This is the thing: what required grind for resources? Yes, you need resources. But if you are exploring a lot and doing the storybook encounters, which are, you know, the focus of the game and full of unique story content, you get most of your resources from that. There aren’t a lot of repeatable sources of resources, and most of them are very low yield and thus poor uses of your time and energy unless you’re desperate. The only thing we ever needed to grind for to speak of was food, which…there are spots where you do a combat encounter and get some food. You do that maybe three or four times to stock up, and then you move on. Most of the time you can’t afford to sit around doing stuff like that any longer than that anyway. In my experience, anyway.
If exploring the contents of the storybook feels like grinding, it’s not a game that person should be playing. That’s the core activity, not a resource grind you endure to get to some other ostensible entertainment elsewhere in the design.