If the game does have open/seamless areas for battles, the screens give me the impression that they're making noticeable sacrifices to environment detail to do it, as every area showing combat looks uglier/more bland than Xillia at worst, or at the same level at best. Performance and enemy count in that case will be interesting to see. If it's still loading a separate battlefield... I hope they have something more flattering to show soon lol.
Mainly I miss having a decent collection of moderately-detailed, diverse, and clean-looking dungeons to explore, which has been kinda scarce in Tales lately. The ruins are ok but I hope the mountain isn't a sign of what most dungeons/"dangerous areas" in the game will look like.