Current combat systems are good, just needs some more variety in weapon choices. As an avid souls fan, VS does not need anything Dark Souls has.
Dodgerolls and parries are really not necessary. The current loop of baiting attacks and managing knock back is pretty fun IMO. Some simple additions like pole arms, 2h swords and maybe stealth and power attacks would be pretty cool.
If we got any deeper, I think it would be tied to the effects system, and maybe add effects that the player can do to certain enemies. Dismemberment would be an interesting idea and add to the horror of the game. Imagine a player dismembering a drifter with a critical hit and having the drifter play a panicked or depressed animation for a bit, then have their AI get more aggressive afterwards. Maybe certain weapons have overhead swings with a chance to KO a bear or something, allowing the player to escape.
Nothing too new has to be added either. The axe already looks like a polearm, just adjust the moveset for it, and make it context dependent which animation itll play. The Forest was able to do this back in the 2010's, I'm sure the talented developers would be able to pull it off too. You could gear the knife to stealth.
The game already has enjoyable fight fantasy in it. Plate armor is so insanely cool as you really feel like a walking tank. Just needs to lean into some of the fun of small, big, medium weapons too.
As for ranged, I think different arrowhead shapes would be really nice to add variety for people who like ranged weapons. Again, to add to the horror of the game, there are some hunting arrowheads that were designed to behead small necked animals. We could have this, and have the player look mortified as a bowthorns head gets completely blown off by the arrows they toss out.