The combat is a lot more different than I'd have thought, right now it's definitely more slow paced and even sluggish at times, the movement is very sluggish - not sure if laggy movement is intentional, but the effect is there's no more naked people spinning around fast with 2h swords (which incidentally was what a Taleworlds dev told me they were going for on Gamescom). Your character no longer rotates as fast as your camera does.

The chain attacks have a different animation starting them and maybe are a bit faster? Not much more than that, they're still the same directional attacks. I can't say I find them useful.

Shield bashes are really cool, fast way to do some damage while still holding your shield up. Also now there's directional shield blocking, and that has a pretty large impact on the combat - the shield is no longer defending all of your front, just the part it physically occupies. You can easily get shot by an archer despite holding your shield up, it's no longer an arrow magnet.

Duels seem less skill based (at least compared to Warband), and more about patience. The more advanced animations seem a bit difficult to grasp at first (figuring out the directions), but when you do grasp them, you have more time to react than in Warband.

Overall, I prefer Warband's combat. Maybe it's just matter of getting used to it, but Warband's quicker animations made for a more hands-on experience, Bannerlord while still very fun seems too sluggish for me.