Darashiva on 01 May 2018
More than just the size of the game's map, what matters to me is whether there is enough meaningful things to do or not. No matter how well designed the game's world is, if there's not enough fun content to fill that area then it's all pointless. That's why No Man's Sky was such a failure at launch and why Sea of Thieves got so many poor reviews recently.
I don't think either option is inherently better or worse than the other. It's simply a matter of what the developer has filled the world they have created with. Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild are great examples of large worlds with a lot of interesting things to do, while a lot of Ubisoft open worlds a few years back were the complete opposite.
