It's so good! It's complex but once you learn it people will be describing exactly how they're holding their weapons, coming up with novel strategies instead of just using the basic attacks, a cut to the head will cause blood to leak down into your eyes preventing you from fighting properly, etc. Hits are actually pretty hard to score, but when you land one and go over to the damage tables they're pretty deadly and usually mean that the fight is over.

edit: I remembered a PvP match I had in one game where I was a player. Our characters were fighting as part of an honor duel that my guy had declared, and were doing it with blunted weapons so nobody would actually get hurt - but then the other player bashed me with his shield which did the full effect because you can't exactly blunt a shield, and I ended up losing because the shock and pain of getting hit in the head for real prevented me from blocking his follow up attack that actually scored him the win.