Overall, I've found that two-handed weapons are quite awful in this game in, quite frankly, every instance. They swing slower, offer significantly less defense than a sword-and-board-esq play-style, use much more stamina to operate, and work against themselves by being so slow that they don't get to take advantage of the few parries one does get while using them. Using the battleaxe or the crystal axe is just a poor choice when compared to a silver shield and X silver-tier weapon. That's not even mentioning the absolute gutter-tier weapons that are the 'two-handed clubs'. Those two-handed clubs are laughably slow, don't scale well in this game in the slightest, and use too much stamina to ever fit the niche of an AoE damage dealer.

At best you're putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to 1-handed weapons + Shield and at worst you pretty much cannot fight certain monsters. Very disappointing after reading that they wanted to balance the weapons so that you can 'main' any of them! I guess they forgot about the two-handers haha.