i understand why some people would fault shadow of war for still being too easy and thus not finding the nemesis system to be as involved. it's perfectly reasonable to want the game to be challenging enough that the triggers happen naturally.
personally, i do enough strategizing to not have a totally rough time fighting captains and warchiefs, but i also stop short of optimizing everything and at times just wade into a battle without thinking about it for the sole purpose of making things more interesting with the nemesis system. it's worked pretty great.
for context, i had the same issue with the middle and latter parts of shadow of mordor where i wasn't finding any of the combat challenging. i've also died numerous times already in shadow of war in the 10+ hours i've put into it, finding it definitely more difficult than the first game.
agreed that the boss rooms for fortress sieges could do without the infinitely respawning trash mobs.
and yeah, spirit of jazz is on point with the general criticisms of the combat design in both shadow of wardor games. it's a visual mess. the arkham combat also just feels more impactful whenever you hit somebody. force feedback on the controller is more noticeable with every strike. the default attacks in mordor feel very light in contrast, with only the special moves having an oomph behind them.
all that said, i've been having a generally good time with shadow of war meeting, fighting, controlling, and getting betrayed by all sorts of orcs. nothing else like it right now!
these story missions though. really generic af, and you dying in them and getting a game over screen really shows how much they're at odds with the core design that a lot of people really like.