To say Dead Rising 2 was hard is kind of laughable. I know full well I sound like one of those insufferable faggots who claim to be better than everyone else, but hear me out.
Rescuing survivors in Dead Rising 2 was probably the biggest objective. All of the plot missions were very short, with a lot of time in between to do one of two things: Fuck around or Rescue survivors. Until you hit level 50, rescuing survivors is the obvious choice, as it gives you lots of PP, combo cards, and a chance to go back to Royal Flush. Going back to Royal Flush is what makes the game easy. Every time you go back to the safe house you have the opportunity to build 3 sets of tenderizers, 2 defilers, and a set of knife gloves. (Possibly more depending on the surrounding zombies and where you come from) Those three weapons are all you need to win the entire game. Period. Most of the other combo weapons are either too impractical (Power Guitar), too bulky (Tesla Ball), or simply unusable (drill bucket) to have any use besides playing around. That's my problem with your whole argument. Dead Rising 2 basically hands you the best weapons in the game constantly anyway, if you really think anything in DR2 (aside from the Twins and TK) is hard then you're just impairing yourself. If you impair yourself in DR3 you get the same result, a game that is seemingly stupidly unfair in many respects. Adding to that there were blenders fucking everywhere, the quick grapple removals and shove run removed any threat a horde may pose, and MOST COMBO WEAPONS WERE JUST GIVEN TO YOU BY THE WORK BENCHES ANYWAY!
That being said, yeah the weapon lockers did remove a lot of the satisfaction of fucking around. Building a Blitzkrieg or Freedom Bear in DR2 was sweet because you had to know where to look for the items and truck them to a specific bench to build them with any kind of efficiency. The big ostentatious weapons are a treat. The more you have a treat the less special it becomes. Everybody knows that though. I wonder why the designers don't.