I just did what could be called a pure combat run with a dodge-based assassin. Ended up with 17 kills and 2 epic combats and I could have scored another 2 to 6 kills. However, doing the final battle against the centurion and his butt-buddy took me almost as long as the rest of the playtime up to that point. At this time, I suppose that a blocking-based combat character may be significantly easier to play than a dodge-based combat character if you invest your SP wisely. For my assassin, I poured SP heavily into dodge, critical strike and crafting, with some light-to-moderate SP use for daggers, swords and crossbows. The SP spent on crossbows were a total waste for me because I ended up not relying on them at all because they didn't fit my play style. The ironic thing is that, in the high-level fights towards the end, I was using the highly upgraded hammer that you get by killing the refugees, so all the SP invested in the weapon skills could easily be considered a waste because my weapon of choice was one for which I invested no SP (save for some synergies). I think this is the root of all the problems most of the people that find the combat utterly impossible have: they invest in weapon skills a lot and little to nothing in dodge or block, and that's a recipe for getting yourself killed almost instantly, no matter how l33t your weapon skills are. Even investing in both dodge AND block is, most likely, a bad idea. In my assassin's case, dodge was by far the highest skill and I fought the final battle in a patrician robe in order to avoid having any dodge penalty. You have to admit that that's at least a bit counter-intuitive, especially for someone who grew up on a steady diet of computer games and has no actual hand-to-hand combat training/experience.
To me, the game seems very metagamey because it forces you to save often, save SP and increase your skills only as a reaction to a failed skill check, especially if you're playing a non-combat character. If you go for a combat character, you still have to save, save SP and go through the same process, but the problem, in this case, is that it takes much longer for you to realise that your character needs some skill increases after you've spent a significant amount of time battling the RNG, compared to the instant pass/fail that non-combat characters get.
while fast attacks and even aimed attacks to the legs(I think) were knocking enemies down and critting
