The animations are okay overall imo.
The issue is 2h weapons are so much faster, longer, and harder hitting that 1h weapons that it makes the "omni" block capabilities of a shield rather useless.
Manual blocking isn't really that hard, times where a manual block failed would usually also have failed witha shield also because it has more to do with poor timing then picking the right block direction.
If anything 2h and polearms across the board need a speed reduction. (This might be addressed with the new wpf formula)