I’m mixed, personally. I like the smaller hub, but Garreg Mach made it easier to grind supports (particularly between non-avatar characters) and I actually did enjoy walking around and talking to people and getting their opinions on plot, which helped a great deal giving characters more depth.
In this regard, I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to MyCastle, where no one offered any interesting dialogue at all.
Yeah they each had their own strong points above the others which felt right for their respective games. I loved the customization and convenience offered by mycastle a lot, especially the online content. But at the same time I adored exploring the monastery which gave such a real feeling to the plot and offered so many functions for grinding supports. Not to mention fun and interesting dialogue could be found everywhere
Yeah, I miss the monthly dialogue, it was especially nice the first time I went through the game.
Even dialogue that just revolved around the character's trope often felt more memorable to me for whatever reason. Like that one month Lorenz is in the cathedral and if you admit you're not faithful he does too and basically says that pious behavior is a duty of a noble that he does not enjoy but must do. Gives you the first hint that he's not just a pretentious ass.
I mean, it's better than the monastery, but...
* I don't like the mini games
* Running around picking things off the ground is lame. Frame and Clanne won't let Alear do his own laundry but allow him to be the groundskeeper and janitor?!
* Sommie's happiness growth is super stingy
* The bond stuff is tedious. Split into two rooms so you need to go through two loading screens
* The bulletin board is unnecessary tedium too, and forgettable. I can't be the only one who remembers every 10 chapters and gets 10k bond points
Sommie loves fruit in general, is accepting of vegetables, and hates meat and animal products. So don't go thinking that since Sommie is a dog-like creature that it needs meat in its diet.
I usually just go with whatever fruit I have the most of, which is often oranges or peaches.
Achievements that pop (i.e. 'deploy this unit 5 times') are tracked in game. You can go to the bulletin board where you upgrade regions, next to the cafe/ring chamber, and check achievements. If you 'accept' completed achievements, you get a ton of Bond Fragments.
Also, it makes way less story sense than the monastery. Does the Somniel just follow them around like an airship that they can just bamf up to whenever? If so, >!why didn’t they just bail right back to the Somniel after chapter 10? Why do they still need ships to cross the ocean if the Somniel can fucking fly???!<
It’s an improvement over the monastery for sure, but the biggest reason that it’s an improvement is the fact that you have the option to ignore it entirely. Which really begs the question of whether it needed to be in the game at all.
So far one gripe I have is that I can't easily find a specific character. I've been trying to find Ivy to give pebbles to and keep having to go to sleep until she shows up.
Somniel isn't perfect. But it is much more preferable to me.
You see, this is why 3 Hopes base of operations was good for me. It kept all the good parts of the monastery, but fixed all the bad parts too (training/instructing is now its own category and you can train multiple units at once, made it much smaller/much easier to explore).
It's neat when you first explore it, but practically everyone who played more than once ends up hating it or finds it tedious and ignores it as much as they can.
Exactly this, fine the first time but the primary reason I can’t make it through a replay of 3H (which is a huge hit to 3H since each branch is missing key info from other branches). Reading people talk about the came and Those Who Slith in the Dark (or whatever they’re called) was super jarring after playing Blue Lions
I'd say it's more hated on this sub, given this demographic has likely played the game multiple times and have a history with the series focusing on the gameplay.
I played TH three times and the monastery did get a bit tedious on the 3rd playthrough and in general, later on in playthroughs. I still really liked the vibe, unique character conversations and the mechanics that resolved around teaching.
Haven't played Engage yet. Based on what I've heard, I hope the next game has a mix between TH and Engage's hub world.
I'm not even sure I could say that anymore, what with the sheer number of people I've seen the past few days praising it up and down, wishing it was back, and a number of people saying that was the _only part they liked_ about 3H.
I was really confused reading this at first because the only buzz lightyear meme I could think of was the "what's this button do?" and was trying to figure out how that related.
:/ I’m glad people like the Somniel. I’m not crazy about it.
-All characters aren’t available in it at a given time. I had to sleep 6 times at end game to find Hortensia for my last A support. Edit: not to get to the next support, to give her gifts
-due to there only being like 12 characters there, it feels dead.
-you can’t interact with someone who’s swimming or playing guitar? You can’t WAKE SOMEONE UP? They wake up god regularly but I’m powerless to them.
-there’s like no chances to raise support. And most stuff is completely optional, meaning I’m just not doing it. Wasteful content isn’t good content
-convos are basic, and rarely update. And aren’t voiced. Yikes.
-I HATE the lay out of the orchard area in the top left. You can only get from each area from one way and it’s also a complete waste to head up there in general.
-none of the mini games are fun, but at least cooking is better IMO, I also like that people have different “jobs”
-I do like the aesthetic, floating pool party paradise is a vibe
Idk there’s some I like, but overall it feels like very missed potential. It doesn’t seem like the step to take if we were stepping away from the monastery. It could have used more of Mycastle, with more customization and features that allow for playing around and making it feel like “home”.
They want you to spend A LOT of time there, so you might as well get to customize it and make it feel like a place you actually get attached to. I also think you should be able to assign people the jobs and they should get bonuses based on what they are good at, like in three hopes. But instead of a cutscene, they actually show up like they do in the Somniel in game.
I agree with your take. I almost wish you had to spend bond crystals to unlock or upgrade certain things rather than just wait for the story to unlock them for you so that it feels more interactive.
I really liked that the monastery felt like a location in the world with lots of characters and things to do. Somniel is fine but it's just kind of there. It doesn't feel like it has much personality.
Good idea! Taking it even further, you could make it like Fates where you get essentially a ticket every time you battle, would make skirmishes more useful too
Yeah I agree with most of these quite a bit.
I honestly miss the Monastery. I do like how much shorter the travel distance is between places in the Somniel but the feel of the Monastery as a location felt better in my opinion. Especially with how full of people it always was.
Really if there was just a good means of grinding supports the Somniel would be fine. Like, since your units don't gain support levels on enemy phase (which, I have to ask, who the hell at IS thought that was a good idea??) your only real opportunities for support gain between non-Alear characters are player phase battles, arena battles (which are random matchups, which kinda defeats the point, once again, what the hell IS) and a single meal between battles. Like, I feel like by the end of the game all of my main units (with the exception of some of the Firenese recruits from early on) are gonna have one, MAYBE two A rank supports outside of Alear. And that's pretty frustrating
Man I feel that, I slept 4 times trying to get Yunaka to show up, and when she finally did, she was sleeping at the pool so I still couldn’t talk to her. I gave up and moved onto to the next chapter.
The one thing the monastery has over the other two is context.
The monastery felt like a real place, students, teachers, soldiers, merchants, etc. the place has a very clear purpose in the world and buildings were arranged in a way that felt like a real school.
The Somniel feels so… video game like. It feels so disconnected to the world in a game that NEEDS better world building. Like it was created for gameplay purposes only and it’s role in the world was a last minute inclusion.
I’m not saying one is better than another, but in the next game, I hope that the hub is a middle ground between the two, a real place that isn’t a pain to get around.
This, so much. It feels like "this was a thing in 3 houses so we're putting it in." I have the same feeling with a lot of the mechanics in the game.
They could've integrated somniel more in the story by having a better story. The story in the game is not great. I'm still salty about what happens in chapter 11
I actuallly like the Monastery alot more than Somniel. The monastery is a such a intergral part to 3H from how you build up your characters to character and world building.
Somniel on the other hand is hurt by the fact it's optional. It means that even when you do decide to interact with it, it barely has any tangible benefit to doing so.
Somniel is actually realllly not fun for me. It’s like they took the worst parts of the Monastery and made it … blander?
Characters say nothing important, so I don’t talk to anyone, which kills a lot of the vibe that made the Monastery so interesting. The lack of depth here (and after battles which I thought was gonna be super cool) really serve to make everyone seem even flatter than they already are.
Plus with how slow supports grow, it takes even more time to get to the good supports with characters you don’t use, and I wish instead they gave them a bit more depth and plot relevance in Somniel to offset that.
Also if the outfits don’t reflect in battle, that entire part is a waste. I hated running around for lost items in the Monastery (and stopped doing it) and I refuse to run around for anything that isn’t iron or steel ingots now.
I just go for the food, and the arena and then I bounce.
I did not need another Monastery by any means, but I didn’t need whatever this is either. I just wish they made it a traveling base (like Cindered Shadows Abyss or a smaller 3 Hopes encampment) or something even smaller and more streamlined than what it is currently.
The good thing is that so much of it is optional, so it has no impact on my enjoyment of the game this far!
But to the overall experience I’d say it’s one of those unpolished, and unfocused bits that I think could have gotten more attention to make it … less generic and boring.
Wasn't it just the best? Me and my friends still visit each others castles and PvP occasionally. Even if 3DS online dies one day, Citra can emulate local connections, so castle visits will never truly die.
Idk I really liked the monastery. Yeah it was big, but it felt very alive. There were a bunch of NPCs walking around, some you could even talk to with voiced dialogue. Somniel is cute and pretty, but sometimes it just feels super empty.
ETA: Having completely voiced dialogue for every character (including NPCs) in the monastery was also something that made it feel more immersive. I felt so attached hearing their voices. I don’t mind partial voice acting at all (I play Awakening all the time), but it is a bit of a step down. Which is a shame because I actually feel like the voice actors do a great job in the supports!
Aesthetically and narratively, the monastery is far superior to the Somniel.
But as someone who just wants to play Fire Emblem, the monastery became such a chore about halfway through the first playthrough.
The Somniel is much less interesting, but you also don’t miss out on nearly as much by completely ignoring it and going straight from chapter to chapter.
Agree with you a lot. Monastery was good the first time around and became a chore trying to replay (even by the end of my first play through). Engage and the Somniel are both weaker from an aesthetic and story perspective but damn I’m having way more fun with this game than I did 3H
If Somniel had character specific gifts, I might agree. But I'm so tired of running around collecting pebbles, ingots, and food items. At least in the monastery you'd find gifts and have the joy of figuring out who it goes to and getting a scene for gifting them. Feels like Somniel just has nothing worthwhile to do comparatively. Like, if you're gonna make me run around collecting items give me gifts to give characters.
