities were basically useless except training.
Grinding in JRPGs can and does work, Agarest is a masterpiece that all but requires grinding and a spreadsheet (I know, I made one). But its not like Fire Emblem, it doesn't use smaller numbers like FE does. Fire Emblem just doesn't need all this filler to drag out its playtime.
Garreg Mach was a chore from the very start. At no point was it ever engaging or fun.
Engage has its characters react to the story in the post-battle maps.
The monastery was just awful after the first playthrough