Let's talk about old Playstation games, have you played any, and did you like them?

Skies of Arcadia has an interesting world to explore in the skies, you have an airship and fly around, discovering islands!

Suikoden IV, on the other hand, has a ship and you sail around on the sea. I haven't played it, so I'm not sure how much of an open-world it is, and how much is it gated by levels and story progression.

I mostly play linear games, does Beyond Good & Evil counts as open world/exploration? There was a lot to explore, and it had PS2 and GameCube versions.

Never even touched a PS2 in my life. not to mention a gamecube! those names are such relics

Yakuza 1 and 2 are my favourite PS2 games, they both have a compact world to explore, but filled with many activities and side quests.
GUN was also fun with a small open world, but it's more linear than Yakuza and much more linear than any GTA.

Only actual open world games I can think of is the GTA series and clones of that, driver, true crime stuff like that besides GTA. Yakuza is a linier open world. One of my favorite game series ever. Hope one day GOG will get them here.

It's sort of average otherwise, but loved the movement in Spider-Man 2. It's not particularly open besides side missions though, the main story is linear.

Do you mean PS1/2 exclusives?

There were a lot (compared to now), but most of them weren't really my thing... except for the horror games (Silent Hill/Resident Evil, ...) Open world and non-linear story are two different things. Open world means: no loading screens / no "level-like" environment design. There are often different gradations of open world, things like "invisible walls", ...

I really like Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song.

The world may be in separate pieces, but the game is non-linear, with most of it consisting of exploring the various towns, talking to people, and discovering some sidequests to do, then doing this. Also, events happen as time passes (which is defined by the number and difficulty of the battles you fight), which can result in quests opening and closing, as well as events such as cities being attacked. The game also has a very unconventional growth system, as well, where actions determine stat growth and occasionally, you'll glimmer a new ability when attacking (a light bulb appears over the character's head, and the character will immediately use a newly learned attack). One thing I find interesting is how this game straddles the line between JRPG and WRPG. (Worth noting that I enjoyed this game more than Dragon Quest 8.)

I could also mention Metal Saga (no relation to the SaGa series), which is basically a post-apocalyptic JRPG with the artificial barriers to exploration removed. The game is a bit rough around the edges, however, but you at least get to drive around in tanks and fight enemies while doing so.

Edit: Also, for the PlayStation 1:
* SaGa Frontier, for many of the playable characters, is open world from the start, though again the world is segmented into different regions. (One warning: Don't play Lute's quest first. It may be the most open of all of them, but that unfortunately means you can get trapped in the final dungeon before you're strong enough to beat the game (and before you understand the game's basic systems). I recommend Blue if you want an open-world experience that requires you to do things before the endgame.) (Also, Asellus is queer.)
* Final Fantasy 2 (from Final Fantasy Origins) is open world in the sense that you can go almost anywhere at the start, provided you are strong enough (and you won't be at the start). However, the game is still linear, in that there's usually only one dungeon to explore at any given point, and the world is rather empty. Also, the PSX version is unfortunately one of the worst versions of the game, as spells level up more slowly than in even the original Famicom version.
* Also, in Japan there's a PSX port of Wizardry 7, which would technically qualify here. Since it's only available in Japanese, you might prefer to play the English DOS version instead (which you can get in the extras of GOG's Wizardry 6+7 pack). (Wizardry 8 is also open world once you get past the start, but that game has no console port, so it technically doesn't qualify for purposes of this topic.)

Edit 2: Note that SaGa Frontier 2 is *not* open world; it is a good game, but it's very different from SaGa Frontier 1.

I bought a PS2 just for DQ8. I have a handful of others PS2 games but I don't remember which ones.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was the main game I played as a kid when I was in the exploration mood. I remember staying up into the wee hours of the night getting the whole sea chart filled out, eliminating enemy outposts, and collecting treasure. That was actually how I spent the vast majority of my time playing the game in the day, did not really focus too heavily on the main story.

Not really an open world game, but when I was a young'un I spent lots of time just running around Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction: Despite owning this game twice (both on Xbox and PS2) I mostly remember watching others play this game. I always thought it was cool and the level of exploration and destructibility in the environment for its day was quite considerable, but I personally did not play it a whole lot. (Same goes for GTA III and Vice City, except I only own those on Xbox)

Chibi Robo! allows open exploration in its world. Mind you, the world is merely the interior of a typical American house, but I rather enjoyed it. Its main claim to fame is that it is just kind of odd in a zany Japanese sort of way.

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: A pretty traditional Japanese action RPG in just about every way, but I have a brief anecdote. It's not terribly exciting, but one time a quest required me to find a spot in a place that was reportedly to the east of a particular town. So I exited town through the exit on the left side of the mini-map and wandered around for hours wondering "WHERE THE HELL IS IT?" until I finally realized that I went west instead of east.

Radiata Stories was a very enjoyable action RPG by the same devs as Star Ocean, but the hook was how you could recruit allies from the many dozens of NPC's who go about daily lives and jobs and whatnot in the game's world. For anime dub fans it also sports a pretty early lead performance by Bryce Papenbrook. I thought the battle mechanics were not as deep as Star Ocean, but that the game was much more enjoyable.

Edit: I did not see the "favourite" in the title at first. Until about the 75% or so mark I certainly would have had Till the End of Time on a favorite PS2 game list, but after DAT plot twist, I remove it with extreme prejudice.

PSO-Gamecube.
Best online/offline game ever; in my opinion. Still have it and play.
Cheaters ruined it, but man that game was something special.

edit: off topic; Witcher 3 and PSO best games of all time for me at least.

Skies of Arcadia was great on the Dreamcast! And I think had better soundtrack music than the Game Cube version (because the GD and no compression) ^_^
Same, PSO was great on the Dreamcast, but never saw the Game Cube version. Which version was better?

I've just found this! ^_^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmzKUIQ8rO4

Gamecube for me because controller was more comfortable and graphics were better. :)

Oh yeah I liked GTA San Andreas, it was from the PS2 days but I played it on Windows. As for Beyond GOod & Evil, I bought it on GOG but I prefer to emulate the Game Cube version so I have instasaves instead of checkpoints.

I really binged the legend of zelda games on the gamecube (even had the emulator disc for ocarina of time and majoras mask) and AnimalMother117 said, in Windwaker you could really explore different islands - sometimes you had to come back after you found a new item and so on.. great times

another game from that time period I really liked and has an open world feel to it is Tales of Symphonia, it's the only game from the Tales of Series that was released on the Gamecube and you get to explore different terrains and cities while following the story - you even switch to a different world after the first half of the game.. the story and the mechanic are "classic" jrpg stuff, but the combat in the Tales of Series is real time and each part of the seiies tries something new with the combat system

also I just remebered Metroid Prime was also on the gamecube, but I don't remember it as much as the others because I just loaned the disc from a friend and didn't spend as much time with it as with LoZ or ToS