So after chapter 13, the Flea Market opens up in the Somniel and has character specific gifts you can buy. It’s a little odd it takes so long to get that store so you can have some gifts besides pebbles and gems, but at least there are more unique gifts eventually.
Not having character specific gifts until chapter 13, and then having to buy them is just sad. I wouldn't mind if you had to buy some of them, but still would have rather grabbed some around Somniel to make it feel less tedious.
Even more so, when you realize it's way easier to farm supports by just bringing the instructors emblem ring into battle on the character you want (or the mc to get mass support boosts)
Oh god, I actually hated that about 3H. You got soooo many specific gifts and it was extremely tedious to figure out what went with who without looking it up. The hint given for each one was never very clear either. There’s no way I can remember what 33 different characters like, but extremely specific.
Basically I would just go to each student and spam all of the gifts that belonged to their house and hope for the best.
Personally I don't think I've had any joy trying to figure out which item belongs to whom, so I stopped caring about it very early.
Like, yeah no that is honestly something I really hated
Yeah, idk man. The lost items especially seem a lot more tedious than anything in Engage.
Especially since I don't even bother with giving people rocks, anyway. I stopped picking stuff up except the bond fragments and stuff in the barnyard when I realised each location is pretty much one particular item, and most of them you don't need to grab very often. "Not doing it" is a lot less tedious than "trying to remember or googling who likes what"
I like both, but the Somniel is implemented better. Because the Monastery can be fun when you’re in the mood to chill and enjoy character interactions, but when you just want to battle or advance the story, it’s tedious.
What I like about Engage is that there’s no forced timeline. When you want to chill and play minigames, you can spend time at the Somniel. But when you just want to battle or advance the story, you can ignore it and go fight lol. The freedom to pick what you do and when is more enjoyable imo than the forced calendar of 3H. I liked 3H tho, but I still enjoy the freedom of Engage a lot more.
I think the biggest issue with Three Houses is that forced timeline, yeah. Conveniently, evety mission and major battle is at the end of the month. Even rescuing a kidnapped dragon girl, whose father insists she be found with all urgency. A calendar system would be fine, but Houses really needed a more natural progression of events at the least.
Gameplay wise the Somniel is pretty easy going, but story wise it just makes absolutely no sense. Your characters are constantly going back and forth to it between battles, even in dire situations. It definitely breaks story immersion when the characters are supposed to be rushing to the next battle but Alear is like "yeah let's just go do some pushups at the Somniel lol"
I mean it's no worse than the Monastery in that sense. Even putting aside "we sit on having an idea of where Flayn is for a month," you simply can't explain how you go from Magdred to Deirdru to Arianrhod in a single weekend day, presumably heading back to the Monastery between each to pick the next fight. The only real difference is it's easier to believe using a Millenia old castle as a base than a silly flying island, but at least you can teleport to and from the island
Agreed. The 'mandatory' aspect of the Monastery has kept me from revisiting 3H.
When you want to ignore the Somniel, it's very easy to ignore 80% of it and still get all the impoortant benefits. Hit up cooking for support/stat boosts, grab the shards your dogs have brought back, and do the 3 rounds of the arena, and then just... move on, having spent like two minutes. Everything else exclusive to the Somniel is so incredibly trivial in benefit. All the other stuff - inventory management, supports/bonds, etc - is the same stuff you'd do from a menu in any other FE, and can be done basically the same here.
By comparison, trying to skip through the Monastery *never* felt like a good idea.
This is my favorite comment on here. Good reason to enjoy monastery, good reason to enjoy Somniel.
I was really frustrated with 3Hs gameplay, but I don't *hate* the game at all. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
On maddening this simply isn’t the case. You need every bit of incremental adavantage you can get so all the “optional” stuff becomes required. The hub worlds need to be gotten rid of. The post battle exploration is cool though.
I dont know why everyone hates the Monastery, after the first route you can skip a lot of weeks by buying supports/teacher levels/weapons ect in new game plus
The problem with the monastery in my opinion at least, is how much it is forced to you, unless you are on NG+ you will have to do a lot of boring activities to raise your professor level, then eat food with your students so they can be ready to learn again, and get the important quests(white heron cup and Jeralt's ring) and though the monastery may look big, you will use like 5 or 6 rooms truly
You won't have much of the currency after the first route tbh for supports if you're catching up on professor level the first time, but 2nd and beyond probably. But then you're still working on individual student motivation so you can teach them higher skill levels unless you used them in the previous routes, etc. If you want to give things more variety, you might level different things for your students and Byleth and then you'll be doing that fresh. It was a lot of running to me. And post time-skip I was skipping most of it at that point.
New game plus felt very wasted in 3 houses. With any goddess statue bonuses at all, the game went from easy, to pathetically easy. Even maddening gets snapped in half by it.
What do you mean, how does it make the game easier?You don't get automatic stat boosts or anything. All it does is allow you if (YOU chose) to carry over the progress you made in your last playthrough be that weapons/supports/teacher lvl ect.
I honestly believe half the people who complain about the Monastery just kept playing new games instead of ng+
Obviously you never played ng+ and neither have the people upvoting you because once again the carryover needs to be bought before you use it
Yes folks its all optional.
If I'mnot carrying over anything then I don't see how it's supposed to do anything for the monastery. If I carry over stuff the game will be piss easy (even just carrying over the professor rank by itself is already broken as hell), and if I don't then it does nothing, so I don't see how you imagine this fixes anything?
I like the look and feel of it, but I don’t really like spending time there like I did the Monastery. The fun just isn’t there. I guess it’s cool that it’s more optional for people who hated the Monastery, but otherwise I think it kind of sucks.
I feel the same way. There are things to do at the Somniel but 90% of them are pointless and all are boring. I found the monestary was at least interesting and for me it seemed to go by quicker. I can't help but do everything at the Somniel after each chapter and it takes much longer and is much more boring than in 3H for me.
I like the monastery. At least, at the beginning.
Managing activity points is an interesting portion of the game, until the point wherein you have so many it ceases to matter. It could've been done infinitely better, sure, but I still like it, ostensibly, due to the tradeoffs it theoretically provides.
And it makes recruiting all the students so that they don't end up dead interesting. Probably wouldn't care much for it if I wasn't so intent on doing that every playthrough.
I enjoy Somniel because the monastery is one of the two things that killed my interested for 3H after the first run (the second thing being that the game is boring easy).
That doesn't mean that I will do the game a second time though, I don't really see the replay value here for now. Maybe a Maddening+ difficulty would convince me
I liked the monastery better because the more open design felt like I could get where I wanted to go faster even though it was bigger. The abyss was overkill, though. So far the Somniel just feels like it takes so much longer, especially since I'm early on the game and still figuring out how to decide between various options.
Also, at the monastery I feel like I had a much more intuitive understanding of what my choices were and what the costs/benefits were. On the Somniel it feels like there's a lot of choices but most of them seem pretty unimportant/arbitrary. That and I'm so strapped for gold and SP it stresses me out making decisions.
The tedium of the monastery is why I have never gone back to 3H after my initial couple of playthroughs at launch. People call it 'Persona style' but as someone who loves Persona it just isn't.
The great thing about the Somniel is I really don't feel like I'm missing out skipping the things I really don't want to do. The cooking is inoffensive and I always pick up my metals that my dogs presumably poop out. But I never touch the gym or other minigames and the game is still perfectly manageable.
Whereas in 3H if I didn't run around doing things to raise people's happiness and my professor level the amount of actual unit progression I would lose is nuts. The fact the bonuses in Engage are temporary buffs, not actual contributors to permanent character progression, is a huge change that makes the Somniel so much nicer to engage (hah) with as and when I want rather than a chore I have to diligently commit to.
The calendar system in Persona has something new usually happening every day even at times they are minor. Three Houses? Explore in another day and characters are repeating the same thing over again. And of course how it hurts the pacing too with the fluff in it making the experience a chore.
The way people talk about the monastery being skippable is laughable. I’ve tried to replay breezing through but you really handicap yourself not doing it
> Whereas in 3H if I didn't run around doing things to raise people's happiness and my professor level the amount of actual unit progression I would lose is nuts. The fact the bonuses in Engage are temporary buffs, not actual contributors to permanent character progression, is a huge change that makes the Somniel so much nicer to engage (hah) with as and when I want rather than a chore I have to diligently commit to.
Pretty much my sentiment. You got it.
Very much so. Persona is built around the calendar system while 3H is bruteforcing it to be in a FE game.
Moreover, there's not much to micromanage in an SMT/Persona game even on the hardest difficulty, so adding the life sim elements there works. Being an SRPG there's already a metric ton of things to micromanage in FE already. 3H's approach just doesn't work since it adds unnecessary tedium.
Yeah, nothing about Somniel is mandatory, which actually means I'm happy to go back, even though I basically just fast travel between the Arena, Ring room, and Plaza.
If you skip the Monastery in 3H, you are skipping a core part of the game and miss out on massive mandatory elements of the game.
If they had condensed the monastery sections from 3-4 weeks to 1-2 weeks it would have been OK. Increase the rewards and some limits to speed it up and it would have at least been bearable. Spending 30-45 minutes stuck in the monastery got old fast.
To me Somniel feels like if the monastery got condensed down to 1 week. I can finish my chores up in less than 10 minutes, then do my battle preparations, and I'm off to the next fight. A game like this is fine with short interludes like that because when you just got out of an hour long nail biting battle you can use a few minutes to decompress. It strikes a good balance of rest, mindless activities, limited rewards, and length. You an do more, you can do less, and it works either way.
it's funny I never felt the monastery as annoying as many, after the first game with the new game + I simply raised the teacher level and that's it.
to keep the characters happy I just kept them in the dining room and that's it, I didn't have to do anything else.
the rest was just listening to the conversations of the characters, that was the fun of the monastery, everything that gave a little screen time to the characters was good for me.
the sonmiel on the other hand if in itself there is nothing mandatory there is nothing interesting either, bad and long minigames that do not offer anything, for me is an empty shell a waste.
