Let's just end the God of War/Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden/Bayonetta discussion here: God of War is a great action/adventure series. It does a lot of things right, visuals, sense of scale, bad assery, presentation, level design and the combat is quite satisfying. Did I mention the game has epic boss battles? And it gets better with each passing iteration.
However, God of War's combat when you remove the distractions is just a modified dial-a combo system with SOME free-form actions thrown in the mix to give it some depth. You have your launchers yes but it's the classic weak/strong attack set up. Your weapon has insane range allowing you to easily combo multiple enemies at once AND juggle them in multiples. Juggling isn't that hard, you can only use certain moves for juggles and they are sufficient. You can mix up the combat with the spells and extra weapon set but it's not anything ground breaking and most of the times it's not that tactically effecient. The problem with God of War comes with the way you can dispatch enemies and get high combo meters which is stupendously easy. Getting a grab on them is instant kill, getting grabs in other games doesn't mean death it means combo opportunity.
If you want to talk about dial-a combos then the king is Ninja Gaiden. The diversity in the moves is insane but the part where NG shines is the enemy AI which is far more aggressive and potent than any other action game out there (Bayonetta included). You have to be defensive AND offensive at the same time, you have to perform proper counters, use walls to your advantage, use guillotine throws/izuna drops to isolate enemies, flying sparrow for zoning, use proper stun attacks, mix up with projectiles... NG actually has a moderate cancelling system because a lot of attacks can be cancelled with the block button and you can perform free-form combos by mixing up the various moves. NG2's tonfas/flails are the best examples of this and NG2's weapon repertoire is quite impressive. Did I mention the On Landing system revolving around dishing Ultimate Techniques in NG at a proper rate and then linking multiple UTs together?
On the other spectrum is DMC and Bayonetta. Bayonetta basically builds on the combat of the DMC series while adding a great dodge system AND incorporating contact sensitive special moves like God of War along with other great stuff. By far it's the most fluid action game to date, the flow between evasion and attack is truly seamless here.
DMC, well until Bayonetta is released, is the king of free form combat. ANYTHING IS CANCELLABLE INTO ANYTHING. Just about every one move has useful properties in combat that few other moves can do the same (which is not the case with something like NG where high level play is about using a limited set of moves). In DMC you are rewarded for using the widest selection of moves possible in combos. It's not really a game about dispatching enemies, it's a game about taking them out in the most stylish manner possible. If you look at DMC that way then you begin to realize where the depth lies. It then makes sense why you have multiple weapon sets, multiple style sets... all on the fly, all realtime all at your finger tips at once. Getting those SSS combos and maintaining them is no easy task.
That is why most consider Nero's combat a step back for the series, the move repertoire is far more limited meaning less overall stylish combat and has a more God of War style combat which revolves around pressing the O/B button to do devastating throws. Even then, Nero's combat is above GoW's... you have instant revving which requires proper timing to play with, you have grab holds, cancels, dashing in the air, snatching enemies to you from air/ground, charging gun and bouncing enemies with them. I am not saying that you can't play pro with Nero, you clearly can but the chasm between what you can do with Dante as compared to Nero is just... hilarious.