I definitely adhere to the option that the berdysh should be an analogue of the halberd against the cavalry and the horses should suffer. However, in close combat - yes, I think it’s a little difficult to swing it often as sword.
It would be ideal in close combat against horses to act as a halberd with a damage bonus, and to remove the bonus against infantry. about speed of the berdysh attack is no idea. in theory, a heavy two-handed axe in heavy SRI armor is waved quickly, which means I see no reason to make the attack speed and damage less than similar infantry, especially the streltcy are not in heavy armor
I try never to use information from Wikipedia because its text is created for a general understanding of the topic and it is easy to change it for fraud. even in the language variants, there may be opposite information.
I believe my eyes. I have seen live berdyshs and the simplest ones (somewhat similar to the long axes of the Germans, but the iron part is huge there) and those that were used during the conditional capture of Kazan (there was a tcar standard and the length of the shaft (150cm+, it seems) and the size and shape of the iron part became standard), and in Moscow museums there are more modern, carved reinforced shaft and with a beautiful chisel in steel. By the way, there are exhibitions of European weapons of those who came to try their luck in the robbery of Russian lands. I advise you if you suddenly travel to countries - visit museums - you will never see live in conditional South America what was used in Asia, for example, and vice versa. I do that
In general, it’s cool that the game has developed a dialogue so that at least 2 people are interested in the history