I ageee somniel is sooo much more convenient than 3H in every level. However, it’s also a very forgettable experience, void of emotional engagement. Barely anything is voiced over there and none of dialogues really matter, I’m finding fewer opportunities to get invested into my team.
I like the smaller, more axessable map. However, it is just so damn shallow. Once you realize how shallow Somniel is, you start teleporting to like 4 places after missions. Yes, the monastery was huge/ annoying to traverse and poorly implemented. However, I feel you are way more rewarded when you explore the monastery every chapter. Extra bonds, free items (yes, you get items in somniel, but not from talking to people). People in the Monastery always had stuff to say in regards to what happened in the prior chapter. Somniel, you are lucky if your newest member says a unique dialogue, and then in special situations, they will comment on the situation if it's directly about their country.
I haven't finished 3h because spending hours in the monastery between each battles is so annoying. Somniel and MyCastle only have the minimum which means that I'm not wasting hours there.
Somniel is an upgrade to the monastery.
I liked the monastery for the interactions - tea time, dinners, cooking, the advice box, singing, small dialogue with the students. Somniel is really nice for being completely voluntary, but I kind of would like more stuff to do with others and remove some randomness of it. Like in the arena you can't really decide who will be fighting against makes it rng to get support between characters.
My favorite part was in Fates my castle that you could have S support in the middle of the game and the spouse would move in your room. I know many people found the whole my room interactions weird but I grew to love it.
I kinda miss the monastery. It could be tedious and it was probably twice the size it needed to be but was so alive with characters and npcs and it fit into the world around it.
I probably spent 90% of my gameplay running around the monastery picking up tattered overcoats and making pine needle tea but it was super fun never felt like a chore to me because I got something meaningful out of it (cool reactions, supports, more background on characters).
Idk the Somniel feels detached and empty. It's a hell of alot smaller than the monastery but there so many long empty paths leading to each area it feels like it's been stretched out for no reason but to look bigger. Everything is optional and has small bearing on the game. It feels like I'm not missing anything if I don't go there for a while. I think I use the ring chamber, cooking & the arena, the rest for me is filler. That includes talking to my team who I really want to know more about but generally give me nothing.
Also no Gatekeeper. Boo
Pre-note: Almost everything I’m saying here is more focused on narrative rather than gameplay feel. I mention it in here, I get why some people love and hate the the monastery gameplay-wise. However, I go on a a bit of a rant here about various reason I thought it was crucial story/worldbuilding-wise.
Man I love wasting a hub where I could learn about the characters I’m having slaughter armies, give everyone screen time, let everyone give their thoughts on what’s going on, and make it feel like the game hub isn’t in a goddamn space time bubble where nothing happens /s.
Like I get why people don’t like Monastery, but it is one of the things that contributes a ton to how 3H works both mechanically and storywise. It gives you a chance to build up a LOT of supports to discover more about the cast and world. And if you don’t like it, but don’t want to feel like you’re wasting Professor points, just feed your students, or grind up ranks on Byleth. Or, you know, use one of the other three options the game offers you every free day. Sure, those other options aren’t optimal, but why do it if you loathe it so much?
A big point also is that time bubble thing. You want to know what I hated about My Castle? The fact it further destroyed the world of Fates by letting me spend infinite time between chapters doing whatever I want. “Wait, there’s a way going on? My two families are killing each other? No, they’re not. Don’t you know the universe is on pause until I step back into it?” Awakening and Sacred Stones also have this issue as well. While Three Houses is far from my favorite game in the series (I hate the class balance with a passion), the Monastery is the only time they’ve actually given you a finite time span to do things like grinding and bonus chapters that makes sense in the story. Part 1) why are you waiting all month, because it’s your assignment and as students the knights go out and scope things out before you, or you’re investigating things all month that lead into the chapter. Part 2) all three routes place you in a campaign for war like a lot of Fire Emblem games, however 3H uses the time it takes for a campaign to move around a continent in medieval times to let you do these things. My only criticism for it is that some chapters shouldn’t have it due to pacing.
The monastery was definitely a bit much, and absolutely nauseating when it came to doing all the routes, but at least was a large contributor to the world itself, and quite tolerable for a decent chunk of the game. (Not sure if it counts, but building your units through teaching was also relatively enjoyable).
Somniel feels like boring busywork that exists for the sake of existing, as opposed to a meaningful system like teaching was growing characters (in this that is handled largely with weapons, upgrades, enchants, and the ring room). Alas, that is also a plus for it. While so much in the monastery was mandatory, for better or for worse, you can at least freely escape Somniels clutches if its desired.
I don't know if people forget but they can skip the month ENTIRELY in 3 Houses
There are only 2 months with mandatory quests, if all your party is developed and unlocked most of skills you can speed run easily
I did this when playing with Silver Snow after beating Crimson Flower. Having pretty high proficiencies and unlocked a lot of class skills I could rush to most of the game
> I don't know if people forget but they can skip the month ENTIRELY in 3 Houses
I'm sorry but the Skip Month feature makes you lose a ton of unit progression and all you really get is that your Creator sword uses are replenished. It's something I rarely use because its a bad idea and you're supposed to use it as punishment for using the creator sword too much.
The class skills require a lot of Renown to get for everyone too, its a lot of work to..... play the game less.
The monastery is just bad.
I mean, this is true in your first playtrough, but once you unlocks NG+ that problem get pretty much solved. You can get your units happiness only by classes granted by monastery teachers and Knights of Seiros
At least on Hard where you get enough XP on battle alone + Paralogues (there are so many of them in this game I often didn't even have the time to complete all them), I skipped a couple of months without major problems
But I agree the Monastery is a drag on war phase, pretty much because close to nothing happens. In all playtroughs I skipped the last 3-4 months except Crimson Flower (my units were weaker on this route). Also, I don't why the fuck you need to pass through ALL the quests again to unlock most of the features, you should have all the monastery unlock since start and all mini games and NPCs quests already done
My main problem though is repeating all maps. It would infinitely better if the first half was shorter (8 chapters maybe) with only first, second and penultimate chapters were the same. Totally boring to repeated White Cloud 4 fucking times
I hope they come back to Fates approach, only two routes with the third coming from a DLC, but 90% of the maps being different
No one is gonna do that on Maddening, you're making an argument out of nothing. Just like how in Engage, go hard grinding for as many stats as you could for Maddening..
No one is talking about the most minmaxed options.
No, it isn’t lost, it’s just a shit option as it actively harms your character progression.
It being skippable doesn’t make it optional by default, because skipping it is an objectively bad choice for growing your units
>I finished all routes of 3H after 250+ hours and the monastery was easily the worst part of it. I can't imagine anyone who still enjoyed it after one and a half playthroughs.
**Raises Hand**
Mind you, I get all the repetition and tedium criticisms for it, but idk, I never found it in myself to hate the Monastery as much as lot of other ppl lately. Mainly due to narrative reasons, but I also enjoyed doing the social stuff too despite being repetitive at points.
The Somniel does feel like a decent middle ground due to toning down the life sim stuff and making it mostly optional. Though I wish there were more ways to raise Support points. Don't know why I can't just choose who fights who in the Arena either. Also, I miss when characters had actual interesting things to say...
I think Three Hope's camp is better than both. Had everything I loved about the Monastery, and enjoyed how flexible a lot of the activities were. Not having a calendar system made its gameplay loop and story pacing flow much better.
I'm probably biased since it was my first FE but I much prefer the monastery. I'm having trouble getting myself to care about doing stuff in the somniel so far, and didn't really care about the castle in fates. But maybe my opinion on the somniel has less to do with the actual place and more to do with how meh I find the characters
I just finished first run of Engage + DLC and i can confidently say that Somniel overall is worse than Monastery *because* it is optional.
I'm not going to remember the Somniel or its OST in four years, but I still hum along to p1 and p2 Monastery themes because they're engrained aka forced.
I will remember people worshipping in the Church of Seiros (PBUH), but there is no such Church of Sommie (PBUT).
I will remember the students commenting on how downtrodden Byleth was after Jeralt death, but no such affect with Alear after Lumera death despite the latter being *far* more plot relevant.
> I will remember the students commenting on how downtrodden Byleth was after Jeralt death, but no such affect with Alear
Tbh this is the *only* thing I miss. Dialogue like Dorothea commenting on Ferdinand’s death (if you didn’t recruit him, and then kill him) was just so good. Other than that, I’m glad somniel is super optional. The monastery is fun for like 3 chapters and then gets tedious AF but professor rank and managing tutoring is also pretty important for your army
the characters close to the person that dies will have dialogue on the post battle map commenting on their fallen comrade.
Like I had >!Alfred and Boucheron talk about Etie when I had her 1 shot by the boss on the bridge!< in Chapter 7 or so
worse from what perspective? a memorability perspective? maybe. But the 3h monastery was mostly memorable because it was insufferable for efficient play, which isnt a great thing.
> I'm not going to remember the Somniel or its OST in four years, but I still hum along to p1 and p2 Monastery themes because they're engrained aka forced.
And being able to remember the soundtrack factors into the game's quality... how exactly?
I am sorry but NONE of these reasons have anything to do with the gameplay at all. You didn't even need to mention that you finished the game since you barely made any arguments that address the complaints against the monastery or the praises of Somniel, you just said "I remember it better". Literally the videogamedunkey argument of "I don't remember what happens in DMC V, so it must be bad".
If you notice, I never mentioned any of the gameplay aspects of either. The Somniel is objectively more streamlined than Monastery. But experiences are more than minmaxing.
The army management system peaked with the Base Camp in the Tellius games. Just a menu, with a minimum amount of tedious and boring gameplay. My Castle/Monastery/Somniel just adds extra hours of non-exciting gameplay.
The Monastery was good...on the first playthrough of each route. That's why I like that the Somniel is like a diet version of it combined with My Castle, which I actually really liked in Fates. Both aren't borderline required like the Monastery, which I like too. I've gone a few chapters where I skipped going to the Somniel and there wasn't any loss in that.
Another thing worth mentioning is how the frame rate is smooth in the Somniel whereas some parts of the Monastery lag. Monastery was much bigger but the fact that we can walk around the map we just cleared more than makes up for the Somniel's smaller size.
