Sekiro is my gold standard for sword combat. At the moment (about 12 hours in), I think Rise of the Ronin very much captures a similar feeling for me, if maybe not to quite the same level of polish as FROM (animations and attack choreography, in particular).
Yeah, the reviews really have me scratching my head, especially when so many of the criticisms could be leveraged at a lot of the games it gets compared to. I love Ghost of Tsushima, but this game already has managed to beat out when it comes to combat.
I'm also pleasantly surprised at how well Team Ninja delivered on their first attempt at an open world city (Edo/Tokyo). Ghost had virtually no large towns to speak of, barring maybe Komatsu Forge.
There's so many positive things here that I would argue largely outweigh the negatives (AC checklists, bandit camps, map markers).