You didn't use backstep cancelling as a panic button though. You have less time to cancel than you do to parry an attack. You'd use it for baiting a parry or causing your opponent to panic roll and catch them at the end of it with an r2.

I didn't mean to imply it was a panic button. Rather, there's two different directions you can take that kind of thing each with different tactical implications. The one you're referring to is where they have canceling; it actually encourages making moves to fake the opponent out and it can turn into a more fast-paced, intense dance of sorts where the first one to misread the other is punished. From went in the other direction here by disabling that and making the animations committal in nature. This takes the tactical game into a potentially slower territory, where it becomes less about outmaneuvering the opponent and more about precise, surgical timing and technique to make every strike count without any wasted action or fancy tricks. Personally, I think that system can be more interesting. CAN. Of course, when a FUGS wielder in full Havel's can be at the mercy of a naked man with an Estoc that system is a bit flawed, which makes it all the more weird that poise isn't an active stat for players.

It shouldn't really be a universal thing though. Great swords, halberds, and ultra weapons would be the primary ones that would benefit and only specific attacks at that.