Well its all opinion of course so your not going to get a straight up "factual" answer as there isn't one..
As for my opinion, I think its fun. The difference in classes/races makes it very team based so partying is fun, the quests are fairly generic go kill this or go fetch this item from this monster though there are a couple really cool ones. There isn't cutscenes from what I know, but if you like the whole fantasy mixed with steam age setting and you think its really awesome looking, like me, you won't even notice your grinding.
No instances, though there are LOTS of bosses you can team up and kill and they are definitely worth killing though usually its more for rare items than for XP though you get a pretty huge amount from what I understand.
The quests are avoidable and usually they give a bit less EXP but they give a TON more items/money than just grinding and it follows a storyline so a lot of people choose to do that since they are more fun than just killing mobs, killing mobs is easier to do though (for me at least) so I choose to do that xD but thats just me and I want to get to the higher end levels so I can have an advantage during PvP and RvR.
Also Neosteam is a lot more based on PvPing and RvR so the grinding/questing aspect isn't quite as worked on.