I'll attempt to explain my logic here:
1. The vast majority of game content is geared towards combat of some sort. Nearly all the game's dungeons are difficult, if not impossible, to traverse purely by stealth (thanks to the fact that most of them are just interconnected corridors). If you get spotted, the only way of getting people to stop looking for you is to - big surprise - kill everyone in sight. So without judicious abuse of invisibility (which I think can be safely considered an exploit on its own), you're going to have to fight things. Furthermore, there are virtually no quests that can be solved in a non-violent manner (some of the thieves' guild/mages' guild quests spring to mind, but little else).
2. When you do get into a fight, melee combat skills are almost entirely necessary. Ranged combat isn't designed to be effective at all (and wouldn't be if not for the backpedaling oversight) as anything other than a first strike measure. Magic is largely underpowered - an enchanted weapon (no matter what that enchantment is) will immediately render physical-resistant enemies vulnerable, while spellcasters have to use weakness spells, and spells are far less efficient than melee attacks regardless. Sneak attacks will never do enough damage to oneshot enemies without extreme munchkining, and, as I say, getting spotted by one enemy means he's locked on to you and will never stop chasing you until you get out of his AI range or one of you dies.
3. There is no exploration. There's running errands. You'll either find a place just by chance (because it appeared on the compass or just popped out in front of you), or you'll be being sent somewhere that you already know how to find. Even if I could consider that sort of thing "exploring" there's nothing stopping me from just blowing it off as padding, because there is nothing interesting out there. Well, that's not strictly true, but there's extremely little.
And if you're seriously making the argument that "I spend most of my time running about" makes the game less combat-based, then, well, I don't know. It's like saying that picking up coconuts was the real point of No More Heroes or something.
4. The other elements cited are those minigames that, in usual circumstances, players find chagrin in. But it appears that people aren't afraid of making double-standards when it benefits their argument (yes, I'm generalising. No, I don't care).