I've seen one interview with Frazier where he said that there are two ways to get "good" at combat, to the point where you are consistently killing enemies 2-4 levels above you. One way is to master the action mechanics, by learning to time blocks, mastering the timing of combos, dodges, etc. The other way is to carefully and meticulously build your character by making intelligent choices in skill-point allocation, keeping your equipment up-to-date and top-notch through crafting and looting, and using abilities like traps, stealth, and spells. So the theory is that if you play this like a hardcore RPG, you can be successful at combat without mastering the twitch mechanics. And likewise, if you play this like an action game and aren't into that "boring" inventory management or whatnot, than you can also find success. That's what they claim, anyway.
The concern about making this accessible to both action and RPG players in terms of difficulty is a valid one, but that's usually what the difficulty setting is for. Knowing the way I play games, I'll probably try to min-max my character AND attempt to master the twitch mechanics. So I'll probably go for at least the Hard setting or higher if it's available, and go from there....