Spirit of Adventure (DOS)
I took my first step out into the wilderness, but the encounters are MUCH more difficult, even around the town. After just three battles my whole party was dangerously low on HP and several members were poisoned, so I headed back to town for healing. I was able to earn enough gold, however, to equip everyone with the best weapons and armor available at that point in the game, so I should now hopefully stand more of a chance in the wilderness.
The wilderness map is pretty interesting. It's just a single screen showing a map, with your party represented as a crosshair. No locations (other than the starting town) are shown on the map, until you discover them by walking into them. It reminds of Fallout in a way. I found one tiny village, finished a small quest there, but then got wiped out by a very tough random encounter. My next goal, then, is to run in there, complete the quest, then run right out!
Lords of Xulima (PC)
Just some light exploring and combat. The game has really opened up quite a bit, as defeating the first Prince clears all the fixed encounters with difficult soldiers posted around the map.
If there's one thing that's really annoying about this game, it's how infrequent random encounters are. I know that sounds crazy, but let me explain. In LoX, certain areas have random encounters in addition to the fixed encounters visible on the map. However, you can eliminate the random encounters in any given area simply by winning enough of them; doing so also gives you an additional EXP bonus. If you want to clear those encounters, it means LOTS of running back and forth waiting for encounters to pop (this of course also uses up your food). The game should have had a skill you can use to immediately start a random battle, imo.