War of Roses looks like it could be viable alternative if one were to believe the hype
Psht. I think we've seen that mainstream buyers won't tolerate a Mount & Blade style system, with Darkfall and Mortal Online. I mean, have you tried to introduce your friends to this game?
"Omg it's too hard."
"That's stupid, he shouldn't be able to do that, I quit."
"What! I can't tell where he's going to attack. Fuck this game."
"I'm bad at it, so I don't want to play multiplayer."
And so on and so forth. I doubt they'll include manual blocking of different directions.