My thoughts exactly.
And the depiction of ‘mass’ battles is brutal. It’s downright gritty when you see how people get clubbed to death from behind when they’re fighting multiple foes at once. It actually made me think (as in, I was taken aback when I saw the scenes unfold in front of me), which is more than I can say for most games of this type.
On a related note - feints are actually super useful, and I can’t believe I’ve been neglecting them for so long. I wish that clinch wasn’t so effective (with the right perk) because it’s easy to 1-2 shot most enemies by winning a clinch and hitting them on the head with a mace.
But the thing I love the most about this game is that even at max level and clad in top of the line armor, I still think carefully if I should take on three+ heavily armored enemies at once. They can overwhelm you really fast if you’re not careful. And then there’s hardcore mode on top for all the people who start to think that combat is too easy.
I honestly don’t know if designers were just so good at eyeballing the difficulty parameters or if this game went through a ton of iteration.