I also still didn't like the combat (which is something I loved in Sands).
You're in a very tiny minority there. :P Even the reviews that praised Sands of Time as GOTY material made a point of complaining about the combat. It mostly consists of either a) vaulting over your opponent a few times, or b) luring them close to a wall so you can vault off that.

Also, I didn't find TTT to have any more of a gritty atmosphere than SoT. None of that annoying Godsmack garbage.