I would advise doing a lot of the side quests. I missed a lot and want to go back to see if I can do some of them.

Side quests are fine-ish (better than FFXVI's) but Chadley's Wild Ride can be a bit too much sometimes, especially when he decides to chime in.

I turned off the minimap/compass completely, i have never done this before in a open world game, but the exploration just feels more satisfying like this.

Storyline is fine but my gof that ubisoft style open world is getting soooo boring..

Its that the world itself look great but iam already burned out on all these rince and repeat stuff/towers.

It is basically Ubisoft lite FF game. I don't mind it because I do like the ubisoft games but when I started playing I kind of laughed at how ubisoft gets criticized for this while FF is like GOTY contender.

I do enjoy that it has more of a purpose though which is key to having so much exploring. In AC games it doesn't matter because they aren't hard. This game is at least tough enough to warrant the extra work. I can imagine hard will really make it worth it as well. It was the same in Elden Ring as well. Very Ubisoft but with the added benefit that doing the extra stuff was worth it cause the items were very useful in beating the game (most of them anyways).

Anything from Zelda to CDPR games has at least some of these elements. The problem isn't the system, it's the games themselves. Ubisoft games have been garbage or mid at best for over a decade with rare exceptions.

I wont speak for anyone else but for me it's always been "Is this worth doing?". I don't want to do all this side stuff unless I get a great storyworld building or I get items that will help me beat the game and the game's difficulty sort of requires you to do it unless you just want a really hard time later on.

For instance AC origins (maybe odyssey?) had a large quest involving you hunting down all these cult guys around the world. I did it because it really added to the story and was great world building. Most of the other stuff in AC games though is boring and really adds nothing to the game.

Fortunately, I just happened to have a lot of time off work this last week and the next few weeks so I have plenty of time to delve into it. As of now I have reached Cosmo Canyon which I believe is probably two thirds of the story. I've skipped almost every addtional thing so far, but I think the way they've recreated FF7 is astounding.

There is no doubt this is a 10/10 in terms of quality and content, but I must say I enjoyed the pacing and the balance of Remake more than this one.

Why? A lot of the side stuff you do is not just random shit. They have a purpose. You get tons of bios about the origins of the land and and the cities. 

I agree with this, i do try to do everything in every region but i stopped halfway with junon because is got bored, but DAMN the story part in junon was great and DAMN i hated the first part on that ship.