I recently finished the game Tunic, which is sort of like A Link to the Past + Fez + Dark Souls... And it's amazing!
I actually owned the game soon after release but bounced off of it due to being busy with work, picked it back up the past few weeks and finally sat down and enjoyed it. Despite looking like a straightforward and cute adventure game, it gets REALLY deep the further you go in. There's so much to discover and the game gives you just enough hints on what to do and where to go.
Tunic ticks all the boxes for me. The graphics are gorgeous, the combat is fun, the world is fun to explore and rich with secrets, and progression was very satisfying.
The most unique part of the game is that you slowly find pages of an instruction manual containing maps of areas and secrets, explanation of mechanics, and guides on how to play... except it's all written in an alien language, so you have to figure out what it's telling you by paying attention to all the pictures and context clues.
Understanding the manual is a bit rough at first but lead to so many "A-ha!" moments when you try something and it actually works. It even foreshadows future bosses and things you'll encounter before they happen which is brilliant. My best advice to someone just trying the game: Pay attention to the manual, seriously!
I won't spoil any more than that, but I really wish more people talked about this game. It's not for everybody, the game is intentionally vague and needs some critical thinking if you're not following a guide, but I think it's absolutely brilliant if you're into exploration and discovery. One of the most unique games I've played in ages.
I will point out that (IIRC) Tunic does have significantly more mechanical progression than some other examples, like Outer Wilds or Toki Tori 2, but they're all lovely games
It's more of a "souls-lite" meets Outer Wilds for sure. You gotta be relatively on top of things mechanically to beat it, and on top of that in the second half of the game it switches to puzzles that are (IMO) infuriatingly grindy and will take hours to complete after you've figured out the mechanic.
Which is perfectly fine for those who like that, but I was sold "knowledge base game like Outer Wilds" which doesn't accurately capture how disgustingly grindy Tunic really is IMO. That's like saying Elden Ring is an "open world walking simulator with gorgeous graphics and compelling combat". I mean, yeah, it's all that and it's a great game. But that's kind of underselling the fact that if it's your first Souls you'll probably break a couple keyboards after meeting Margit.
I'm not sure which puzzles you're referring to - do you mean stuff to reach an ending, or the obscure, very much optional, deep secrets?
It's been a while since I played it, but I don't remember grindy puzzles in the main content, bar the big one, but that one felt exhilarating to figure out and solve.
As for combat, it is difficult, but I remember beating the whole game without turning down the difficulty (which I remember being a thing), so it seemed fine to me... But yeah, people misrepresenting a game is always a risk.
I looked it up because I already forgot, but you need to do half of the puzzle I'm talking about to do the big one. And that one is annoying as fuck to do because even if you immediately understand how it works (it is very neat) you'll be looking at it for literal hours getting tiny details right with zero feedback from the game, and the "this is neat" feeling quickly turned into intense frustration for me. Doubly frustrating because I was not in the right headspace after being forced to do a bunch of content filler puzzles to even get there. I just can't find any joy in the tedium of figuring out a bazillion very similar puzzles over and over again to solve a bigger puzzle I already know how to solve. I figured out your trick, game, where is my damn reward? I guess that's why I could never get into Rubik's Cube...
Outer Wilds approaches this very differently, I definitely spent hours wandering because I misunderstood one very specific thing. But once I did understand that thing, everything clicked into place and the game revealed itself to me. Late-game Tunic instead punishes discovery with more grind.
The combat was fine, I never touched the difficulty either. Though I will say the difficulty scaling was a bit all over the place, most of the regular enemies were barely a threat, while the bosses were pretty all over the place in terms of difficulty. But overall the combat progression was quite enjoyable.