The Path Companion however was never available freely in the open world in 1.0, and was restricted to only assisting you during several (solo) story battles, not too disimilar to what we have now in solo fights with story NPCs assisting.

Unfortunately, Yoshi regards the chocobo companion as enough for current open world content, as there is the Grand Company Squadrons, Trusts and Duty Support for instanced content like dungeons and certain trials (and what is available to use with them is being increased as time goes by).

I do miss my sultry moonkeeper kittygirl Path Companion from 1.0 though, but I've accepted she's gone and isn't coming back.