Quote Originally Posted by RopeDrink View Post
Yes, the exploration, scope, and trash struggles have their charm and appeal, but those don't last long.
I think that is kind of missing the point of having exploration in the first place. I'm arguing for Immersion, for the fantasy of battling an actual place and against the artificiality, however practical, of just sprouting in front of a boss fight without any context on how we arrived there.

Where is the feeling of raiding a robot for his parts so I can make gear out of it? Hell, the Edenmorn stuff looks more like I'm raiding Gaia's wardrobe rather than whatever fever dream Eden is conjuring up. And I think like E10 has an actual location in the overworld or at least the story, but where does E9 takes place? Or E11? Eulmore certainly doesn't seem to be that large, and did we teleported there from the Empty?

It seems like a sense of location doesn't matter anymore. At least in Alexander I still had the feeling I was inside of the robot during the whole thing except maybe the final boss where things got funky. And then Omega started just conjuring whatever the hell would seem apropriate to his challenges and it all went to hell. Nowadays Trials are more of a location than Normal Raids, Titania has the castle, Innocence has the top of Mt.Gulg, Emerald has Castrum Marinum, Ruby got us back into the Ghymlit Dark...

I want to Raid PLACES again, not abstract constructs of a machine's algorythm or platforms of my imagination. Hell, I was already sad when Shinryu didn't take place on that Ala Mhigan garden where we meet Zenos, we just got some arbitrary platforms. And yes, I WOULD like to explore these actual solid places and kill my way through, thank you very much.