Cities and Scale in Final Fantasy

[ShinGundam]

Lindblum and even Alexandria both felt huge to me! Trust me, I know when something feels huge! I still get lost in Esthar.

Esthar is a good example of how not to make a city. Sure, it was huge, but it was also horribly designed, and relatively empty. The massive walkways make no sense, because there are no exits, except at the, what, five buildings that you can visit in the city? You get this view of a big, futuristic city, but it's all in the background. There's no way to access any of it. Who would build a main street that bypasses 98% of the buildings in a city?

But Esthar had good shops, flying cars and airport? :>
Honestly, I don't remember any explorable futuristic cities in general.

[VeloZer0]

I think one of the big things that made Midgar feel like a city is the fact that you never actually got free reign of it. The fact is that 99% of a city is useless to anyone living in it, and just makes going from place to place take longer. This is wisely excluded from most game design, however it also makes them feel much less life like. We never got to see the full Midgar, so we don't ever get to see its limitations. Being able to do a full lap around a city in a couple minutes will always make it feel small, but if you play with camera angles, screen transitions and no map you can make things feel a whole lot bigger.

I feel Junon also did a good job of this.

[Formalhaut]

The only one worse than Esthar that I can remember is Academia. No one would ever, ever live in a city like that. The streets, in addition to being incredibly unsafe, are simply horribly put together. You couldn't even go to the store for milk without taking twenty seven turns and probably getting lost.

Not to mention Academia is incredibly unsafe. Seriously, unshielded walkways? You'd be falling the full 500 floors of the city.
But I didn't care about any of that, because the music in Academia 4XX was lovely and the place just had a lovely, upbeat atmosphere.

[Slothy]

Yeah Lindblum had a gigantic vibe. Rabanastre was also like that too.

Yeah, FFXII wasn't exactly lacking in a sense of scale.

I actually think just about every major city and location in FFIX felt absolutely huge. Even places with fewer actual people like Burmecia were quite large as far as RPG areas go.

[Dr. rydrum2112]

Midgar was the original CITY in an RPG. I remember feeling that way too. Although it was silly because even at the time, I knew there was more game after the city because there were more discs, and the booklet had all these other characters, discussed the PHS system, and might have even mentioned the world map BUT it did really feel like it was a conclusion to a full game.

I can't really think of another one in the FFs to rival it.

in non-FF's:
Radiata in Radiata stories probably rivals Midgar.
Balandor in WKC is pretty good but not quite there.