I think this game is incredibly fun, the combat is engaging, the characters are top tier and overall the story flows really well.

However, even with the quality of life changes that were added in this remake, the one thing that still plagues this game is its awful back tracking.

Yes they do have the fast travel room that allows you too go from world to world in a breeze. However, that only solves part of the issues at hand. For one if you have to deviate from the fast travel pipe, you have to then trudge alll the way back to the pipe once your done with what you are meant to do. Major examples are chapters 5 and 1.
In chapter 1, 50% of the reason you will return to it will be for petalburg, which the pipe is in, and the other half are going to Hooktail's castle. If you go to hooktails castle, you are basically left with a dilemma of either going back to petalburg to use the pipe or to simply use the pipe to the left of you too return to rougeport underground. This dilemma is annoying as its fully based on the fact that you need to know what your doing next. As most of the time its just faster to go into the rougeport underground and walk throught the few rooms to get to rougeport. However, if you're going to say chapter 3 next. You're better off going back to petalburg to use the pipe. Its a small dillemma that is just annoying.

However chapter 5 is just the worst, the pipe for the most part doesn't help you in 90% of scenarios, as most of the time, the town is not where you need to go. Most of the time you are needing to go to the grotto. The issue is that you can't go through the back of it. As there is no way to get out of boat form. Your basically stuck if you go out the back, so your forced to go in the front of it, and omfg it is so fucking annoying. The layout of the grotto is convulented with annoying jumps, long coradors with either spikes or annoying enemies and its basically a nightmare to go in and out of.

Overall the game is great, I just hate the backtracking.