It's no Dark Souls that's for sure. The weapon mechanics are much more basic, the enemies are very predictable in their behaviour and generally with open world games you have so much freedom that any encounter can be trivialised into oblivion.

The best way to take the tedium out of it is by bringing buddies. Even though enemies have more health, they also get staggered more, and you can dedicate much more of your stamina just for attacking.

Although biomes are not literally locked, the game uses large enemy stat jumps as a soft barrier. There isn't a big difference between knowing combat mechanics and mastering them. After that it is entirely about the gear and food that you bring.