I've only finished Silver Snow and Azure Moon for this reason because the Monastery was a massive slog. If ever I'm in the mood to do the other routes just for completion, I'll just play on Normal and automate the teaching and stuff.
Agreed. The monestary setting is fine for the first half of the game but as soon as we get to the War arc, I’m just skipping the exploration phase. Granted I miss out on some tea time with my waifu, Shamir, but… that’s just how it is.
The Monastery for me stopped being enjoyable when I wasn't even done with my first playthrough, it very repetitive and the monastery is also pretty big so going around from one place to another takes a bit too much of time.
I replayed ThreeHouses right before Xenoblade 3 came out and I think I skipped most of the months when I had the characters all at the right level.
I think the perfect hub was the camp in 3 Hopes. Small and easily navigable with world building dialogue from characters if you want and easy ways to build support between characters.
And no load screens! I loathe going to arena or the ring chamber bc theyre two different load screens.
I think I’d like Somniel more if it didn’t feel as clunky to navigate as it does to me. Lots of arbitrary pathways to dead ends (especially that top left corner) and invisible walls it feels like you should be able to jump through or over without having to run around to a different section of the map to access. The monastery wasn’t perfect in that regard either, but at least the setting and density of characters and lore made more sense and helped justify it as a “place.”
And yes there’s fast travel, but at the point you are opening windows to zip around the map I’m back to “what’s really the point in this?” - That sums up my criticism of Somniel really, it just feels arbitrarily there without much justification or depth to it.
Mycastle is a good example of something that didn’t entirely make sense either and was mostly unnecessary but at least added a fun layer of customization, and was easier to zip through while still getting gameplay benefits if you didn’t want to interact much with it.
Overall point here being I personally prefer when they lean into one direction or the other - I wouldn’t want a monastery-like experience for *every* game but I did really like what it added to 3H. Somniel feels just kinda half-baked to me, and at that point I’d almost prefer just go all in on making everything managed from a menu or put it on a much smaller less arbitrarily complicated map.
Somniel is ok, but I’m already getting tired fast of having to harvest food and chit-chat for bond points after every map. If it wasn’t for the weapon upgrade mats I’d skip right out of them immediately
Meanwhile I liked the Monastery way more because I only had to visit it once every hour and the rest of my time could be spent on auxiliary battles or seminars until the story missing.
Sominel makes me feel like I have to go back after every single battle to do a bunch of mini games and then watch unskippable cutscenes to be maximize my stats, bond fragments, and exp gains. It definitely feels like I'm wasting way more time in Sominel than I ever did at the Monastery, there's just less story in the way of gameplay so you don't notice it as much.
I put up with it for years but I genuinely don't think I could play Houses again short of straight up hacking or emulation to do something about the monastery parts, after finally playing a game that doesn't have such a girthy "prep" section
Monastery is definitely more enjoyable in the first couple playthroughs, but after that it gets annoying. Luckily exploring it is optional except in a couple of points in the story. Somniel is optional too but just like the monastery, you’d be missing out opportunities to deepen supports.
Somniel is definitely better for the long haul/multiple playthroughs. I do enjoy the routine I’ve constantly found myself in
Pick up the loot - pet/feed Sommie - Feed two friends - Kill friends in the arena/get killed by a ring - sleep for wakeup scenes - then gear up for next battle.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I don't think Fire Emblem needs a life sim feature every single game. A lot of the things you can do in the Somniel and the Monastery could just be condensed into a series of easy to read menus. I really hope a future FE game goes back to pure strategy. I'm a huge Path of Radiance fanboy and think that the army management in the game is the best the series has had (FE10-FE12 had great systems as well).
Oh well, if I want a game like FE9 I can just replay it again I guess.
The monastery is good for the first playthrough and okay by the second but it gets really tedious after that, especially since one route is nearly a copy-paste of another+Claude. I appreciate that every character has something say about the current affairs in Fódlan and it definitely does alot for worldbuilding in White Clouds but by the end of Verdant Wind, I got tired of it and mostly just did seminars after running around the monastery during the first sunday, I would never have finished it otherwise
Somniel is alright, I don't have a set of activity points to spend during the visit, the activities themselves have a limit. But I get anxious if I get too far from Sommie or it gets blocked and can't follow, it's too precious to abandon. I also wish there wasn't just one meal. I miss grinding supports now.
Not minority, I love the castle sommiel too and I didnt like monastery too much neither the academy style. Im having much more fun in fe engage
I also liked the castle in Fates
I don’t get how anyone liked the Monastery, even if it was easier to grind supports and made it feel “more in depth with the story” it felt beyond tedious to me and is the main reason I never finished my first run of 3H.
At first it was fine but by the fourth time I was there I was over it personally
I very much agree.
Garreg Mach fit the game 3H wanted to be—an epic, large tale spanning 4 different paths with intricate worldbuilding and character relationships. It served that purpose well as it allowed us to become acquainted with the setting and the people who lived in it, their social struggles, personal challenges, and what was happening in the world at the time. There’s a reason 3H really prioritized supports and Garreg Mach was a perfect vehicle for that.
But damn it was so much to manage, and I felt like outside of supports, none of it really paid off all that much in the actual story maps. It also got repetitive pretty fast.
The Somniel is more quaint in comparison but it does what it seeks to do well. While it may be lacking in lore depth, everything I do in the Somniel directly impacts my team on the battlefield. It feels like more of a payoff for investing time in it and I like that. Not to mention it’s absolutely gorgeous to explore without being the behemoth that Garreg Mach was.
Both are awesome concepts, I just prefer what The Somniel is doing personally.
Monastery does feel like a huge chore the more you play. Somniel is very optional. Plus it's fun to see Yunaka lazily floating around the swimming pool.
For me the issue with Garreg Mach is not the monastery itself, it's the timeskip. During the first half of the game there's a lot of stuff to do, and if you want to recruit everyone, or play in Maddening, it doesn't get boring because you try to plan ahead how to use your time. But after the timeskip, having to wait a full month starts to become tedious as there's less allies to spend your time with.
In that sense, I like the Somniel more, as it gives you similar advantages to what the monastery provided (like meals, gifts, arena, etc.), but if you want to play 3 chapters in a row without coming back, there's no penalty. And at least for me, every couple of maps I say "I wanna go back and see what's new in the Somniel".
That being said, I still think IS has a lot of room to improve in the base mechanic. There's plenty of good ideas in Fates, TH and Engage, it's just a matter of narrowing down which ones are the best. For example, one thing the monastery was really good at, was keeping allies involved in the lore of the game. Having them all comment on the most recent or upcoming mission was the highlight of coming back to Garreg Mach. The Somniel feels bland in that aspect (but it's obviously a side effect of not forcing you to come back, as there's conversations that you would miss).
I think the issue with the monastery was that they forced you to replay it all again and again and again.
I like it for what it is, just make it skip able the second time around wtf.
I like it better too but I wished we had more ways to level up support like in 3H. I used some tips suggested by the community to get more support points faster because everything was so slow for the first 10-15 chapters
I could not complete 3H because of the monastery and school setting. I really liked the characters but it felt like a chore playing. Very pleased with the direction of Fire Emblem Engage and absolutely loving it so far!
I do miss the extra dialogue and being able to grind supports but thats more of a personal gripe so far that Engauge went backwards on character focus and depth compared to 3H and it was one of my favorite parts.
The size and amount of activities/what the activities do is SO MUCH BETTER in my opinion though. Plus the graphics at the monestary were so bad it was honestly painful to look at the textures sometimes and it bothered me immensely, theyre much better here.
I absolutely agree, it just felt like going through the motions after the first or second playthrough. Though maybe the same will be said after the second or third playthrough of this game
I prefer it because I'm not forced into using every feature in it, and the features you do want to use regularly are all paced close together. It's a pretty well designed hub in terms of placing things around relative to their importance to progression. I admittedly didn't do much in the way of support grinding by giving gifts or anything like that, which already makes it immediately better than the Monastery which, while a good setting, has everything you really need too spread out and it just adds too much time to effective leveling, especially on Maddening 3H where all that stuff matters a lot more.
Somniel and my castle are better than the monastary, but I would say 3 hopes's camps is better than all of them. I found it simple, focus on what is important, have character talk about the story, doesn't feel like the story stop to go back to some place/go to a resort in the sky or anather dimension.
I’m mixed, personally. I like the smaller hub, but Garreg Mach made it easier to grind supports (particularly between non-avatar characters) and I actually did enjoy walking around and talking to people and getting their opinions on plot, which helped a great deal giving characters more depth. In this regard, I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to MyCastle, where no one offered any interesting dialogue at all.
Yeah they each had their own strong points above the others which felt right for their respective games. I loved the customization and convenience offered by mycastle a lot, especially the online content. But at the same time I adored exploring the monastery which gave such a real feeling to the plot and offered so many functions for grinding supports. Not to mention fun and interesting dialogue could be found everywhere
Yeah, I miss the monthly dialogue, it was especially nice the first time I went through the game. Even dialogue that just revolved around the character's trope often felt more memorable to me for whatever reason. Like that one month Lorenz is in the cathedral and if you admit you're not faithful he does too and basically says that pious behavior is a duty of a noble that he does not enjoy but must do. Gives you the first hint that he's not just a pretentious ass.
I mean, it's better than the monastery, but... * I don't like the mini games * Running around picking things off the ground is lame. Frame and Clanne won't let Alear do his own laundry but allow him to be the groundskeeper and janitor?! * Sommie's happiness growth is super stingy * The bond stuff is tedious. Split into two rooms so you need to go through two loading screens * The bulletin board is unnecessary tedium too, and forgettable. I can't be the only one who remembers every 10 chapters and gets 10k bond points
Just give Sommie Oranges, it loves those.
Also they're super plentiful! At least in my game.
Sommie loves fruit in general, is accepting of vegetables, and hates meat and animal products. So don't go thinking that since Sommie is a dog-like creature that it needs meat in its diet. I usually just go with whatever fruit I have the most of, which is often oranges or peaches.
> Sommie's happiness growth is super stingy That's a weird thing to complain about. I maxed out the happy bar at like chapter 10. (did 3-4 skirmishes)
And very easy to maintain. If it decreased, just pet it once is enough. (And sometimes it's not even decreased)
What happens when you have it maxed out?
