Sweet Baby Inc Detected

I really enjoyed odyssey, and was really hoping for more of that with this one. Maybe that's on me, but this one was nowhere near as fun. I didn't like any of the characters as much, and every part felt like Such a chore.
You leave Norway and end up in England. Cool, start making some allies. And also, here's a potion to drink to go do a quest line in asgard. And here's another potion to drink for a roguelike section to get random gear in the real world. And here's a couple different river raid maps to get special resources to upgrade the Jomsviking Hall. And here's a mastery challenge to do at some point. Don't forget to upgrade your settlement for the feast buff that's basically useless because combat isn't a huge challenge anyway.
You can collect roman masks for settlement decorations if you're into that, or if the glowing spots on the map bothers you like it does me. You can also chase after stupid pieces of paper while the free-running controls fail you over and over for a tattoo you either won't use or will be covered up by your gear. The short mystery quests were interesting for the most part, but I've got no reason to try to get the 'good' outcome on some of them because I have no investment in these randoms and I'll never see them again.
There's a couple issues with npc pathing, I had a woman I was rescuing in a burning house walking into the door frame forever until I kept nudging her and knocking her down. There's also been a few times I've had to save and reload because people just weren't there or weren't moving when I was supposed to follow them.
There is less gear bloat than odyssey, you'll probably pick a loadout and just upgrade it as you play, but you cannot get any gear out of your inventory. So it's just there asking to be upgraded forever.
It's probably worth a shot if you end up catching it on a significant discount, but please don't buy any of the weird out of place destiny cosmetics for real money that they offer.

I am a die hard Assassin's Creed Fan but after Black Flag, the franchise has been going downhill and I was hoping Valhalla would change that course. Unfortunately, it sunken deeper into the abyss of "WTF." The game mechanics is not even close the franchise and the story is putting me to sleep. I rather count sheep than play this game again.