Adding New Skills for all Classes.

[Zantetsuken]

To be fair, every FF game was extremely linear - extremely until 1 major plot point in the game then every FF game gave you the ability to "explore" in order to get optional bosses or items (like ultimate weapons), FFX+ just made it that much more obvious. For example you could never tackle a FF storyline from any other direction other than the one set forth - To get to the northern crater in VII you needed to go a very set path, then a bunch of stuff happened, then it opens then you go straight to sephy boy or tie up loose ends that happened during your linear path.

FF1 had some solid exploration in it... I remember reaching the NE point on the southern contenent and finding an area where Trolls and Gigas spawned long before you should be able to fight them.

FF3, FF4, FF5 and FF6 all had good exploration, even in the early game.

Same with FF9 -- that area above the ladder Gizamaluke's Grotto stands out

and.. Bravely Default also has an open-ish world as well (though not an official FF title)

I think the best of the single player games was FF12.. lots of places to go in that game, once you got outside of Rabanastre

Of course, no FF game even comes close to the non-linear exploration that exists in FF11.




Also, note that FF7, FF8, FF10, and FF13 were all done by the roughly the same SE development team -- you can see how each of their games became successively more and more linear, all culminating in the thinly-disguised corridor-runner that FF13 was.