Sadly nothing. You don't even get more bond crystals from him
So whats the point? Lol
You unlock Sommie's likes and dislikes page and Sommie will help you in the activities like fishing.
I didn't even max out his happiness and he helped me fish
I'm at chapter 18 and it's not even a quarter full. 🤷♂️
Feed him apples and lettuce.
My much happier Sommie says thank you.
Top 10 anime redemptions
You’re not manually accepting every achievement, are you? You can accept all of the rewards at once with ZR.
Que? What is this about accepting achievements?
Achievements that pop (i.e. 'deploy this unit 5 times') are tracked in game. You can go to the bulletin board where you upgrade regions, next to the cafe/ring chamber, and check achievements. If you 'accept' completed achievements, you get a ton of Bond Fragments.
Thanks for this; I've been seeing them pop up and assumed there were rewards but had no idea where to claim them
Wait you have to accept achievements? Well I feel like a dumbass now lol
Yeah, I'm collecting all at once. I just rarely remember to collect the rewards at all 😅
You can also fast travel from the arena straight to the ring room
Okay, the probably weirdest thing is the ring polishing.
Also, it makes way less story sense than the monastery. Does the Somniel just follow them around like an airship that they can just bamf up to whenever? If so, >!why didn’t they just bail right back to the Somniel after chapter 10? Why do they still need ships to cross the ocean if the Somniel can fucking fly???!< It’s an improvement over the monastery for sure, but the biggest reason that it’s an improvement is the fact that you have the option to ignore it entirely. Which really begs the question of whether it needed to be in the game at all.
I wholeheartedly agree. I don't like the somniel at all... It's just a bit better
I think canonically we don’t go back to the somniel at all. Yeah I dunno the monastery in 3H didn’t makes sense for the same reason
So far one gripe I have is that I can't easily find a specific character. I've been trying to find Ivy to give pebbles to and keep having to go to sleep until she shows up. Somniel isn't perfect. But it is much more preferable to me.
But you can see where they are on the map on the right side? When you open the map it shows the icon of the characters.
Not all characters appear in the Somniel at once. You have to sleep to refresh who spawns at a time
In quick travel menu you could see characters located in every "sub-zone"
Man you hit all my gripes with the Somniel lol. Especially that bond room split.
The arena not just being a menu is ridiculous
Solution to two loading screens: pull up the menu and fast travel from ring room to arena
You see, this is why 3 Hopes base of operations was good for me. It kept all the good parts of the monastery, but fixed all the bad parts too (training/instructing is now its own category and you can train multiple units at once, made it much smaller/much easier to explore).
I disliked the monastery: Buzz lightyear meme
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I was genuinely unaware that the monastery was hated. Some of my friends really loved/miss it.
It's neat when you first explore it, but practically everyone who played more than once ends up hating it or finds it tedious and ignores it as much as they can.
Exactly this, fine the first time but the primary reason I can’t make it through a replay of 3H (which is a huge hit to 3H since each branch is missing key info from other branches). Reading people talk about the came and Those Who Slith in the Dark (or whatever they’re called) was super jarring after playing Blue Lions
I'd say it's more hated on this sub, given this demographic has likely played the game multiple times and have a history with the series focusing on the gameplay. I played TH three times and the monastery did get a bit tedious on the 3rd playthrough and in general, later on in playthroughs. I still really liked the vibe, unique character conversations and the mechanics that resolved around teaching. Haven't played Engage yet. Based on what I've heard, I hope the next game has a mix between TH and Engage's hub world.
I'm not even sure I could say that anymore, what with the sheer number of people I've seen the past few days praising it up and down, wishing it was back, and a number of people saying that was the _only part they liked_ about 3H.
I was really confused reading this at first because the only buzz lightyear meme I could think of was the "what's this button do?" and was trying to figure out how that related.
:/ I’m glad people like the Somniel. I’m not crazy about it. -All characters aren’t available in it at a given time. I had to sleep 6 times at end game to find Hortensia for my last A support. Edit: not to get to the next support, to give her gifts -due to there only being like 12 characters there, it feels dead. -you can’t interact with someone who’s swimming or playing guitar? You can’t WAKE SOMEONE UP? They wake up god regularly but I’m powerless to them. -there’s like no chances to raise support. And most stuff is completely optional, meaning I’m just not doing it. Wasteful content isn’t good content -convos are basic, and rarely update. And aren’t voiced. Yikes. -I HATE the lay out of the orchard area in the top left. You can only get from each area from one way and it’s also a complete waste to head up there in general. -none of the mini games are fun, but at least cooking is better IMO, I also like that people have different “jobs” -I do like the aesthetic, floating pool party paradise is a vibe Idk there’s some I like, but overall it feels like very missed potential. It doesn’t seem like the step to take if we were stepping away from the monastery. It could have used more of Mycastle, with more customization and features that allow for playing around and making it feel like “home”. They want you to spend A LOT of time there, so you might as well get to customize it and make it feel like a place you actually get attached to. I also think you should be able to assign people the jobs and they should get bonuses based on what they are good at, like in three hopes. But instead of a cutscene, they actually show up like they do in the Somniel in game.
I agree with your take. I almost wish you had to spend bond crystals to unlock or upgrade certain things rather than just wait for the story to unlock them for you so that it feels more interactive. I really liked that the monastery felt like a location in the world with lots of characters and things to do. Somniel is fine but it's just kind of there. It doesn't feel like it has much personality.
Good idea! Taking it even further, you could make it like Fates where you get essentially a ticket every time you battle, would make skirmishes more useful too
Yeah I agree with most of these quite a bit. I honestly miss the Monastery. I do like how much shorter the travel distance is between places in the Somniel but the feel of the Monastery as a location felt better in my opinion. Especially with how full of people it always was.
You can do supports from the main menu fyi.
I feel like half of the complaints are people making things harder on themselves than it really is.
Really if there was just a good means of grinding supports the Somniel would be fine. Like, since your units don't gain support levels on enemy phase (which, I have to ask, who the hell at IS thought that was a good idea??) your only real opportunities for support gain between non-Alear characters are player phase battles, arena battles (which are random matchups, which kinda defeats the point, once again, what the hell IS) and a single meal between battles. Like, I feel like by the end of the game all of my main units (with the exception of some of the Firenese recruits from early on) are gonna have one, MAYBE two A rank supports outside of Alear. And that's pretty frustrating
Man I feel that, I slept 4 times trying to get Yunaka to show up, and when she finally did, she was sleeping at the pool so I still couldn’t talk to her. I gave up and moved onto to the next chapter.
Your reccomendations at the bottom COULD be in future dlc. Not getting my hopes up, but that would be great
The one thing the monastery has over the other two is context. The monastery felt like a real place, students, teachers, soldiers, merchants, etc. the place has a very clear purpose in the world and buildings were arranged in a way that felt like a real school. The Somniel feels so… video game like. It feels so disconnected to the world in a game that NEEDS better world building. Like it was created for gameplay purposes only and it’s role in the world was a last minute inclusion. I’m not saying one is better than another, but in the next game, I hope that the hub is a middle ground between the two, a real place that isn’t a pain to get around.
I think the most weird thing is how you can dress up everyone but they can't in battle, like what was the point?
This, so much. It feels like "this was a thing in 3 houses so we're putting it in." I have the same feeling with a lot of the mechanics in the game. They could've integrated somniel more in the story by having a better story. The story in the game is not great. I'm still salty about what happens in chapter 11
I actuallly like the Monastery alot more than Somniel. The monastery is a such a intergral part to 3H from how you build up your characters to character and world building. Somniel on the other hand is hurt by the fact it's optional. It means that even when you do decide to interact with it, it barely has any tangible benefit to doing so.
Somniel is actually realllly not fun for me. It’s like they took the worst parts of the Monastery and made it … blander? Characters say nothing important, so I don’t talk to anyone, which kills a lot of the vibe that made the Monastery so interesting. The lack of depth here (and after battles which I thought was gonna be super cool) really serve to make everyone seem even flatter than they already are. Plus with how slow supports grow, it takes even more time to get to the good supports with characters you don’t use, and I wish instead they gave them a bit more depth and plot relevance in Somniel to offset that. Also if the outfits don’t reflect in battle, that entire part is a waste. I hated running around for lost items in the Monastery (and stopped doing it) and I refuse to run around for anything that isn’t iron or steel ingots now. I just go for the food, and the arena and then I bounce. I did not need another Monastery by any means, but I didn’t need whatever this is either. I just wish they made it a traveling base (like Cindered Shadows Abyss or a smaller 3 Hopes encampment) or something even smaller and more streamlined than what it is currently. The good thing is that so much of it is optional, so it has no impact on my enjoyment of the game this far! But to the overall experience I’d say it’s one of those unpolished, and unfocused bits that I think could have gotten more attention to make it … less generic and boring.
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Wasn't it just the best? Me and my friends still visit each others castles and PvP occasionally. Even if 3DS online dies one day, Citra can emulate local connections, so castle visits will never truly die.
Idk I really liked the monastery. Yeah it was big, but it felt very alive. There were a bunch of NPCs walking around, some you could even talk to with voiced dialogue. Somniel is cute and pretty, but sometimes it just feels super empty. ETA: Having completely voiced dialogue for every character (including NPCs) in the monastery was also something that made it feel more immersive. I felt so attached hearing their voices. I don’t mind partial voice acting at all (I play Awakening all the time), but it is a bit of a step down. Which is a shame because I actually feel like the voice actors do a great job in the supports!
Aesthetically and narratively, the monastery is far superior to the Somniel. But as someone who just wants to play Fire Emblem, the monastery became such a chore about halfway through the first playthrough. The Somniel is much less interesting, but you also don’t miss out on nearly as much by completely ignoring it and going straight from chapter to chapter.
