Last year I made a video talking about how I believe that seeing action games as a competition over a central resource is the best way to approach it. I made it as a reaction to Atsushi Inaba's talk where he described Platinum viewing action games as passive - that is a series of situations that serve as inputs that players react to, if I understand right.
I rewatched it and realized that there's actually a really good example of this stuff in God Hand.
God Hand's enemies have a block mechanic. They'll randomly guard, which forces you to reprioritize & rethink your actions and respond in a number of ways - guard break (most likely, but enemies can themselves counter or break out), charge a punch to hit them when they exit the guard state (less likely but still handy), use it to reposition, or change target. This afaik is a good example of what I think Atsushi Inaba meant when he said that the games are passive - the game gives you an input, and you have a bunch of viable reactions to said input.
What I wanted to get at is that I think viewing this whole interaction as the end goal or even the center is missing the forest for the trees - it's just a tool, a single step in a broader process. And God Hand itself is a great example of that. The guard breaks/counter hits are fine, but what happens after? They aren't the end of the interaction, they are the beginning. As soon as you launch an enemy and kick them into a group, you've won a shit ton of space & time for yourself that you can use to set up all sorts of other things, including repeating this space-control process. And because the enemies have a simple game plan of surround & trap you with overlapping attacks, space control is what it's all about! It's a way to "see past the interaction" and "see past the mechanic"
I think this might be a good clear, concrete example. I dunno.