How much you like this film depends on how much of a die-hard fan you are!

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2016)

SPOILERS!!!!!
I will pre-amble this by saying I'm not a true die-hard fan who knows everything about the Star Wars universe.
If you are expecting to see Jedi knights and lots of light-sabre duels, be prepared to be disappointed. Remember this is a SW stand-alone story and shows a different side to the SW universe, not a part of the main saga.
The whole point of the introduction for each of the main films is to provide the set-up for each episode of the saga as a whole. I understand why the crawl was not included as (a) it is a stand alone film and (b) we know the plot and we can pretty much guess what will happen at the end of the film by virtue of how ANH starts. In that respect, the story is predictable as we know they will have successfully stolen the plans.
Rogue One comes before ANH so the audience had to anticipate an original plot (unlike the TFA which was a rehash of ANH). As another reviewer said, this film takes Star Wars seriously and as far as the feel of the film is concerned I would put it very close behind TESB.
Having said that the part in ROTJ where they use the shuttle to land on Endor was again used similarly in R1 which I found slightly disappointing. Otherwise I couldn't see any other obvious plot similarities to those films.
The downsides is that the film started off slow and, given the necessity of stealing the plans, didn't have the urgency of ANH or TESB. Though we know the outcome of the story, I think the urgency to steal the plans could have been much more life-and-death in the plot like a ticking time-bomb.
There is very little in the character motivation especially Jyn aside from the fact that her father is centrally involved in the design of the death star.
I understand why some of the die-hard fans will pick lots of holes and have very high expectations but I personally think it is, overall, an entertaining film.