Exposure to grinders was never healthy. Especially when you're onto PB game where you can't kill something with one swing. Rats, turkey and chicken excluded.
I don´t know whether you played those "grinders" or not, but to me it´s actually Risen 3 which I´d consider to be a "grinder" - besides the settlements the game comes with constant flow of combat and loot and the settlements throw a crapton of quests which are mostly of simple fetch/kill variety. Due to the abundance of combat there´s very little breathing room during wilderness exploration and due to a distinct lack of non-quest related dialogues, there´s very little breathing room in NPC conversations as well.
Souls games don´t encourage players to loot at every step and combat consists of encounters which mostly feel hand placed and designed to offer a varied combat experience. Risen 3 has very, very repetitive encounter design in comparison (and I think that´s quite true when compared to G1/2 as well).
Speaking of which,
If your reflexes are completely ruined by grinders, either move to muskets or learn sword dancer skill as soon as possible. See… You don't start this game as a world champion in swordfighting.
I actually think PB made a valiant effort at giving players variety of combat tools.
I think it´s unfortunate they expanded on Risen 2´s system, instead of going back to the first game´s, but the arsenal comes with a good wealth of options, which is nice.
My problem with the game´s combat mostly boils down to enemy and encounter design and the fact there´s a loooot of it. Strictly in terms of visual variety I have a feeling this may be PB´s most expansive game yet, but the ways enemies actually fight are very limited. I feel like I´m fighting the same 3 types of enemies over and over and there´s very little of challenge that I would consider meaningful/fun. The combat severely lacks surprises and due to lack of varied enemy movesets, roll invincibility and instant healing via items, the only question is how fast the opposition will be dispatched, not whether I´ll be able to at all. In previous PB games there usually was a fair amount of enemies I´ve decided to postpone till later and I´ve yet to encounter a single such situation in Risen 3. And all of that goes without me adding the possibility of playing with a companion into the picture.
This lack of threat and variety in turn undermines the varied combat toolset PB has given to me.
In short, I´m finding the game´s combat experience boring and that´s a problem in a game where combat is such a prominent gameplay feature.