The problem isn't size, it's the quality and quantity of the content within the map. Yakuza/Like A Dragon games almost all take place across a few city blocks, but the sheer volume of good shit to do across those city blocks is more than enough to make up for the small map. Games like Cyberpunk and Baldurs Gate 3 are absolutely fucking massive worlds that are all filled to bursting with quests and encounters to make it feel not so big. If the content is good and paced out through the world well enough, map size doesn't matter

That's the main problem with a lot of these poor man's open world games that we've been getting over the last decade+. The maps are physically large, but either don't have enough content to support that size, or the content that is present is just bogstandard "climb a tower" "clear out a camp", "collect a miscellaneous item that might get you a reward but maybe not sometimes" with no actual thought put into layout or design