In middle ages stances and guards were the basis for good trained combat. Knowing what stance to be in, what stance your enemy was using, the different strikes and defense options each stance provided you, this is what the schools and masters of the era taught and the surviving historical combat manuals show how important stances were as a basis for combat of that time period.
In many games stances don’t even factor in melee combat. The relation of your feet to your hand and the placement of your weapon mean utterly nothing, just hit the button to do this attack or this one.
It would be awesome if you could actually develop your character through learning stances and then learning what attacks/moves go with that stance and giving each stance their weakness/advantages, just like they had in real life.
Another aspect that is often overlooked (in both movies and games) is the importance of grappling.
People have it in their head this vision of people fighting with swords, one guy standing away from the other guy swinging their swords until one guy stabs the other guy. When in truth, just like today with our own modern combat and melee fighting, lot of times those guys would get close, one guy might grab the other guy, one might trip the other, another might go for a disarm and fall, then they’d fight on the ground and grapple.
“wrestling/grappling” was a part of combat of this era, you can find these techniques throughout the historical combat manuals even before the time period this game is set.
I’ve studied some of these techniques from authors in renassaince’s masters (exactly Achille Marozzo and Anonimo Bolognese) and believe me, they works as hell 
