Either flying mounts need a nerf or every set of islands should have AA guns that shoot your ass down until you beat the tower boss of that area. Once you get a half decent flying pal, even without passive boosts, you can basically go anywhere and walking becomes trivial. Yeah, pre Jetragon mounts are slow faster but in my 150 hours of playtime so far I've never thought "I wish I could run around these mountains at a slightly faster speed instead of just flow over them"
It's a shame too because there's a lot of neat handcrafted paths and exploration options like the grapple gun and the jump spring locations but you rarely engage with any of that past level 15 ish when you get a flying mount.
Okay rant over