Ok, so I played this game a lot but I don't think it was becasue of the reasons you wanted me to..I played it as it was dark souls and I wanted to beat it.
It was super hard. took me over 20 tries to get over the first stage, and I got wiped in the second 1 immediatly. Maybe I suck, but I think there are ways to make the combat more fair.
A. The animation for the enemy's attack should have some visual cue that it's coming. It's immediate and as frequent as the player's attack. This make it super tough.
B. The animation for blocking should be quicker, maybe instant. This, with the previous comment combined made it hard to block something if you didn't already had your shield up.
C. Sometimes when I was blocking, it didn't. That was frustrating you can imagine. (I think it was due to calculation and the enemy was technically attacking to my left, but he was below me and I had my shield to the south.)
D. Fighting 2 enemies at once was the tough part. Since you can't move while blocking/attacking you can't reposition for the other enemy, or dodge the attack after you attack. I think adding movement while attacking/blocking will make it more fun and fair. You can also add some more depth with parry, or roll etc but that's for later stages.
Other than that, I love hard games with rogue-like-like progression system. And the fact I played it for as long as I did means I had fun trying and wanting to progress.
Well done!