Booyaah

I have not played KCD for a while, but from what I remember from playing the sword combat you could do overhead, left/right swings, /thrusts, even diagonal swings (in 6 directions total). The defender would have to react to the directional animation and counter attack or parry in that specific direction which gave it a nice twitch element to it. Not sure what you're talking about lock-on, maybe it's changed since I last played the alpha...

I prefer a B2P model the most. If they had later expansions that brought new major features they couldn't implement due to time/tech issues for release, that would be okay. I would be fine with something like $30 for KS backers and $60 for full retail if the devs really do a good job creating this game.

If they wanted a good in-depth melee combat system that would be easy to implement, I would copy Kingdom Come Deliverance swordplay. They use directional based attacks/parrying and reward you for 'perfect' parrying/blocking and such.

I think they have a waaaay long way to go. Personally I'd rather they get 90% of their tech done, stub out all major gameplay mechanics (economy, building, missions, UI, combat, exploration, etc) into a basic form at least, before opening any alpha up to the public. Even if they just spent a few hard core weeks of development on each of those systems.