The enemies with the shield are intended to be beaten with your shield if you make them face the other direction. Most people seem to agree that this could've been telegraphed better, but I didn't think of it at the time. I think what made you have trouble with the sword is that enemies only capture the sword when you attack them while they're countering or have their shield. Likewise, the sword can only be reclaimed by you when it attacks you. Sorry if that wasn't clear, and yeah it is really rough. This is my first game jam game and I'm still learning.
Viewing post in Impartial Blade jam comments
For your first game, it was pretty well-done, and you have good gameplay ideas. :-) Regarding sword capture, it wasn't very clear to me when the second enemy (the first that can actually capture it) was "countering", so I was under the impression that the sword got captured automatically if it stayed near an enemy for too long.