You're comparing mindless QTEs to parrying, a twitch based mechanic requiring you to observe your enemies location and attack patterns? Okay.
I'm not sure why you're so hostile, all I did was say Asura's Wrath is crap and MGR is a solid video game with actual quality gameplay which is wasted if you're just running up to people and hitting the same button and not making use of its other great mechanics… especially when these other mechanics are what really make the game. I'm sorry, but if you're playing MGR and not regularly using parrying and blade-mode then you're playing the game wrong and it's no wonder that you dislike it.
I played games for a long time now you make it sound way different than it is. It's really not. Game gives you visual cue it can be a button pop up or whatever and you react to it with a button press. QTE and the parrying mechanic are just not that far away from each other in practice. And just to be safe because god knows people can be stupid sometimes, I'm of course comparing parrying to the type of QTE's that require you to hit something fast and not the ones where you have to press some button very fast for a few seconds.
Not sure how parrying suddenly requires so much more brain power than a QTE. They're the same "mindless" as you call it one is just a bit harder to execute because the timing window is a bit tighter.
Also while we're at it making baseless assumption that seem to make sense to us, I'm sorry if you haven't played enough games that MGS:R battle mechanics seem so unique and beautiful to you, to me they just don't.
Requiring me to observe enemy location and attack patterns? You know that might be true if you're new to the genre or something but that does not require my utmost concentration for me. They do stuff I react to it. This nets me B and the occasional A rank just fine.
You know what makes me require actual active brain power and makes me pay full attention? Playing against real humans in dota 2 when you're 2 barracks down and you have to find that 4 man mass disable(black hole) with the right people in it. There is no pattern which actually requires you to really observe your enemies.
Why I mention this? To maybe bring up that our baseline of comparison is different maybe you're one of those people that is so good at MGS:R and completes everything in S rank and almost does full no dmg runs. Now if you also were a person that was able to do all the Asura's Wrath missions on the highest rank then yeah you maybe could make and argument about the intricacies of what sets them apart. But at my level of play what the two games require of me in those instances does not feel super different.
Well let's just say any grade of hostility you perceive equals the grade of condescension I perceive from your answers. So you tell me about that. Whatever the case I have an inkling that our answers will line up on this matter.