It's too long for its own good. It draws out a story that can be told quickly, and with much more emotion. The way it's told makes the story irrelevant because of how long it can take to explain a plot point and the amount of time between them. The repetition kills this game that makes me wonder if it is soulless. So many objectives all doing the same thing; there is plenty of content this way. From raids to drinking games and flytings but the vast majority of it achieves nothing in combat and story. On top of that, the lack of instructions for mysteries makes it difficult to follow if you don't finish a mystery start to finish. Missed the instructions? Yeah, too bad. There is no way to get them to repeat the instructions for the majority of these mysteries.
Unfortunately the criticism doesn't end there. The game doesn't play fair. The combat is a step down from Assassin's Creed Mirage and Odyssey. Sometimes the enemies act like sponges. The auto-engagement doesn't work well sometimes. The game will punish you for not using the right tactic. It forces you into a specific playstyle. This is not a game where you can play your own way to the end. You will need to adjust your playstyle to some degree. For me, it was a considerable change moving from a small axe and shield to dual wielding large axes and spears for specific enemies.
Despite several years out, it crashed a lot in play 100+ hour playthrough. Sometimes I would end up with random lockups without warning; Evior would just stop moving and no inputs would work. And a couple time my mission progress had to be reset because a mission failed to complete or failed to start the next mission in the chain. And one unfortunate time I lost a few hours of progress because of the Cent region bug corrupting my save. Quite possibly the most unfair event was when I was almost done a Bear challenge for a gold model and the game suddenly crashed on me. The most difficult set of challenges in the game and you're about to get gold, and it crashes on you randomly? Like, really?
Despite these grievances, the game has some redeeming factors. It's a vast, open and beautiful world. It's pretty relaxing running around in the countryside and seeing roman ruins all around, with minor instances of combat. Throughout my playthrough, Evior grows as a character. Not as quick and balanced as with Kassandra in Odyssey, but enough that it becomes noticeable after a while. The execution of the story was definitely ruined by the game. And had the story wrapped up earlier, and with key fixes to mechanics like mysteries being small side missions, this could had been a wonderful game, even with its bugs and issues. Unfortunately there is a lot to be desired from how this game was designed in those key areas.
Mastery challenges are not all based on skills. Some of those challenges are based on pure luck. And that is a shame. This is especially about the Bear masteries, also known as combat masteries. Compared to the other mastery challenges, they are unnecessarily difficult that I'd rather play Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Code Vein, or any of the other numerous souls-like games where good combat and perfect frames matters. It made me question if Ubisoft's play testers ever beat them. There is no other way than to brute force through the combat challenges. Pure luck. It doesn't test your combat capability in this game. At least the other mastery challenges do to varying levels of success.
Going out of my way to mention this to help others with a specific mastery challenge. The Wenlocan Outpost Wolf mastery challenge appears to be difficult at a glance, but the game allows leeway. You can fire off an ability to make your arrows go on fire. You can use your ability, run into other archers and light them on fire and it counts as an indirect kill. You can do the same by using the torches around the challenge arena to light your arrow with fire. Same result. You can run into enemies or shoot a fire arrow along from a distance to cause fire damage. This challenge in particular can lock you out of gold if enemy patterns become undesirable. So this indirect fire strategy should be of use to avoid being locked out of gold.
Getting back to this review. I finished the main story, collected all items, finished all mysteries and collected all artifacts. I completed Vinland and the Order of the Ancients storylines. I avoided most of the other side quests that weren't strictly relevant, but occasionally did a few. I did play through many Orlog games, almost all drinking games, sometimes twice. Clocking in at around 114 hours for my level of completion, the game is much longer than Assassin's Creed Mirage for 100% completion, but I could see it taking another dozens of hours to complete the game 100%, and unlike other games, I don't think I would enjoy it. Its enough where I don't have much drive to do much more in the game.
In closing, I don't recommend this game. If you're achievement hunting, there are better games to play that are worth your time. If you liked other Assassin's Creed games, coming from new and old, I can't recommend this game either. There are other entries that are more deserving to be played over this. But, if you feel like you want to take a trip back in time like in any other Assassin's Creed game, visit a world apart from you and feel emersed in a visually beautiful world with Viking raids, this game is just as good as other Assassin's Creed games in that regard.
