Talk:Monster Girl Quest: NG+ (Ecstasy)/@comment-26047404-20150127061507/@comment-5844115-20150508215708

Depends on how you define "Duel". If it's just a 1 on 1 fight without weapon restrictions, the pole arms still win, because you need several steps to reach them (giving them time to counter and/or retreat at their discretion), while they just need one lunge to strike at you. It's just that pole arms are unwieldy to carry around all the time, and also pretty obvious, so nobles preferred smaller weapons for their duels - stuff they could actually bring with them everywhere.

And I still wouldn't discount a specialised single weapon user in a dual. Their speed and precision is higher than that of a dual wielder, and it's not the number of hits that makes the difference, but who gets the deciding hit in first.

If you know exactly where attacks are coming from (even with two weapons, the attacks still come from only one person, and the weight of two weapons + the two arms who hold them means reading the attacks of a dual wielder ahead of time is actually easier), a single weapon specialist can easily compensate for the second weapon by advancing and retreating with each strike, and by the fact that he's just a smaller target - only his sword arm is ever going to enter the enemy's reach, and only to attack.

That's why the traditional dual wielding styles of Europe use daggers, cloaks and bucklers - things so small and light, you might as well forget about them. They were, essentially, fighting with just one hand, and used the second only if it was convenient. It was a backup trick, not a main attack style.

Even Musashi, the "poster boy" for dual wielding, had his iconic duel with nothing but one wooden sword, and as far as I've heard there are no actual records of him using two swords in duels - only against multiple opponents.

Where Dual Wielding shines is when you have to fight in a dense crowd, without formation (in a less dense crowd, or as part of a battle formation, pole arms can make sure no one actually gets close - but once people *do* get close, the pole arm is at a disadvantage), and in general when enemies can surprise you from multiple directions. There, the footing and mobility advantage of single weapon users as well as the reach of pole arms are less relevant (you can't kill them as fast as they come, so enemies *will* close in, and since they're everywhere, you can't retreat), and it's suddenly more important to be able to react against attacks from all directions, which is where having a usable off-hand comes in handy. A single weapon user has to turn around completely to parry an attack from behind, a pole arm user has to wield his rather unwieldy weapon - a dual wielder only has to turn a bit to parry with his off-hand.