Eh, I'm okay with no maps, but a lack of a journal has always bothered me. I played this space-saga game on DS called Infinite Space. Got about halfway through it and then had to do some real life shit. Came back a few months later and had no idea what the hell was supposed to be doing. The game is huge, too, with tons of star systems and planets to visit. I spent hours just trying to pick up where I left, going from planet to planet talking to people, just hoping that at some point one of them would be on my 'quest.' You know, just hero things. I don't think it's that ridiculous for a hero to write down his life goals into a journal.
No gamey maps is fine, though. Glorified minimaps and UI that dot the screen with shit always take me out of the experience. When I played Skyrim for fifteen hours or whatever, I always tried very hard to not look at the map. In that game they made this very bizarre choice: the entire map is shown to you right off the bat, but the 'locations' aren't. So... I can see the land from the get-go, but not what's in it. That's some kind of dumb middleground. They should have fogged that sucker up. Skyrim did have a paper-map/treasure hunt, IIRC, though, that was fun. Alright I'm getting off topic, but yeah I dig the idea of paper maps.