i also can grudgingly accept the stab chain as it fits the weapon in how it was used historically, but i really i miss the Heavy sweep as an opener. And you could do a double stab before with L1 → L2 stab → H2 stab. So the new stab chain isn’t a fresh thing visually.
The horde-clear repeatable chain of strikes with the axe though (L1 sweep ↔ H2 sweep), this irks me greatly.
We can say what we want about the intended gameplay design of the weapon (how capable it should be to hordeclear), but i think we can agree that the developers value immersion and believability of weapon handling in first person. There’s a recent Dev blog - Animating the Grail Knight , where its hinted that developers are interested into HEMA:
Some people don’t care at all about historical accuracy and don’t see a problem with halberd repeated axe sweeps, and that’s fine. But for someone like me, when i do the repeated axe sweeps, i think like “this is greataxe/greatsword in action, there’s no halberd to be seen”.
Lastly, enjoy this video i found just recently, a beautiful presentation of halberd techniques outside of formation:
