Okay, I managed to capture a fight with Rico on Arcade mode. I'm playing this match on Easy mode and still getting my butt kicked. As you can see, even when I beat him once I just barely made it. It appears that the main problem with Rico is that his punch combo enables him to whittle down your health very fast. He's also a very fast hitter, rarely giving himself an opening even on the easiest difficulty.
As for my trouble adjusting to the combat system, I think my difficulty adjusting can be summarized as me being too used to the system from the original games (which were much more simplistic than the one here) and me being overwhelmed by the more complex attack commands. I am on the autism spectrum so I have a bit of a learning disability as a result, but I'm trying my best to adapt.
(If you're wondering why I'm fighting Rico the way I am, it's because my approach to fighting in this game is to just mash the movement and attack buttons. It seems like a fatal tactic, but believe it or not, it usually works. Either way, watching myself flail about like a ragdoll makes me look like a buffoon and makes me wonder if I'm just bad at the game or if fighters like Rico are just making me look bad)
On the plus side, as you can see in the video, I figured out how to use Danny's uppercut and Ghostly Wail and decided I could just spam either attack whenever I had the opportunity.