It feels like a fresh breathe of air for me in this game.

This game really feels like the developers designed the melee combat first then hastily added in magic afterwards.

Really? I've always played melee characters and only just now started my first Mage, and I'm really having a blast. I think it's mostly the variation - using magic all the time gets boring, so switching things up makes the game more fun to play.

I think they planned on having that dual cast perk stretch across all different types of spells, so that you could cast a Fury-Blizzard, for example. Then they got pumped up about shouts and realized how difficult spell-mixing in a balanced fashion can be, so we ended up with a stunted magic system.