Love the starting animation with your sword being stolen.  Why does parrying eat up your shield? The fact that you accelerate from a stop to full speed makes it really hard to take advantage of a parry. I would hit an enemy, they would stop, and I would try to start moving and then take forever to get moving and end up dying. It's like playing Mario Kart with a heavy car with a fast top speed that you can never get up to because people keep hitting you. Same in reverse. Sliding to a stop means that I accidentally ended up just bumping into enemies and dying instead of stopping where I intended so that I could parry them. You should really be able to plan more in a game that has no fighting. I should be able to aim at where I want to be, parry, then use the momentum of my parry to go off in a different direction while the enemy is frozen.