CapnZapp
Legend
In order to enjoy a PF2 Adventure Path as written you really need to enjoy playing the game chiefly for the combats.This was what I was expecting, either "dungeon padding", or the intention is to go war of attrition on PCs to nickel-and-dime their resources. Which in my experience players just do not want to push ahead when they are low on resources.
I also suspect maybe it had something to do with 1e being where you could fight 50 skeletons at a brisk pace, but a lucky crit will kill you, or something like that. (If I understand that's how 1e was.)
Encounters combining is certainly a fair point. Although that then gets dicey with balance in the opposite direction.
This was how I felt about those shallow fights. If the monster is just there for dungeon color/provide information/whatever, it's handwaved as "you see the raccoon and you splatter it, but it's easy to notice shimmering light coming from the hole the raccoon emeged from..."
I can also kind of understand wanting to let PCs strut a little, but IMO that ought to be a rare circumstance. I like to try that an encounter should be interesting. If it's not overtly lethal, then there's something else that's fun about it like a terrain element, something to make it exciting. No Orc and Pie circumstances, for ye olde ENworlders.
But, aside from the speedbump element, for me it's a matter of pacing. I want to keep things moving along briskly until there's a good reason to take up time.
Every PF2 AP consists of a string of very hard combats interspersed with not-very-hard-but-far-from-trivial combats that total about a dozen combats. Each level, every level.
Any GM that doesn't want combat for combat's sake can of course remove those combats, but that would reduce the content of a Paizo PF2 AP by at least 75% in my estimation. In conclusion: any GM that's more in it for story and roleplaying is much much better off with a system like 5E.
In comparison to PF2 and official Paizo APs, combat in 5E and official WotC campaigns is almost an afterthought. (And yes, I know how absurd that sounds from outside the D&D-o-sphere)