I did my jury duty and wasn't selected for a trial, so it was just the one day, and since my name was called early, I didn't have to wait around long and thus didn't get to play much. I got in like 30-45 minutes of time with Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack on my Vita while I was there. But I played more last night too, so now I'm in the fourth area, the Badlands, on, I think, the final stage of the area. And as far as I can tell, there are only two more areas after that.
In Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4, I went back to Sthal, did what I needed to do there, and now I gotta go back to Central Resulia, haha. So I'm definitely understanding why people complain about backtracking. And I've yet to explore anything that I would consider a legitimate dungeon. Anyway, I decided to take the long way back, since there's new stuff I can do along the way. I did my first run through the optional Cathedral of Oblivion, which is kind of like an arena. It appears to be a reference to the Cave of Oblivion from Valkyrie Profile, which also had a degree of randomness to it. I had to do three battles before I could leave. The second was a bit challenging, and the third definitely was. I blew through most of my healing items on that one. Next I'm gonna restock in Myiddok (some of these town names are really over-the-top) and see what new stuff is available there. There should be another portal to the Cathedral of Oblivion on the plains too. (I know because I just recently bought the Prima strategy guide for the game, which I'm referencing to see what I may be missing.)