World Beat

by Andrew Gonzalez 

We'll start with FF9. It's my favorite of these four games (though not by much), and the map is a big reason. Even on the Mist Continent alone, there are lots of places to visit. The Outer and Lost Continents also have many locales; Square did a smart thing by not skimping on the outer parts of the world. There are also several places to go away from the main part of the world, such as Daguerreo, Qu's Marshes, the Chocobo Lagoon, Mognet Central, Chocobo's Paradise, etc. Many of these other places must be found on your own, and that extra element of discovery adds much more enjoyment to the game. Of course, when you talk about FF9 and discovery, you can't forget Chocographs. This aspect of the game maximizes the breadth and depth of the world map by allowing you to hunt for treasures on it, even across mountains or in the ocean in the middle of nowhere. Because the world map gives you so much to do, the world seems bigger and the game much more fun.

Next, we move to FF8 and Xenogears. These games have large worlds as well, but lose points for the stark emptiness of most of the worlds. In FF8, the entire Southern continent is empty except for a Chocobo Forest, Edea's house, and the Centra Ruins. The same goes for the Esthar continent as well. In the Northern Continent, once you visit Shumi Village and Trabia Garden, you've got bupkis. About the only thing to do in most of the places is find enemies to get items and draw spells from. Xenogears is mostly similar, minus the item and spell aspect of FF8. Ignas has lots of stuff to do, but not much can be said for the rest of the world. Most of the patches of land you see on the world map have absolutely no meaning to them, which really detracted from the game for me. Also, in both of these games, some cataclysmic event occurs that seals most of the map off. In FF8, Time Compression prevents you from entering towns and other places; in Xenogears, once most of the world's population is turned into Reapers, you can't enter towns. (To be fair, this happens in FF9 as well when the world becomes covered with Mist again at the end of disc 3, but only to a few places. Most of the world is still explorable.) Having most of the world map unavailable makes the game seem much smaller and boring, and I came away feeling gypped by otherwise great games.

Lastly, we come to Chrono Cross. The world map is almost non existent here. Despite the existence of Another World, the map is very, very small, which makes the game feel too compact. There's the main continent, then the dragons' isles, the Isle of the Damned, the Invincible/Zelbess, Marbule, the Dead Sea, Hermit's Hideaway, Guldove, and the El Nido Triangle. Woo friggin' hoo. I liked this game as well, but the tiny map really bothered me all throughout the game.

I love all four of these games, but the way in which the map is set up affects that enjoyment in varying degrees. I've talked your ear off enough already; if you want to talk mine off, drop me a line at TenchiAG@yahoo.com.