Assassin's Creed Valhalla is expansive and comprehensive in its recreation of 9th century England and Norway. However, it is plagued with lackluster content cast upon its gorgeous landscapes. It brings with it a narrative that has intriguing content, but it is drawn out in such a way where its fate once fully spun is hard to appreciate. In short: Valhalla is unreasonably, unethically, and gratuitously bloated. It spites itself with its expansiveness, asking you to disembark from promises of set-pieces or creative assassination sequences in favor of fetch questing, dully walking from one NPC to another at an agonizingly slow pace, or repeating your 10th copy-pasted fortress conquest at the end of a narrative arc. Many of Valhalla's "mysteries" are actually quite clever and filled with gratifying incorporations of its historical context, but still other mysteries and "wealth" spread throughout the open world are direly boring to collect. Valhalla is fun in its core gameplay, and customizable in a way where it might be enjoyed in a manner similar to the prior Assassin's Creeds - titles that didn't demand fighting spongy enemies and encouraged stealth gameplay if the player was so inclined. The combat and gameplay here is good throughout: parrying is satisfying and the arsenal of weaponry and finishers invoke the brutal fantasy of viking combat. This, however, is let down by repetitive mission-design and combat encounters throughout 100+ hours. It is further let down by some clunky aspects of the gameplay, including a parkour system that seems somehow to have degraded from prior AC titles I am naturally obliged to compare it to. Odd glitches remain present in this game 4 years after release, prompting me to have to reload on multiple occasions to interact with a NPC or so that my horse might regain its ability to gallop, for example. Eivor and their cast members are decently interesting, and I genuinely did care about this game as an Assassin's Creed mainline entry. The early conflict between the Hidden Ones and The Order of the Ancients are cleverly weaved into Eivor's independent story, with appreciated callbacks to Origins and Odyssey. Furthermore, the science-fiction aspects of Assassin's Creed genuinely carried this story to its climax in great contrast to contemporary Assassins Creed titles. Without following precedent of staging Eivor as a descendent of the modern day protagonist, Ubisoft has still invited genuine prominence to their role in this universe. Ubisoft has achieved more intertwining mythological facets of the cultural setting into the Assassins Creed Universe than they did with the likes of "Assassin's Creed: Origins" or even "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey." Genuinely, open world setbacks aside, the incorporation of Norse mythological thematics here are well integrated. Valhalla is less successful in establishing a reason to care about its drawn out viking-oriented tale of conquest in 9th century England. The historical events and flow of time are presented here with less enthusiasm and gameplay experimentation as compared to much older titles like Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, IV: Blackflag, or Unity. As previously mentioned, there is an overarching story here that is worthy of an audience. However Valhalla fumbles on its own hubris more often than not in guiding you through this journey. Valhalla is worthy of a mainline venture for Assassin's Creed fans, but it is unfortunately monotonous as an open world game purposive of engrossed immersion.