Ok si your argument is : when houses are bad then it’s useless.
Who said that houses had to be bad exactly ?
At this point why does this game has a combat system ? It’s mid at best so why bother ?
With this kind of mindset everything you can add to a game is useless.
I never said about houses being bad, I said about empty, non-interactive spaces being a waste of time. This is what I meant with my example of SO6; why even bother going into the houses when there are absolutely nothing in there, no NPC's with dialogue lines or anything else worth of visiting it? Maybe 1 treasure chest that gives you the basic health potion in one of 10 houses. Rather use the money what went into creating the assets to something else.
If you design a space for the player to visit, have meaning to it. This is a big problem with games these days, waste time.
What an odd comment about a battle system in an action RPG? Please elaborate this more. Of course the battle system is needed and using SO6 as an example, the game's absolutely pride and joy WAS the battle system. Seiken 3 had a battle system from 1995 on a Super Famicom, it was back in it's time way enough to carry the game onwards. ToM added some stuff on it, but it was perfect enough for us who already finished the original multiple times and understood what we're getting into. I haven't played the demo of VoM, so I cannot say what it's system is - this is an open field as it's a new game. Seiken series never had a deep battle system akin to Star Ocean games and was never needed. But that's my opinion.
Maybe I should've been more precise with the point this being a new game from scratch for the teams; the Seiken teams have NEVER gotten AAA level of funding for their projects. These are done with B-level estimates and with the money they have, they shouldn't put it into useless empty world. It's a wonder we got this game in the first place, so the budget being small definitely shows cuts here and there.