I saw Rogue One yesterday and thought it was great. I'll need to watch it a second time before considering how it rates to the other movies, but my initial reaction is that it is on par with A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. The final battle was superb, although my expectations were that the land battle would be more intense. Space battle surpassed my expectations and it may be the best one ever done on film...just not sure if it surpasses Return of the Jedi or not.
The only two weaknesses, IMO, were the lack of an opening crawl (thankfully, I knew this going in) and the soundtrack. Early on I found the lack of a John William's caliber soundtrack to be jarring and actually take me out of the movie. Even in the second half, there were times I expected to hear familiar themes with certain scenes, which when lacking, distracted me from the movie. I have heard that the composer was only given four weeks to write the soundtrack, which is really surprising considering they knew they were replacing Williams for this one and how important the music is to the franchise. I also don't know why they didn't use more of the music from the original trilogy, where it would have been appropriate (e.g. Imperial March, Rebel Base music from A New Hope).
As for the slowness of the beginning, I didn't have much of a problem with it; but, I had read Catalyst, which details the background relationship between Krennic, Galen, and Galen's wife (Lyra) during the Clone Wars and the early years of the Empire, before Galen and his family went into hiding. I can see where much of what they were doing may not have connected as well for those who didn't feel as though they already knew the characters.
