It has a pause option, at least in a solo session. From what I understand it also can be played offline after the initial denuvo activation (but haven’t confirmed it myself). I’m not extremely far into the game yet but so far, the pacing of the game has been really quick and I’ve never once had to grind anything, but that may be in part due to my experience with monster hunter making it relatively easy to get by with lower tier equipment.

I definitely wouldn’t say it’s anything like an mmo or live service game besides the fact that it will get free content updates for a little while, and has the option of playing with friends.