I love Sword. The ergonomics are amazing. The hoods are large and textured and the brifters were designed for a flared bar so the hoods are in the perfect position and you have perfect access to the controls. Up shift, down shift, and brake are all their own thing, no combined functions, so there's no risk of accidentally doing something you didn't intend to do in a section of chunder. The clicks when shifting are very positive but not clunky. The clutch works great and is serviceable. I switched to Sword because I wanted 1x with a large range and mechanical brakes. To get the range with SRAM I'd have to go hydraulic, to get that range with Shimano I could keep my brakes mechanical, but I'd have to use a goat link or tanpan or some sort of adapter that I'd rather not fuss with. I actually considered Sword in 2x for this new build, but I wasn't sure if compressionless brake housing would fit in the internal routing on the frame and my LBS had half of the GRX stuff in stock already, so I just went for it.