By taking away the world map you are effectively 'shrinking' the world by a great deal. I suppose this doesn't conflict with the philosophy of not even having a story worthy of traveling the world for, but the world seems far, far more limiting.

I wouldn't say this doesn't feel like a FF, I wouldn’t just say it certainly doesn't feel like one of the better ones. I don't know how you can justify having the game play itself as being fun. The fact that 60% of the game (70% of all statistics are made up by the way ) can be played by having one finger on the analog stick the entire time and eyes checking back to the TV every 4 sec, well....