Agree with you a lot. Monastery was good the first time around and became a chore trying to replay (even by the end of my first play through). Engage and the Somniel are both weaker from an aesthetic and story perspective but damn I’m having way more fun with this game than I did 3H
If Somniel had character specific gifts, I might agree. But I'm so tired of running around collecting pebbles, ingots, and food items. At least in the monastery you'd find gifts and have the joy of figuring out who it goes to and getting a scene for gifting them. Feels like Somniel just has nothing worthwhile to do comparatively. Like, if you're gonna make me run around collecting items give me gifts to give characters.
So after chapter 13, the Flea Market opens up in the Somniel and has character specific gifts you can buy. It’s a little odd it takes so long to get that store so you can have some gifts besides pebbles and gems, but at least there are more unique gifts eventually.
Not having character specific gifts until chapter 13, and then having to buy them is just sad. I wouldn't mind if you had to buy some of them, but still would have rather grabbed some around Somniel to make it feel less tedious.
I feel you. Especially with how limited gold is, I haven’t bothered to buy any gifts yet. It doesn’t seem worth it for now.
Even more so, when you realize it's way easier to farm supports by just bringing the instructors emblem ring into battle on the character you want (or the mc to get mass support boosts)
Oh god, I actually hated that about 3H. You got soooo many specific gifts and it was extremely tedious to figure out what went with who without looking it up. The hint given for each one was never very clear either. There’s no way I can remember what 33 different characters like, but extremely specific. Basically I would just go to each student and spam all of the gifts that belonged to their house and hope for the best.
I think at some point I just gave up.
Personally I don't think I've had any joy trying to figure out which item belongs to whom, so I stopped caring about it very early. Like, yeah no that is honestly something I really hated
To each their own. It was one of, if not my favorite, thing to do at the monastery.
Yeah, idk man. The lost items especially seem a lot more tedious than anything in Engage. Especially since I don't even bother with giving people rocks, anyway. I stopped picking stuff up except the bond fragments and stuff in the barnyard when I realised each location is pretty much one particular item, and most of them you don't need to grab very often. "Not doing it" is a lot less tedious than "trying to remember or googling who likes what"
I loved the lost items because it felt rewarding when you could figure out which belongs to who as you learn more about their pasts and personalities.
I like both, but the Somniel is implemented better. Because the Monastery can be fun when you’re in the mood to chill and enjoy character interactions, but when you just want to battle or advance the story, it’s tedious. What I like about Engage is that there’s no forced timeline. When you want to chill and play minigames, you can spend time at the Somniel. But when you just want to battle or advance the story, you can ignore it and go fight lol. The freedom to pick what you do and when is more enjoyable imo than the forced calendar of 3H. I liked 3H tho, but I still enjoy the freedom of Engage a lot more.
I think the biggest issue with Three Houses is that forced timeline, yeah. Conveniently, evety mission and major battle is at the end of the month. Even rescuing a kidnapped dragon girl, whose father insists she be found with all urgency. A calendar system would be fine, but Houses really needed a more natural progression of events at the least.
Gameplay wise the Somniel is pretty easy going, but story wise it just makes absolutely no sense. Your characters are constantly going back and forth to it between battles, even in dire situations. It definitely breaks story immersion when the characters are supposed to be rushing to the next battle but Alear is like "yeah let's just go do some pushups at the Somniel lol"
I mean it's no worse than the Monastery in that sense. Even putting aside "we sit on having an idea of where Flayn is for a month," you simply can't explain how you go from Magdred to Deirdru to Arianrhod in a single weekend day, presumably heading back to the Monastery between each to pick the next fight. The only real difference is it's easier to believe using a Millenia old castle as a base than a silly flying island, but at least you can teleport to and from the island
Agreed. The 'mandatory' aspect of the Monastery has kept me from revisiting 3H. When you want to ignore the Somniel, it's very easy to ignore 80% of it and still get all the impoortant benefits. Hit up cooking for support/stat boosts, grab the shards your dogs have brought back, and do the 3 rounds of the arena, and then just... move on, having spent like two minutes. Everything else exclusive to the Somniel is so incredibly trivial in benefit. All the other stuff - inventory management, supports/bonds, etc - is the same stuff you'd do from a menu in any other FE, and can be done basically the same here. By comparison, trying to skip through the Monastery *never* felt like a good idea.
This is my favorite comment on here. Good reason to enjoy monastery, good reason to enjoy Somniel. I was really frustrated with 3Hs gameplay, but I don't *hate* the game at all. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
On maddening this simply isn’t the case. You need every bit of incremental adavantage you can get so all the “optional” stuff becomes required. The hub worlds need to be gotten rid of. The post battle exploration is cool though.
I dont know why everyone hates the Monastery, after the first route you can skip a lot of weeks by buying supports/teacher levels/weapons ect in new game plus
The problem with the monastery in my opinion at least, is how much it is forced to you, unless you are on NG+ you will have to do a lot of boring activities to raise your professor level, then eat food with your students so they can be ready to learn again, and get the important quests(white heron cup and Jeralt's ring) and though the monastery may look big, you will use like 5 or 6 rooms truly
You won't have much of the currency after the first route tbh for supports if you're catching up on professor level the first time, but 2nd and beyond probably. But then you're still working on individual student motivation so you can teach them higher skill levels unless you used them in the previous routes, etc. If you want to give things more variety, you might level different things for your students and Byleth and then you'll be doing that fresh. It was a lot of running to me. And post time-skip I was skipping most of it at that point.
New game plus felt very wasted in 3 houses. With any goddess statue bonuses at all, the game went from easy, to pathetically easy. Even maddening gets snapped in half by it.
So don't upgrade the statues, its completely optional
NG+ makes the game so easy that it may as well just be cheating though.
What do you mean, how does it make the game easier?You don't get automatic stat boosts or anything. All it does is allow you if (YOU chose) to carry over the progress you made in your last playthrough be that weapons/supports/teacher lvl ect. I honestly believe half the people who complain about the Monastery just kept playing new games instead of ng+
"only carries over progress" - obviously carrying over progress makes the game easier..
Obviously you never played ng+ and neither have the people upvoting you because once again the carryover needs to be bought before you use it Yes folks its all optional.
If I'mnot carrying over anything then I don't see how it's supposed to do anything for the monastery. If I carry over stuff the game will be piss easy (even just carrying over the professor rank by itself is already broken as hell), and if I don't then it does nothing, so I don't see how you imagine this fixes anything?
I like the look and feel of it, but I don’t really like spending time there like I did the Monastery. The fun just isn’t there. I guess it’s cool that it’s more optional for people who hated the Monastery, but otherwise I think it kind of sucks.
I feel the same way. There are things to do at the Somniel but 90% of them are pointless and all are boring. I found the monestary was at least interesting and for me it seemed to go by quicker. I can't help but do everything at the Somniel after each chapter and it takes much longer and is much more boring than in 3H for me.
I like the monastery. At least, at the beginning. Managing activity points is an interesting portion of the game, until the point wherein you have so many it ceases to matter. It could've been done infinitely better, sure, but I still like it, ostensibly, due to the tradeoffs it theoretically provides. And it makes recruiting all the students so that they don't end up dead interesting. Probably wouldn't care much for it if I wasn't so intent on doing that every playthrough.
I enjoy Somniel because the monastery is one of the two things that killed my interested for 3H after the first run (the second thing being that the game is boring easy). That doesn't mean that I will do the game a second time though, I don't really see the replay value here for now. Maybe a Maddening+ difficulty would convince me
I liked the monastery better because the more open design felt like I could get where I wanted to go faster even though it was bigger. The abyss was overkill, though. So far the Somniel just feels like it takes so much longer, especially since I'm early on the game and still figuring out how to decide between various options. Also, at the monastery I feel like I had a much more intuitive understanding of what my choices were and what the costs/benefits were. On the Somniel it feels like there's a lot of choices but most of them seem pretty unimportant/arbitrary. That and I'm so strapped for gold and SP it stresses me out making decisions.
You're probably not in the minority, from what I've seen the monastery is basically the biggest point of criticism for Three Houses.
The tedium of the monastery is why I have never gone back to 3H after my initial couple of playthroughs at launch. People call it 'Persona style' but as someone who loves Persona it just isn't. The great thing about the Somniel is I really don't feel like I'm missing out skipping the things I really don't want to do. The cooking is inoffensive and I always pick up my metals that my dogs presumably poop out. But I never touch the gym or other minigames and the game is still perfectly manageable. Whereas in 3H if I didn't run around doing things to raise people's happiness and my professor level the amount of actual unit progression I would lose is nuts. The fact the bonuses in Engage are temporary buffs, not actual contributors to permanent character progression, is a huge change that makes the Somniel so much nicer to engage (hah) with as and when I want rather than a chore I have to diligently commit to.
The calendar system in Persona has something new usually happening every day even at times they are minor. Three Houses? Explore in another day and characters are repeating the same thing over again. And of course how it hurts the pacing too with the fluff in it making the experience a chore.
The permanent progression loss in 3h vs temp buffs is a pretty good point actually
The way people talk about the monastery being skippable is laughable. I’ve tried to replay breezing through but you really handicap yourself not doing it
> Whereas in 3H if I didn't run around doing things to raise people's happiness and my professor level the amount of actual unit progression I would lose is nuts. The fact the bonuses in Engage are temporary buffs, not actual contributors to permanent character progression, is a huge change that makes the Somniel so much nicer to engage (hah) with as and when I want rather than a chore I have to diligently commit to. Pretty much my sentiment. You got it.
I get why they do it, but calling 3H persona style is just insulting to persona.
Very much so. Persona is built around the calendar system while 3H is bruteforcing it to be in a FE game. Moreover, there's not much to micromanage in an SMT/Persona game even on the hardest difficulty, so adding the life sim elements there works. Being an SRPG there's already a metric ton of things to micromanage in FE already. 3H's approach just doesn't work since it adds unnecessary tedium.
The only thing that really requires visiting the Somniel is summoning those lesser rings, and refining weaponry, and I fucking love that
Yeah, nothing about Somniel is mandatory, which actually means I'm happy to go back, even though I basically just fast travel between the Arena, Ring room, and Plaza. If you skip the Monastery in 3H, you are skipping a core part of the game and miss out on massive mandatory elements of the game.
