A world map would be completely fine with me. It gets pretty irritating to have to go through all sorts of places to get to one spot, if you know what I mean.
Welp, I can't decide on a final design for the chapter 2 boss (and a lot of it will be fully 3D, so there won't be a lot of stuff to post here from it anyway), so here's an unfinished mini bob-omb:
Not sure if I'll make it a direct reference to the similar enemy from Super Mario RPG (Microbomb) or if I'll give it a unique name.