Skills are very noticeable though when you have played with one type of wepon for a long time and change to a new one that you never used before.
And if you are playing the game the first time it's easy to fool oneself that the new wepon you try out is really bad.
But in fact all wepons are really great, but some of them is better than another depending on the enemy or the boss you fight.

But then again as other have said here, skills is nothing to fuss about as they tend to take a very long time to get and is very hard to notice since the wepon upgrade will take more stamina.

Edit: Also, if you open up the skill menue and point at every skill you will see a explanation on what it do.