Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Notes

Yes, the original genre of the series is dead, and the developers have basically dropped the over-arching storyline, but this is the first successful conversion to huge sprawling open world; way better than Origins and Odyssey.

Pros

The story is what keeps me playing. Conquering England bit by bit, and meeting lots of memorable fully-voiced characters along the way
Combat is visceral and great fun
Lots of special skills that border on godlike
Gorgeous. Runs much better than Watch Dogs Legion
I'm glad that actual assassins are back in the game
You can respec skill points around any time you like
There was a proper "wow" moment the first time I reached a hill in England and had the whole countryside set out before me
England is absolutely gorgeous, although it feels a bit more like storybook England than realistic. It's too orange and colourful
Lots of references to previous games
Exploration is rewarding. There's stuff EVERYWHERE
As always, you can climb anything, and movement is really fluid

Cons

Open world games that encourage you to go anywhere shouldn't have loot that shows up on a map that you can't get yet because it's locked behind a sidequest. There are lots of places with loot markers that are only accesible later
While stealth is still possible, it's now completely pointless as it's much faster to just run in and smash everyone
"Checking for addons" for 10 seconds every time you start the game
As always, 'made by a team of multiple gender identities' nonsense
Most of the intro sequences at the start of the game are 30fps video, with constant audio stuttering. The rest of the game is in-game models, so it's weird that they only use that at the start
Can now switch gender at any time, and there's a "let the animus choose'. None of that makes sense.
The devs have completely given up on the over-arching story, or even bothering to explain why there's a modern day component. New players will have literally no idea why there's suddenly 2 minutes in a modern day setting talking about an animus
Considering all the effort they've gone to to make the longship believable; vikings rowing it, sails, retractable sail for bridges etc, I find it rather weird that when they're playing a song, there's no viking in the boat with an instrument
Although the sense of scale is enormous and majestic, it does just mean there's a ton of travel time between places

Bugs

There's a key highlighted in London that isn't there
When I arrived in London, I just went exploring. I ended up in a temple with quest letters in it that were highlighted but I couldn't interact with them yet
If you've been playing for more than about an hour, taking a screenshot crashes the game
Crashed about a dozen times in 50 hours
Sometimes there are NPCs standing in fields just staring ahead not moving
London's audio is all echo-ey and sounds like you're in a cave permanently
There's a world event near London's docks where the marker shows up, but the NPC isn't there until you complete the main quest