These are very beautiful models, I admire the great amount of detail you put into them. Unfortunately, they don't look as spectacular in-game as they do in renders so most of the designs on the hilt aren't even going to be seen by the player, therefore having such elaborate shapes that raise the polycount is useless. I encourage your detailed modelling as long as you don't go crazy, but try to optimize.
Actually, Sketch-Up's renderer is VERY similar to Torques as far as the end result goes.
When I model, I think like Im making a FPS view model, but since you cant do that in torque, it also ends up as somewhat of a polygon parade :P
But all of the details are noticeable in 1st person, even on a low res like 800x600, so there's no real harm in it. Just don't be a moron and spam the stuff out of the item spawns and you're fine :P
Also, two-handed sword for v4(?) -- Requiem from Soul Calibur

Obviously nowhere near complete, still got a lot to do :P