Current Events > What's your favourite RPG world setup?

(+) Yeah! (+)

World Map: point-and-click map or locations list

Game Board: locations on a map linked by linear or branching paths (Super Mario Bros. 3-style)

Routes: the party travel along explorable, branching paths (Pokemon/Final Fantasy X style)

Overworld: the party travels freely around a scaled-down world map, with enterable locations (Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy I-IX)

Open World: fully to-scale world. Locations may be seamless with the world (BotW) or enterable (Skyrim)

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Probably between routes and overworld. I wanna say the former often leads to a tighter gameplay/story experience.

On the other hand, with overworlds, you can sometimes attempt to sequence break, which is fun. I think Dragon Quest 4 in particular, which opens up an immense amount once you get the ship.

I feel like Open World can sometimes prevent you from Sequence Breaking due to the nature of the game taking that into account. Though this doesnt always hold true.

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Best: Open World, Overworld

Good: Routes

OK: Boards

Bad: World Map

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I really like the Overworld setup, but I think that's just because it features in almost all of my favourite RPGs.

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Large connecting zones like in FF12

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Overworlds need to make a comeback in a major way. Open worlds are beyond great, but they give a good approximation of a small country at most.

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FF_Redux posted...

Large connecting zones like in FF12

This for sure

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I like the way Summoner 1 did things. It had your traditional overworld, but towns and dungeons were massive in scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fORepkP4xOM&ab_channel=TheJS

Mind you, the load times in the original game were awful, I mean really really bad. But they would only use a load screen if you were transitioning from 1 important area to another, or if you were on the world map transitioning into a battle which was essentially an open field.

That or Star Ocean 3.

FF_Redux posted...

Large connecting zones like in FF12

I'd put FF12 under the "Routes" option. Probably my favourite example alongside Xenoblade

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Zones, like EverQuest and Atelier Firis
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