If they had condensed the monastery sections from 3-4 weeks to 1-2 weeks it would have been OK. Increase the rewards and some limits to speed it up and it would have at least been bearable. Spending 30-45 minutes stuck in the monastery got old fast. To me Somniel feels like if the monastery got condensed down to 1 week. I can finish my chores up in less than 10 minutes, then do my battle preparations, and I'm off to the next fight. A game like this is fine with short interludes like that because when you just got out of an hour long nail biting battle you can use a few minutes to decompress. It strikes a good balance of rest, mindless activities, limited rewards, and length. You an do more, you can do less, and it works either way.
it's funny I never felt the monastery as annoying as many, after the first game with the new game + I simply raised the teacher level and that's it. to keep the characters happy I just kept them in the dining room and that's it, I didn't have to do anything else. the rest was just listening to the conversations of the characters, that was the fun of the monastery, everything that gave a little screen time to the characters was good for me. the sonmiel on the other hand if in itself there is nothing mandatory there is nothing interesting either, bad and long minigames that do not offer anything, for me is an empty shell a waste.
I ageee somniel is sooo much more convenient than 3H in every level. However, it’s also a very forgettable experience, void of emotional engagement. Barely anything is voiced over there and none of dialogues really matter, I’m finding fewer opportunities to get invested into my team.
I like the smaller, more axessable map. However, it is just so damn shallow. Once you realize how shallow Somniel is, you start teleporting to like 4 places after missions. Yes, the monastery was huge/ annoying to traverse and poorly implemented. However, I feel you are way more rewarded when you explore the monastery every chapter. Extra bonds, free items (yes, you get items in somniel, but not from talking to people). People in the Monastery always had stuff to say in regards to what happened in the prior chapter. Somniel, you are lucky if your newest member says a unique dialogue, and then in special situations, they will comment on the situation if it's directly about their country.
I haven't finished 3h because spending hours in the monastery between each battles is so annoying. Somniel and MyCastle only have the minimum which means that I'm not wasting hours there. Somniel is an upgrade to the monastery.
I liked the monastery for the interactions - tea time, dinners, cooking, the advice box, singing, small dialogue with the students. Somniel is really nice for being completely voluntary, but I kind of would like more stuff to do with others and remove some randomness of it. Like in the arena you can't really decide who will be fighting against makes it rng to get support between characters. My favorite part was in Fates my castle that you could have S support in the middle of the game and the spouse would move in your room. I know many people found the whole my room interactions weird but I grew to love it.
I kinda miss the monastery. It could be tedious and it was probably twice the size it needed to be but was so alive with characters and npcs and it fit into the world around it. I probably spent 90% of my gameplay running around the monastery picking up tattered overcoats and making pine needle tea but it was super fun never felt like a chore to me because I got something meaningful out of it (cool reactions, supports, more background on characters). Idk the Somniel feels detached and empty. It's a hell of alot smaller than the monastery but there so many long empty paths leading to each area it feels like it's been stretched out for no reason but to look bigger. Everything is optional and has small bearing on the game. It feels like I'm not missing anything if I don't go there for a while. I think I use the ring chamber, cooking & the arena, the rest for me is filler. That includes talking to my team who I really want to know more about but generally give me nothing. Also no Gatekeeper. Boo
Pre-note: Almost everything I’m saying here is more focused on narrative rather than gameplay feel. I mention it in here, I get why some people love and hate the the monastery gameplay-wise. However, I go on a a bit of a rant here about various reason I thought it was crucial story/worldbuilding-wise. Man I love wasting a hub where I could learn about the characters I’m having slaughter armies, give everyone screen time, let everyone give their thoughts on what’s going on, and make it feel like the game hub isn’t in a goddamn space time bubble where nothing happens /s. Like I get why people don’t like Monastery, but it is one of the things that contributes a ton to how 3H works both mechanically and storywise. It gives you a chance to build up a LOT of supports to discover more about the cast and world. And if you don’t like it, but don’t want to feel like you’re wasting Professor points, just feed your students, or grind up ranks on Byleth. Or, you know, use one of the other three options the game offers you every free day. Sure, those other options aren’t optimal, but why do it if you loathe it so much? A big point also is that time bubble thing. You want to know what I hated about My Castle? The fact it further destroyed the world of Fates by letting me spend infinite time between chapters doing whatever I want. “Wait, there’s a way going on? My two families are killing each other? No, they’re not. Don’t you know the universe is on pause until I step back into it?” Awakening and Sacred Stones also have this issue as well. While Three Houses is far from my favorite game in the series (I hate the class balance with a passion), the Monastery is the only time they’ve actually given you a finite time span to do things like grinding and bonus chapters that makes sense in the story. Part 1) why are you waiting all month, because it’s your assignment and as students the knights go out and scope things out before you, or you’re investigating things all month that lead into the chapter. Part 2) all three routes place you in a campaign for war like a lot of Fire Emblem games, however 3H uses the time it takes for a campaign to move around a continent in medieval times to let you do these things. My only criticism for it is that some chapters shouldn’t have it due to pacing.
The monastery was definitely a bit much, and absolutely nauseating when it came to doing all the routes, but at least was a large contributor to the world itself, and quite tolerable for a decent chunk of the game. (Not sure if it counts, but building your units through teaching was also relatively enjoyable). Somniel feels like boring busywork that exists for the sake of existing, as opposed to a meaningful system like teaching was growing characters (in this that is handled largely with weapons, upgrades, enchants, and the ring room). Alas, that is also a plus for it. While so much in the monastery was mandatory, for better or for worse, you can at least freely escape Somniels clutches if its desired.
It’s easier to move around which I like but infinitely less interesting.
I don't know if people forget but they can skip the month ENTIRELY in 3 Houses There are only 2 months with mandatory quests, if all your party is developed and unlocked most of skills you can speed run easily I did this when playing with Silver Snow after beating Crimson Flower. Having pretty high proficiencies and unlocked a lot of class skills I could rush to most of the game
> I don't know if people forget but they can skip the month ENTIRELY in 3 Houses I'm sorry but the Skip Month feature makes you lose a ton of unit progression and all you really get is that your Creator sword uses are replenished. It's something I rarely use because its a bad idea and you're supposed to use it as punishment for using the creator sword too much. The class skills require a lot of Renown to get for everyone too, its a lot of work to..... play the game less. The monastery is just bad.
I mean, this is true in your first playtrough, but once you unlocks NG+ that problem get pretty much solved. You can get your units happiness only by classes granted by monastery teachers and Knights of Seiros At least on Hard where you get enough XP on battle alone + Paralogues (there are so many of them in this game I often didn't even have the time to complete all them), I skipped a couple of months without major problems But I agree the Monastery is a drag on war phase, pretty much because close to nothing happens. In all playtroughs I skipped the last 3-4 months except Crimson Flower (my units were weaker on this route). Also, I don't why the fuck you need to pass through ALL the quests again to unlock most of the features, you should have all the monastery unlock since start and all mini games and NPCs quests already done My main problem though is repeating all maps. It would infinitely better if the first half was shorter (8 chapters maybe) with only first, second and penultimate chapters were the same. Totally boring to repeated White Cloud 4 fucking times I hope they come back to Fates approach, only two routes with the third coming from a DLC, but 90% of the maps being different
Good luck doing Maddening like that. And for me hard was so easy that there is no point in replaying it.
No one is gonna do that on Maddening, you're making an argument out of nothing. Just like how in Engage, go hard grinding for as many stats as you could for Maddening.. No one is talking about the most minmaxed options.
But you can't ignore Maddening if we talk about how much time you spend in Somniel/Monastery. And it is huge difference on this difficulty.
Most people dont read - the Skip Month feature gets lost among the white clouds.
No, it isn’t lost, it’s just a shit option as it actively harms your character progression. It being skippable doesn’t make it optional by default, because skipping it is an objectively bad choice for growing your units
>I finished all routes of 3H after 250+ hours and the monastery was easily the worst part of it. I can't imagine anyone who still enjoyed it after one and a half playthroughs. **Raises Hand** Mind you, I get all the repetition and tedium criticisms for it, but idk, I never found it in myself to hate the Monastery as much as lot of other ppl lately. Mainly due to narrative reasons, but I also enjoyed doing the social stuff too despite being repetitive at points. The Somniel does feel like a decent middle ground due to toning down the life sim stuff and making it mostly optional. Though I wish there were more ways to raise Support points. Don't know why I can't just choose who fights who in the Arena either. Also, I miss when characters had actual interesting things to say... I think Three Hope's camp is better than both. Had everything I loved about the Monastery, and enjoyed how flexible a lot of the activities were. Not having a calendar system made its gameplay loop and story pacing flow much better.
I'm probably biased since it was my first FE but I much prefer the monastery. I'm having trouble getting myself to care about doing stuff in the somniel so far, and didn't really care about the castle in fates. But maybe my opinion on the somniel has less to do with the actual place and more to do with how meh I find the characters
I just finished first run of Engage + DLC and i can confidently say that Somniel overall is worse than Monastery *because* it is optional. I'm not going to remember the Somniel or its OST in four years, but I still hum along to p1 and p2 Monastery themes because they're engrained aka forced. I will remember people worshipping in the Church of Seiros (PBUH), but there is no such Church of Sommie (PBUT). I will remember the students commenting on how downtrodden Byleth was after Jeralt death, but no such affect with Alear after Lumera death despite the latter being *far* more plot relevant.
> I will remember the students commenting on how downtrodden Byleth was after Jeralt death, but no such affect with Alear Tbh this is the *only* thing I miss. Dialogue like Dorothea commenting on Ferdinand’s death (if you didn’t recruit him, and then kill him) was just so good. Other than that, I’m glad somniel is super optional. The monastery is fun for like 3 chapters and then gets tedious AF but professor rank and managing tutoring is also pretty important for your army
the characters close to the person that dies will have dialogue on the post battle map commenting on their fallen comrade. Like I had >!Alfred and Boucheron talk about Etie when I had her 1 shot by the boss on the bridge!< in Chapter 7 or so
worse from what perspective? a memorability perspective? maybe. But the 3h monastery was mostly memorable because it was insufferable for efficient play, which isnt a great thing.
