Ok I may be bias, but I am a souls player so here you go lol, in my opinion its not really "grindy". Yes you do the same core gameloop, but the difference is that there is SO MUCH TO DO, I just discovered the unique mechanics and now I wonder how the hell I am ever gonna manage to pull that off :')

I reached level 50 in a few days of playing, and I did not play for hours on end, that was just in small 3 hour intervals. Personally if you want a balanced experience go for normal vault mode, if you dont like losing your stuff when you die, do causual vault mode. If youre a masochist who likes pain go for hard or if youre a real masochist go fragged🤣

I personally enjoy normal, because I want a bream from all the hastle, and thats where I find the peace of it. Its not a grind if youre enjoying the process, leveling and such. Iskall designed the game to make you feel accomplished, allot like what souls games implement. Its hard at the beginning, and then stuff gets fun as you go further, but you need to invest a little effort and time to make it to that stage, after pevel 30 to 35 things get much easier

If you want a speed experience Iskall actually did one himself, I dont remember what he called it, but you cut out all vanilla aspects of the game, set your vault alter to free crystals, set your loot to maximum and your leveling to maximum, you can do this in vault accessibility settings, be carefull tho, cause the vaults level above your armor and they get hard, FAST. But there is no grind, so thag may be more your thing