After almost 90 hours, I feel finally ready to articulate why I feel Assassins Creed Shadows is a fairly mediocre game.

There are 3 primary criticisms I would level at Assassins Creed: Shadows. From least important to most important:

1. A fairly mediocre artistic direction. I think that engaging environmental and artistic design is very important to make a game enjoyable to play. In fact, the more video games I play, the more important I believe art direction to be (along with music direction). I would say that, in general, AC Shadows has great foliage, but fairly mediocre looking people. Additionally, the lack of a strong sense of visual identity compared to say, Ghost of Tsushima or AC Origins (for two games that are roughly comparable, the first from being similar in location and the second from being the same IP), is a real problem.
2. A storyline that is poorly paced, both in terms of length and tone. Honestly, I think this would've been a fairly good story if it was maybe half the length, with a lot of repetitive and poorly paced content cut so that the story highlights are close together. I honestly think that at this point, Ubisoft should focus on having much shorter campaigns with maybe a number of Elder Scrolls style "guild quests" to round everything out. A 15-20 hour campaign that is properly paced would be amazing - and having mediocre side content, if the core campaign is good and well paced, would be less of an issue.
3. A bland open world that provides 'content' to overcome that itself carries no sense of genuine progression. This is the biggest and most pressing issue. All this really is at its core is a checklist simulator. You go to a location, check the list, and then go to the next location. Additionally, there are too many locations that feel too similar. In some ways, this feels more like work than my actual job.

Obviously, I do not recommend you play this game. It is not worth your time, and I've only put this many hours into it because I am an insane person.

I am also very unhappy because a big part of why I bought this game was because it was originally supposed to get a multiplayer mode that I wanted to play with my friend, but that was cancelled.

i will now summarize the entire game:
Walk 5km
Kill some nutbag
Walk back
Walk 4km to buy groceries
Walk back
Walk 1km
Play conflict resolver (mostly ends in you wiping an entire zipcode off the map)
Walk back

there you go, saved you ~80 hours of horrible storywriting, thank me later

I've cleared roughly half the map, and at this point, I'm mostly playing out of stubbornness rather than enjoyment.

For context, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is one of my favorite games of all time. If Odyssey is a 10/10, this is a 5/10 on a good day. The difference is night and day. Odyssey constantly gave me reasons to keep exploring. This game keeps giving me reasons to check how much map is left.

The visuals are genuinely beautiful. The environments are stunning, the scenery is fantastic, and there were plenty of moments where I stopped and thought, "Wow, that looks amazing." Unfortunately, looking amazing and being fun are two different things.

The gameplay loop became repetitive much faster than I expected. Every time I thought the game was about to get interesting, it found a new way to send me on another chore disguised as content. At some point, I realized I wasn't excited to log back in, I was just trying to justify the money I spent.

Honestly, if the graphics weren't this good, I would have dropped the game hours ago. The scenery is doing more heavy lifting than some of the main characters.

I'm also the kind of player who finishes games even when I don't particularly enjoy them. I usually push through because sometimes a game redeems itself later on. Halfway through this one, I'm still waiting for that moment. At this rate, the credits might arrive before the fun does.

If you've already bought it, give it a chance and see if it clicks for you. But if you're several hours in and still wondering when it starts getting good, don't worry you might already be playing the "good" part. In that case, it may be time to find another game.