After hearing a lot of praise for this game combat I decided to try it. Melee looks good - light attack, block and six types of powered attacks! So I went as pure swordfighter - no magic, no stealth, no bullshit. With bows though, endless ammo helps to use bows even without proper skill. And I went on Hard. Well, it was challenging, but little fun.
Enemies are fucking sponges. They take ages to kill with sword. Main character is glass one, though, dying in several hits. And he starts to suffocating after running for 10 seconds or making five kicks, I guess poor bastard was smoking several packs of Rothmans each day since he was ten. Environmental kills are overpowered, though. Kick a guy into spikes - dead. Into water - dead. Into fire - dead. From great highs - dead. A thrown barrel does more damage than several power attacks with sword. So I was kicking guys to their death and running around like madman, throwing stuff at people. Feels like being a fucking Donkey Kong, throwing barrels at your foes all the time - until I reached the ork boss. This was the pinnacle of this prestigious swordfighting. Your block is magic and unpenetrable for all enemy melee attacks as long as you hold down the button and they don't flank you. Against one guy this is not a problem. So block - watch guy telegraph his attack - kick - power attack. Rinse and repeat. With ork boss this process took five to seven minutes of slicing him up, with enthralling commentary of two lines by him "Stranger gonna meet his dragon", and "Stranger gonna die". All in all, I definitely killed more guys with environment than with melee.
I was able to reach necromancer lair before I quit. Vampire knight are bastards, fast and deadly (and spongy). But in the dark I didn't even realized that. While I was descending in the library I kept kicking them down to inglorious instadeath, not even realizing who they are. Only down below, I met two of them in a fair fight and lost it. Of course, I had the choice to run up and kick them down like dozens of guys before, but by this point I was tired of kicking people to death.
And then I went to play on Normal. And this is not fun too, as Normal is piss easy. No challenge whatsoever. I didn't play it for more than two hours.
Well, maybe archer/mage/sneaky builds are more fun, but pure swordfighting here definitely sucks.