I've moved on from Dragon Quest 11, and am ten hours into Tales of Vesperia now. I played it originally on the Xbox 360, but never finished it. When it came out for Switch, I bought a hard copy of it, but I only dabbled in it until now. It's really a great game, and I forgot how enchanting the stories and characters can be in Tales games. The combat is a little dated now, but I have no complaints with it. The banter between the characters however, is timeless.
And the game looks great! Cel-shaded games always age best. There is so much detail to the graphics and the characters and locations. It's a feast for the eyes, really.
I've noticed as I go through the game, I sometimes get lost on the world map, and wander around fighting monsters (they appear on the map rather than as random attacks), while I look for whatever I'm looking for. And I said to myself last night, as I was doing this: "This is really fun!"
Recent Tales games (that I've played), have gotten rid of the world map mechanic, as have a lot of other modern JRPGs. But I've always been a fan. Even with the sometimes ridiculous scale of worldmaps, I always feel the largeness of the world more. I don't know why - I just do.
I really enjoyed DQ11, and lord knows it's a large world with a lot of nooks and crannies with a lot of things to discover. But sometimes... I just want a world map to journey upon.
Cel-shading definitely became one of my favorite art styles back in the GameCube days.
Yeah, I really prefer it to realistic graphics most of the time.
Always liked world maps, or "overworlds" as we also called them. More efficient travel without needing fast-travel. Developer doesn't have to worry about filling every square foot of map with content, art assets, etc. Although I'd take a best of both world approach with an overworld and a full scale world that you can switch between.
Ah, yeah, overworld. Forgot about that. 
I used to play anything that had cell-shaded graphics. There's this racing game Auto Modelista and I just saw a remastered version of XIII today.
I remember that game. But I never played it. What system was that for?
Both were on Xbox/PS2/Gamecube. The XIII remaster is on all current systems.
I have to get back to Vesperia on game pass eventually. I was playing Rayman Legends recently, and it's so good.
Vesperia is really great.
Tales of Vesperia was probably the only Xbox 360 game I cared to revisit, I was glad to see it get a Switch release. It is a beautiful game, and it has one of the best casts of playable characters with great voices to boot.
I, too, miss world maps sometimes. Tales of Hearts, which came immediately after Vesperia, was the last Tales with a world map. A lot of games not only don't have a world map, but travel is accomplished just by selecting an icon to a number of disconnected areas. However, Dragon Quest VIII and DQXI did drawn-to-scale game worlds just right.
I forgot how good it is. Tales games can be so great.
I like world maps, too. I also liked it when games came with instruction booklets and printed paper maps. That was really helpful.
Yeah, game booklets and maps are definitely a lost art.
