I do struggle in tournaments when fighting nobles or high end troops on my own, but it's not because they block all my blows and strike from unexpected directions; it's because they seem to have better armour and instead of inflicting 35 damage from a blow to the head, I inflict 5 or 10.
Again, when the first EA came out, the 1 on 1 combat in this game was mighty hard. People blocked like it was going out of business and even bandits and looters were swift and ruthless with their weapons.
Now I can almost always defeat an opponent. Feels a bit cheap.