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[Shades]

but a lot of folks view RPG Maker games with disdain sometimes, even when something really good is made with it!

This is mostly because we've yet to come across something good made with it but I'll give it a go, maybe it'll be the first one.

[Keiseth]

Enjoying Yume Nikki means having a love of excellent atmosphere, and gameplay that takes back seat to it. I find it to be more of an interactive hallucinogen, to be honest. Bad Trip In a Box, if you will.

[Virtz]

There's the Uncharted Waters and Uncharted Waters 2 games (also consider the SNES versions, for the different art style), which have somewhat of a focus on exploration (besides the storyline of the character you choose). I recall one of the selectable characters in UW2 even being a cartographer and you earning money for reporting discoveries.

[chaoticag]

Knytt and Knytt stories fall into this. I haven't finished knytt yet, but you can count the enemies in that game on two hands. Not sure about knytt stories though, not that I heard anything bad about it, but I haven't played it yet.

[Servu]

Try Spelunky (if you don't mind bad graphics and ridiculous difficulty) It's a free side-scrolling platformer thing. Something between La Mulana ond Nethack.

[Pnx]

This is mostly because we've yet to come across something good made with it ...

Try playing "The Way", it's mostly stock graphics and sounds, but it's got a awesome storyling that will make you eat those words.
http://www.crestfallen.us/download.html

EDIT the way isn't really an exploration game, but there are tons of hidden secrets and plot dividers.

[Tilla]

http://jayisgames.com/cgdc6/?gameID=9 I just played this through and it's rather short but good - love the graphical style

[Gabeux]

Yeah, just played that small worlds too..

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And what the hell was the dev thinking when he made that ending?

[Sean Mirrsen]

If you want a different sense of "exploration", you might look at "Vangers: One for the road", a game by K-D Labs (makers of Perimeter, among other things). It's got the weirdest world you've ever seen in any game. It took me several hours to realize the little crawling things I was squashing on the ground were currency. There is money crawling around on the ground. That game's insane, and the visual design doesn't help.
You can read about it here, if you want. As for finding it...  it's pretty old, and initially russian, so you'll hardly find it in stores.

[Koja]

jayisgames just had their Casual Game Design Competition...

The theme was "Exploration".

[Chutney]

Try Spelunky (if you don't mind bad graphics and ridiculous difficulty) It's a free side-scrolling platformer thing. Something between La Mulana ond Nethack.

bad graphics? The graphics are superb, my good sir. Everything looks good together, and everything properly represents what it means to. I don't know how you could say it has bad graphics!

PS: Cave Story is an exploration game but story kind of takes precedence over that. Pixels earlier game, ikachan, is more exploration heavy (in fact, it barely tells you where you're supposed to go, so you have to explore to get there! And not in a bad "this game has no direction!" way, but in a "wow i'm exploring!" kinda way) but it's pretty short. Still a great game though.