why was kratos fist & and shield combat gutted?

[John Josep Jingleheimer Schmidt]

like on the first one i understand, fist and shield was overpowered for stunning enemies and had far more use than the axe except for special immune enemies (burning berserkers).
but was it really neccesary? i'm just now travelling whit freya doing her quests and woah, i really MISS the combat of the first one. and for some odd reason i feel some enemies ignores my dodges but that's unrelated. why was hand and shield combat gutted so hard!? what's the point?

[Venemic]

We all wanna know, I expected shield and bare handed combat to be expanded on what was already there, not just removed. I can't grasp the dev decision to just remove something that integral.

[CourtesyFlush09]

Because the Lunda armor poison fist build in this game is already insanely broken lol. I can see why they took the bare-handed skill tree away.