The exportable world is huge, considering you can’t climb, swim, jump, or otherwise move on the vertical axis. Grinding is moderate to minimal, as you’ll be kept busy with the delicious buffet of quests. As to keep you from grinding on the same weak level 0 monster all the time, you'll only gain exp from monsters 5 levels below you or stronger. Once you reach the low-low cap of level 20 though, it all changes. I gained levels 1-15 pretty fluidly, and got my way to level 20 by repeatedly doing a very fun mission, all in a little more than a week. Oops. HUGE mistake doing that even before you made it through half the story.