Builds other than daggers + blocking are a lot worse.
Daggers seem like by far the best weapon, and blocking seems to be by far better than dodging.
Ultimately though, daggers are the key, I found that even a dagger dodger (with majority of points in dodge to get 300 by end game) was probably better than a blocker from the other weapons. I was able to finish the optional fight with the dagger dodger, although I had to reload a couple times to get there, due to Dellar critting me for 27+. Switched him between silk armor and Butcher's armor, depending if there are sword enemies or not.
Being able to do still do good damage spamming 1-2 ap fast attack is a huge bonus over the other builds, which have their damage significantly nerfed by opponents in heavy armor, and have 3 ap fast attacks.
- heavy armor and shield swords seemed much worse than dagger, although perhaps you need to invest in critical strike to gain the benefit of the sword special? I never saw it go off and died on Ordu when it took me forever to kill the swordsman. I do find sword enemies to be super annoying vs dodging builds however, (due to their crit bonus and dodge's low crit resistance) so I guess there is a niche for swords.
- heavy armor and shield axeman - decent but lacked damage vs heavy armor - only cleaved two shields ever - Better than swords, despite shield cleaving doing virtually nothing. Died on Triarii, due to lack of damage to finish the enemy axeman quickly. Very annoying as enemies though.
- heavy armor and shield, maceman - tons of mace procs - almost died to the crossbowman (who is normally a joke) as I kept knocking him out of melee range... mace procs a liability here. Low damage again, took so long to beat the ordu that the bowman ran out of ammo and had to melee... couldn't kill triarii axeman fast enough, and died due to chain shield cleaves
Dodge is much more luck based than blocking, I had a dodge guy with 45 hp get crit twice in a row for 20 hp each time.
Overall, the engine is good, the pace is good, but the mechanics are a bit wonky and not balanced, and there isn't much in the way of tactics, it's just an autoattack fest, results based on how you built your guy and a little bit of luck.
Positioning is just not particularly relevant in this game, with no party, and no flanking or terrain bonuses, you pretty much just cautiously move up to the enemy and spam your best attack, occasionally you can get a tiny advantage from manipulating the group AI so that you can get extra swings on the most dangerous enemy (usually a mace or axeman) when you close for melee combat.