The main issue I have with hub areas is that both the monastery and the somminel are just a drag to do everything you want to do. My castle was better simply because everything was right next to each other and easily accessible additionally in my castle quite a few of the building you can completely ignore and it won't make the game much harder I will say that the somminel was an improvement over the monastery because many actives were not as important but there was still quite a few things that felt necessary like dragging yourself down to the grotto to get bond fragments felt so helpful and yet so painful. In the future I hope that we can at least zoom out and have all the activities be really close to each other or even just have the option to make it a menu instead of exploring and I really don't ever want items to pick up off the ground.