Quote Originally Posted by Mirage View Post
I like lots of world maps. However, it's not really the several world maps that is important, it is how you constantly are shown things that you have no idea how to get to, and when you get to them, you suddenly realize that the entire world you thought you knew was just one small part of a much larger thing, and then you're shown even more places you have no idea how to get to there, etc.

It really gives me a desire to explore and go on a real adventure, and it is something I really miss in the later games. Take FF13 for example: for 95% of the game, if you can see something, it is either your next destination or just stupid background graphics that you can never ever actually travel to. There is no excitement, no wonder, no build-up. It just feels like a big ball of meh.

I want the game to tease me with exciting looking places that I can't get to until way later. It feels so rewarding when you can finally get there and the game just showers you with awesome stuff and the long wait just feels like it was so absolutely totally worth it.

Take FF7 as an example. At first, you have a huge city which feels really big and cool. Then you get out of it and you notice that it is just one small place in a huge world. As you travel to Junon, you see distant continents and islands as you travel the shorelines, and places on the other side of the mountain and all you think is "man i wonder what's up there, I can't wait to get there and find out". As you get to the other side of the ocean and get the buggy and drive to cosmo canyon, you see the ancient forest and have no way of getting there and really wonder what's up with that thing. You also notice a seemingly isolated waterfall with something that looks like a dock. What could that possibly mean? Could there be something up there? How the heck do I even get there? This is so exciting!

Most Final Fantasy games do this, until we ran into the PS2 ones. There's not a whole lot of this sort of excitement in FFX. There is some in FFXI and XII though, but not as much as on PS1 and earlier. In FF13, it's almost entirely gone again, and there's not a whole lot of it in 13-2 either. It's a shame, really.
Yes. This is what the world map's all about. The only thing I have to add is that I like being able to gauge my progress based on how much of the map I've been to. I always like knowing I'm making progress towards something, rather than just following a story. It's why Zelda games are so fun, because you know how many stones you need to find and each new one becomes a step to the ultimate goal of the game.

X didn't really have a world map, but I did like the actual map the game gave you to look at. Since the main objective in the game is to get to Zanarkand, I like the way you could look at your map and know how much closer you're getting to your goal. The only thing X didn't have map-wise was the feeling of awe and curiosity seeing places you can't reach yet but eventually might.

I thought XII did the 'world map' thing neat, too. You have a region map so you know where you are in relation to other locations, but the actual zones you cross through are areas themselves rather than just in-between areas. The big desert felt like a big desert, the coast felt like a coast, etc.

XIII just sucked, period. Even the menu map rotated North so I ended up getting lost so much on Pulse. How do you screw up a smurfing map? That's how.