i don't particularly mind grinding, but i mainly like grinding when it also has customization and personalization involved. in other words, if leveling up allows me a new decision for how to develop my characters' stats, abilities, and skills, i like it. if it's "automatic" and it just means a little bit more of every stat with no decisions to make for how to improve a character (no skill tree, no important equipment choices, no class changes, etc.) then it isn't very fun
basically, grinding in a game like final fantasy 4 tends not to be fun, since there's no difference at all between your level 50 cecil and your friend's level 50 cecil, but grinding in a game like final fantasy tactics is fun, because you are constantly making decisions about how to develop your party -- what classes to turn characters into, which skills to learn from those classes, how to equip them, and so on
bastion gave you a couple of choices of which skills and weapons to use, but the decisions never felt meaningful; there wasn't much functional difference between them, or else there was often clearly a best choice that everyone took, there wasn't much in the way of situational customization
i think that was due to the limited enemy variety, really. most action rpgs have dozens of different types of enemies, bastion felt like it had less than 10. it's hard to maintain a 20 hour game when there are only 10 types of enemies (since it means you could spend 2 hours or more without ever encountering anything new in the way of combat). so overall the pacing felt like it needed a makeover
fighting enemies always felt like an annoying task to me, i ran on automatic, doing it by rote, doing the same thing over and over, killing the same enemies over and over, it was not something that was fun. and developing my character felt brainless; there was very little creativity in choosing which weapon to use for which level. so everything i enjoy about rpgs (customization, creativity, strategic combat) it didn't have
also, many action rpgs, like zelda, darksiders, dark souls, secret of mana, kingdom hearts, etc., have puzzles to break up the monotony of combat. bastion, as far as i can recall, didn't have any puzzles at all. it was just a romp through new areas, fighting every step of the way. why didn't they include some puzzles?
still, it did a few interesting things, and obviously a lot of work went into the game. i don't regret playing it or anything. but i guess i just don't get why this game is so widely praised while games that i enjoyed much more are ignored. for instance, did you guys ever hear of guardian of paradise? it's a pretty great, and free, indie zeldalike / action-rpg, that i enjoyed a lot more than bastion
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=rakuga