This I agree with, and why i never understood why everyone was clamoring for melee combat in a third person shooter like Horizon. its like asking for a deep melee combat system in gears of war or uncharted. Thats not what this game is.
That said, Horizon is trying to be an RPG. And that means you have to allow people to play the way they want to play. Even Souls games have range builds that let you play the entire game as an archrer. So if thats what they are going for in this game, i would be ok with it. I do think melee combat will make clearing human camps more fun. They werent fun with arrows. Rise of Tomb Raider let you select up to three enemies for a stealth kill. I think Horizon needed abilities like that to spice things up a bit.
P.S Traps took too much time and preparation. I figured out the best way to take out all these bigger dinobots. You grab a bunch of freeze arrows. Freeze them, then use tear arrows to rip off their guns. Then do 3x damage to them using their own weapons.
I think God of war is the only game that effortlessly combines ranged and melee into one system.
I think Horizon issue was it drew attention to its melee. You had 2 different attacks and you could upgrade it to take down bigger machines. Where as in uncharted, gears etc it often used to finish off a wounded foe etc. Horizon has enemies get In your face more as well.
I can see what you mean with dark souls rpg comparison. Although in that context your usually swapping a ranged weapon for melee as opposed to fluidly going from one to the other in the middle of a fight. I didn't know you beat dark souls as an archer got any cool vids to see? I always felt the magic in dark souls was weak though.
To be fair what we have been shown so far is encouraging. I like that the spear powers up and you can displace energy with it as opposed to just whacking machines which is what I am most concerned with.
Then again if it feels wonky we will still get an amazing 3rd person shooter!