Spicing up the combat system ⚔

For a combat system to stay engaging and interesting it needs some kind of variation and different options to choose from when thinking about what to do next within a combat.
Currently you wait for the enemy to finish their moveset (or interrupt them by parrying) to follow up with your own ever repeating moveset which is determined by the weapon you chose.
To get some variation in this pattern an idea would be to introduce COMBOS!
By splitting attacks into light and heavy attacks as well as using a shove/kick for a third button you introduce the option to vary and chain your moves:
A - light attack
Y - heavy attack (chargable)
B - kick/shove (to break poise /shielding stance, or even push enemies from cliffs)
X - roll (when used with a direction; tapping X whithout a direction results in a short backstep)

There could be pre-existing combos you could learn from a fighter at the arena in the upper city (e.g. A, A, Y, B might be a combo called “crushing strikes” or something)
or
you could take it even a step further and allow the player to “craft” own combos they could practise. For example there could be a library of weapon moves (specific to each weapon type like “two-handed” for example) that can be assigned to the three buttons A, Y and B. By holding RT while pressing these buttons you could use these assigned moves instead of using the custom moves that come with your weapon.

When using a combo successfully the player could be rewarded by getting a short-timed buff, e.g. attack speed, movement speed, getting health back etc.

Here’s an example of how this might look like:
Combos - LotR

I would also suggest that crafting a weapon leads to a blank version of it with no predetermined runes. That way you’d have more freedom to create custom combinations of movesets and abilities granted by runes.