Anime Ys series

[Tse Tse Fly]

When you get the ship in this do you have a bunch of options right away, or do they just unlock one location at a time as you finish the previous one?

Progression through game world areas is tied to main story. You can't go to a new area freely, first you must complete current area's part of main story. When you enter a new area, most of the content is locked until you complete some part of the main story related to this area, after that optional quests and other activities become available. To unlock other content you may need to recapture islands seized by the enemy (this is similar to "Ubisoft towers" that everyone seems to hate). Sometimes new content becomes available in areas you already visited. So it's more like Ys 8-9, which create an illusion of open-world, but aren't truly open-world.

By the way, were older Ys games actually open-world/non-linear? They had much less handholding (no quest markers etc), that's true, and some levels were more labyrinth-like, but order in which you must complete them was fixed iirc.

 

[Damned Registrations]

They weren't really non linear, but they had elements of that. It was more that they didn't artificially block you off from areas. When you fire up Ys1, you can fuck off all around the map right away. You still need to do the first dungeon before you can get the key to get the fruit to get the sword at the roda tree... but you can go straight to that tree if you want to explore around. And it wasn't a waste to explore around like that, because you could find permanent stat boosting herbs in areas you weren't meant to visit yet and stuff like that.

When I start up a game and can't leave town because 'there's monsters on the road' it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth. No shit there's monsters on the road, why the fuck do you think I want to leave the town? So many modern games make me feel like I'm on some guided tour.