I think Celestial fury is the best. It's fast, does tons of damage and stops monsters killing you and can be gained early in the game. The Crom Fayr is good but the problem with it is that it's a warhammer. Unless your protagonist is a cleric I doubt you have proficiencie in warhammer because there aren't any other good ones. So by the time you get Crom Fayr your fighter characters who can get the most use out of it have already got big weapons and like four or five proficiencies in that other weapon. You can carry Crom in your off hand and get the strength 25 but then you don't have a shield and if you don't have any slots spent on dual wield then you're penalised more than helped. Agreed the long swords available don't end up as good as other weapons that's the point. It's how Black isle have balanced out the different weapons. With the most powerful weapons there are very few other good ones of that type so your character is weak until you find the good one. If you pick katanas then you're stuck with a measly +1 katana until you can get the fury. While the best long swords or axes for that matter aren't as good as Celestial for example you find pretty good ones easily. So You have to choose between pretty good for a long time or crap for a while then extremely good at the end. Long swords and axes are supposed to be the weapon of choice for the first timer. As the game says katanas are good but the skill is only useful if you can find one and putting slots in katana in order to use Fury isn't much good if you don't know where it is. The best weapon for new players is one of the two +3 axes. I used one in each hand my first game. Axe skill also gives you grand mastery with both melee and missile weapons in the one weapon type.
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