Linear game

When you get the airship your only options are to revisit old areas (which have nothing new) or go where the plot tells you to.

The space whale is this even more so. There's absolutely nothing to do on the moon but go to the few remaining dungeons in order.

I think Final Fantasy 3 for the nes is highly underrated.

the town of Mist has the dancing dagger and golden tiara as well and there's the Eblan Castle which you never actually have to visit even when the game tells you about it.

There's Bahamut and the Namingway village.

An optional dungeons and an optional shop at each point is hardly the world opening up. Plus revisiting Mist can actually be done a bit before the airship.

Wew.

Skies of Arcadia had the ship from the get go? I can't remember shit about that game, there is a port on PC, right? I should play it again.

FF13 was the absolute worst for this. The fucking pacing was terrible. I had it on the 360 and the game was broken into 3 disks. I wasn't really worried about that considering how much I liked FF8 which had 8 disks but holy SHIT they didn't even give you the ability to use anything other than attack and item until THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND DISK. Two fucking entire maps and a massive end of disk boss fight for combat to become more than one fucking option. Then you get to the third disk and the map opens up into a central hub with tracks going off it and MMO style hunt quests that go down one of the tracks. Basically fucking pointless because lel FUCK YOU every quest is just kill this monster. Not even a fucking tiny bit of story. They're not even quests, they're just chores you can do for some xp and coins AND NOT A SINGLE BIT OF FUCKING STORY WITHIN ANY OF THEM. Skipping all of the hunts loses you nothing bar a tiny bit of grinding.

FF8 had it right. As you traveled you could go to different parts of the world and other parts were locked off because of your mode of transport. As you progressed you went from walking/trains to flying the garden to flying the ragnarok to getting a chocobo that could go over any terrain if you were autistic enough to get it and finally on the last disk you got a few windows you could go through from ultimecia's castle entrance in case you missed any of the optional things like odin's castle ruins. Though there were side quests around that were completely optional that had story to them and the ability to leave an area and just go for a walk on the world map was always there. You could even leave the town in the SeeD final exam mission.

Fuck linear games and corridor simulators.

Nobody's mentioned pic related yet?
Really?
The OP perfectly describes this.

We're talking about RPGs

breath of fire 2 actually does it twice.

Plz me point me to part of the OP that says he's looking for an RPG.

Almost all Zelda games are open to explore from the start and the ones that are more linear stay that way throughout. I wouldn't say Wind Waker is a good example of what OP is talking about.

Have you played it?
It does exactly what the OP asks for. It starts out linear. You literally only have one path to take for about the first hour of the game. Then you get a boat and about an hour or so later the world becomes totally free to explore.
You can find triforce shards or master sword powerups or you can just explore the land looking for more generic, optional upgrades.

2's based on a single quest, but the world is open as soon as you get the boat, oppressively so as it's hard as fuck to get directions outside of "go west"

3's IS linear, as is 4 and 5 6 does NOT count, though.

What makes 6 special is that the ENTIRE WORLD becomes a sidequest and you can raid the final dungeon at any time with as many or as few party members you picked up once you hit Ruin. In fact you don't even have to pick Terra up at all, or ANY of the other characters, but it makes the final dungeon hard as balls since the game expects you to at least pick up some of them.

How about games like Suikoden? 108 recruitable party members in each, and you basically only get like 30 as part of the main quest. Aside from 5, which had tons of fucking missables, the games generally are linear, but they have a ton of sidequests centering around the recruitable characters, which generally pop up as you secure that town's support that you've been sent to. The game's linear, but every section aside from the introduction in each game is packed with little packets of sidequests that count towards the true ending. And generally you're landlocked aside from the occasional boat and there has never been an airship due to the game being about wars in individual countries instead of a whole world. As a result you get fast travel transport about a 1/4 into the game once the world starts getting big.

I think Suikoden IV fits the bill for what you're describing. Ship pretty much from the get-go, some islands to explore most of them bare tho however the game does have some neat stuff. Sailing is dope, the game is short enough so the lack of islands doesn't feel too bad, ship battles are nice tho sparse and the economy system to jew your way to the best equipment was a nice touch. Too bad the encounter rate was absolutely horrible

Literally all of them with an overworld you dumb nigger. It would be easier to list all the games that don't.

DQIII did it back in the fucking 80's and since the japanese have a boner for dragon quest harder than a katana folded 1000 times they fucking shove the concept into everything they can.

Cross and Trigger both do this.

Final Fantasy 12 definitely does this, mostly in the form of playing Monster Hunter. There are several optional dungeons and paths to explore though.

how bout you play some and get back to us

To be fair Grandia doesn't do this, it's a linear game from start to finish, with two or three optional dungeons.