Environments you can't interact with. There's shit lying around and I'm rolling my way through here. I would really like there to be physics so that the world around me is affected by what I'm doing.
Too many invisible walls. Is it really necessary to stop me from jumping around the courtyard gardens (ff16)? Let me get all up close and personal with the environment. Let me yeet myself off a random cliff.
Related: buildings that you can't go into. Yes the outside world might be cool and interesting but it's so much more immersive and realistic if buildings have interiors that you can go into. Half the fun I have in the older Pokémon games is exploring and just checking out the unique towns, listening to the town music etc, but the newest Pokémon games... If it's a building you can interact with at all, it's just a menu screen?? No visiting random apartment blocks and department stores?
And then lastly, have few to no NPCs, and if the ones that are there just stand still and don't do anything. It really annoyed me about so many of the kingdom hearts games, that you have these cool worlds that you've seen in movies and are explorable, but in all the spin off titles, there isn't a single NPC to be found in any of the worlds. It's so big and empty and boring. Let me allow myself to believe we're visiting these video game worlds and viewing a snapshot of what fantasy life is like in this video game.