The combat was great at first, but not very well balanced. I was playing on hard difficulty and it initially provided a decent challenge, the combat soon became too easy. My party was obliterating everything and eventually I stopped playing midway through, because the other aspects of the game (i.e., the story) weren't holding my interest. I will give it another go with the enhanced edition.
I suppose I could've intentionally made things more difficult by not bringing along 2 companions or going to areas with higher level enemies… but neither one of those is very appealing from a role-playing perspective. I want to complete quests in an order that makes sense and not just because they are giving me the appropriate challenge…
I guess that's why I find open world RPGs overrated. Either they scale enemy levels, which is awful because it kills any sense of progression, or in the case of D:OS, the enemies have fixed levels and you end up deciding where to go based on the "suggested level" of a certain area… Until a developer can solve that dilemma, I'd prefer semi-linear RPGs with a strong story to the illusion of being able to go anywhere.
But the main issue I had with D:OS was not the combat but the awful random loot system… I'd prefer less frequent, hand-placed loot to finding (possibly slightly better) random crap found in every barrel, crate, and chest.