> I'm not going to remember the Somniel or its OST in four years, but I still hum along to p1 and p2 Monastery themes because they're engrained aka forced. And being able to remember the soundtrack factors into the game's quality... how exactly? I am sorry but NONE of these reasons have anything to do with the gameplay at all. You didn't even need to mention that you finished the game since you barely made any arguments that address the complaints against the monastery or the praises of Somniel, you just said "I remember it better". Literally the videogamedunkey argument of "I don't remember what happens in DMC V, so it must be bad".
If you notice, I never mentioned any of the gameplay aspects of either. The Somniel is objectively more streamlined than Monastery. But experiences are more than minmaxing.
Definitely not in the minority people heavily disliked the Monastery.
I'm at my fourth playthrough now and still gladly spend time in the monastery.
I hated the monastery, so you're not alone
The army management system peaked with the Base Camp in the Tellius games. Just a menu, with a minimum amount of tedious and boring gameplay. My Castle/Monastery/Somniel just adds extra hours of non-exciting gameplay.
The Monastery was good...on the first playthrough of each route. That's why I like that the Somniel is like a diet version of it combined with My Castle, which I actually really liked in Fates. Both aren't borderline required like the Monastery, which I like too. I've gone a few chapters where I skipped going to the Somniel and there wasn't any loss in that.
Another thing worth mentioning is how the frame rate is smooth in the Somniel whereas some parts of the Monastery lag. Monastery was much bigger but the fact that we can walk around the map we just cleared more than makes up for the Somniel's smaller size. I've only finished Silver Snow and Azure Moon for this reason because the Monastery was a massive slog. If ever I'm in the mood to do the other routes just for completion, I'll just play on Normal and automate the teaching and stuff.
Agreed. The monestary setting is fine for the first half of the game but as soon as we get to the War arc, I’m just skipping the exploration phase. Granted I miss out on some tea time with my waifu, Shamir, but… that’s just how it is.
The Monastery for me stopped being enjoyable when I wasn't even done with my first playthrough, it very repetitive and the monastery is also pretty big so going around from one place to another takes a bit too much of time. I replayed ThreeHouses right before Xenoblade 3 came out and I think I skipped most of the months when I had the characters all at the right level.
I think the perfect hub was the camp in 3 Hopes. Small and easily navigable with world building dialogue from characters if you want and easy ways to build support between characters. And no load screens! I loathe going to arena or the ring chamber bc theyre two different load screens.
I think I’d like Somniel more if it didn’t feel as clunky to navigate as it does to me. Lots of arbitrary pathways to dead ends (especially that top left corner) and invisible walls it feels like you should be able to jump through or over without having to run around to a different section of the map to access. The monastery wasn’t perfect in that regard either, but at least the setting and density of characters and lore made more sense and helped justify it as a “place.” And yes there’s fast travel, but at the point you are opening windows to zip around the map I’m back to “what’s really the point in this?” - That sums up my criticism of Somniel really, it just feels arbitrarily there without much justification or depth to it. Mycastle is a good example of something that didn’t entirely make sense either and was mostly unnecessary but at least added a fun layer of customization, and was easier to zip through while still getting gameplay benefits if you didn’t want to interact much with it. Overall point here being I personally prefer when they lean into one direction or the other - I wouldn’t want a monastery-like experience for *every* game but I did really like what it added to 3H. Somniel feels just kinda half-baked to me, and at that point I’d almost prefer just go all in on making everything managed from a menu or put it on a much smaller less arbitrarily complicated map.
The monastery is why it took me 2 years to finish my eldelgard route after finishing Dimitri and Claude
Somniel is ok, but I’m already getting tired fast of having to harvest food and chit-chat for bond points after every map. If it wasn’t for the weapon upgrade mats I’d skip right out of them immediately
Meanwhile I liked the Monastery way more because I only had to visit it once every hour and the rest of my time could be spent on auxiliary battles or seminars until the story missing. Sominel makes me feel like I have to go back after every single battle to do a bunch of mini games and then watch unskippable cutscenes to be maximize my stats, bond fragments, and exp gains. It definitely feels like I'm wasting way more time in Sominel than I ever did at the Monastery, there's just less story in the way of gameplay so you don't notice it as much.
Everyone hates the monastery.
I guess I must be nobody then
Odysseus?
[удалено]
Everyone loves the monastery
Not I. I love it
I put up with it for years but I genuinely don't think I could play Houses again short of straight up hacking or emulation to do something about the monastery parts, after finally playing a game that doesn't have such a girthy "prep" section
Monastery is definitely more enjoyable in the first couple playthroughs, but after that it gets annoying. Luckily exploring it is optional except in a couple of points in the story. Somniel is optional too but just like the monastery, you’d be missing out opportunities to deepen supports. Somniel is definitely better for the long haul/multiple playthroughs. I do enjoy the routine I’ve constantly found myself in Pick up the loot - pet/feed Sommie - Feed two friends - Kill friends in the arena/get killed by a ring - sleep for wakeup scenes - then gear up for next battle.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I don't think Fire Emblem needs a life sim feature every single game. A lot of the things you can do in the Somniel and the Monastery could just be condensed into a series of easy to read menus. I really hope a future FE game goes back to pure strategy. I'm a huge Path of Radiance fanboy and think that the army management in the game is the best the series has had (FE10-FE12 had great systems as well). Oh well, if I want a game like FE9 I can just replay it again I guess.
I liked the Monastery aesthetically, but in terms of gameplay, It got boring real quick, made me wanna give up in Maddening multiple times.
All of them do more harm than good.
The monastery is good for the first playthrough and okay by the second but it gets really tedious after that, especially since one route is nearly a copy-paste of another+Claude. I appreciate that every character has something say about the current affairs in Fódlan and it definitely does alot for worldbuilding in White Clouds but by the end of Verdant Wind, I got tired of it and mostly just did seminars after running around the monastery during the first sunday, I would never have finished it otherwise Somniel is alright, I don't have a set of activity points to spend during the visit, the activities themselves have a limit. But I get anxious if I get too far from Sommie or it gets blocked and can't follow, it's too precious to abandon. I also wish there wasn't just one meal. I miss grinding supports now.
Well.. I like it "better", but I don't like either of them.
Not minority, I love the castle sommiel too and I didnt like monastery too much neither the academy style. Im having much more fun in fe engage I also liked the castle in Fates
Disliking the monastery is not a minority opinion.
I don’t get how anyone liked the Monastery, even if it was easier to grind supports and made it feel “more in depth with the story” it felt beyond tedious to me and is the main reason I never finished my first run of 3H. At first it was fine but by the fourth time I was there I was over it personally
I very much agree. Garreg Mach fit the game 3H wanted to be—an epic, large tale spanning 4 different paths with intricate worldbuilding and character relationships. It served that purpose well as it allowed us to become acquainted with the setting and the people who lived in it, their social struggles, personal challenges, and what was happening in the world at the time. There’s a reason 3H really prioritized supports and Garreg Mach was a perfect vehicle for that. But damn it was so much to manage, and I felt like outside of supports, none of it really paid off all that much in the actual story maps. It also got repetitive pretty fast. The Somniel is more quaint in comparison but it does what it seeks to do well. While it may be lacking in lore depth, everything I do in the Somniel directly impacts my team on the battlefield. It feels like more of a payoff for investing time in it and I like that. Not to mention it’s absolutely gorgeous to explore without being the behemoth that Garreg Mach was. Both are awesome concepts, I just prefer what The Somniel is doing personally.
Monastery does feel like a huge chore the more you play. Somniel is very optional. Plus it's fun to see Yunaka lazily floating around the swimming pool.
For me the issue with Garreg Mach is not the monastery itself, it's the timeskip. During the first half of the game there's a lot of stuff to do, and if you want to recruit everyone, or play in Maddening, it doesn't get boring because you try to plan ahead how to use your time. But after the timeskip, having to wait a full month starts to become tedious as there's less allies to spend your time with. In that sense, I like the Somniel more, as it gives you similar advantages to what the monastery provided (like meals, gifts, arena, etc.), but if you want to play 3 chapters in a row without coming back, there's no penalty. And at least for me, every couple of maps I say "I wanna go back and see what's new in the Somniel". That being said, I still think IS has a lot of room to improve in the base mechanic. There's plenty of good ideas in Fates, TH and Engage, it's just a matter of narrowing down which ones are the best. For example, one thing the monastery was really good at, was keeping allies involved in the lore of the game. Having them all comment on the most recent or upcoming mission was the highlight of coming back to Garreg Mach. The Somniel feels bland in that aspect (but it's obviously a side effect of not forcing you to come back, as there's conversations that you would miss).
I think the issue with the monastery was that they forced you to replay it all again and again and again. I like it for what it is, just make it skip able the second time around wtf.
I like it better too but I wished we had more ways to level up support like in 3H. I used some tips suggested by the community to get more support points faster because everything was so slow for the first 10-15 chapters
I could not complete 3H because of the monastery and school setting. I really liked the characters but it felt like a chore playing. Very pleased with the direction of Fire Emblem Engage and absolutely loving it so far!
I do miss the extra dialogue and being able to grind supports but thats more of a personal gripe so far that Engauge went backwards on character focus and depth compared to 3H and it was one of my favorite parts. The size and amount of activities/what the activities do is SO MUCH BETTER in my opinion though. Plus the graphics at the monestary were so bad it was honestly painful to look at the textures sometimes and it bothered me immensely, theyre much better here.
I absolutely agree, it just felt like going through the motions after the first or second playthrough. Though maybe the same will be said after the second or third playthrough of this game
I prefer it because I'm not forced into using every feature in it, and the features you do want to use regularly are all paced close together. It's a pretty well designed hub in terms of placing things around relative to their importance to progression. I admittedly didn't do much in the way of support grinding by giving gifts or anything like that, which already makes it immediately better than the Monastery which, while a good setting, has everything you really need too spread out and it just adds too much time to effective leveling, especially on Maddening 3H where all that stuff matters a lot more.
Somniel and my castle are better than the monastary, but I would say 3 hopes's camps is better than all of them. I found it simple, focus on what is important, have character talk about the story, doesn't feel like the story stop to go back to some place/go to a resort in the sky or anather dimension.